Rachel Anne in Parliament: update

As some of you may know from knowing me, or from reading my blog, about two months ago (my goodness time flies) I was recognized in Parliament by my MP for Glengarry, Prescott, & Russell: Mr. Pierre Lemieux.  Mr. Lemieux (who is a very classy guy) spoke about a national award I had won for an art piece I made for the Historica-Dominion Art From Memory Challenge that was inspired by a Canadian veteran, Mr. Fraser Muir (who I finally recently got to speak with and he is a delight!).

Anyway, I haven't gotten my copy of the video yet so I can't upload it, but I do have some links to Mr. Lemieux's speech (which I watched on C-Pac and broke into tears, cause you know, I'm cool like that).

So........ please check out the Press Release, the Official Hansard (did you know Hansard transcripts are so named because it was Luke Hansard and his descendants who compiled these reports until 1889; thank you Dictionary.com), and the Video (which is on the top right side of Mr. Lemieux's official website).  Hopefully once I head home next week I'll be able to get the digital copy of the video and post it myself.

No idea what I'm talking about? Catch the original post here and a second update here.

Hope you enjoy!

Below are photos of "Security Blanket" taken by the amazing talented Jeff Crawford (graduate of the New Brunswick College of Craft & Design's photography diploma, freelance photographer, and photo technician at NBCCD).
Check out Jeff's website here.




Front view of piece




Close up of screen print text & image




The bottom had 3 pockets sewn in so viewers could write letters of gratitude and leave them for the veteran who inspired this piece, Mr. Muir, or for veterans in general




My own letter of thank you sitting in the pocket



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Good News!

I'm going to have a REAL studio!!
Right now I'm working in a spare bedroom/studio/giant closet and to be honest, it gets quite frustrating.  It's a hard space not to get swallowed up the overload of stuff and lack of space.  But, I've realized I need to have a studio in my living space because I work odd hours, like to multitask while I work (which can include housework etc and creative work), and am just plain to lazy to walk across the street (literally) to go to a studio.  I also just really like having my stuff around me (the start of this sentence is a hoarder alert!) so that when the creative spirit takes me, it's there: I never know what I'll be inspired by and when.

Now for the good news... Drumroll please...
 Bbbbeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....

The spare bedroom/closet/studio is soon to be JUST A STUDIO!!!!! YAAAYYY!!!

The powers that be have seen to for our spare bed to be taken away, which frees up SO MUCH space for me! Also, the fox and I have decided to stay in the this apartment for another year so we're agreeing to invest in a pantry and shelving etc, which will also solve the "this studio is a giant closet" problem.  I am SO EXCITED!
Creating in a space I can't turn around in is a tad challenging and soon I will be without a studio at school (cause I'll be gradumacated) so this could not have come at a better time!

I will not be posting photos of my "studio" pre fixing up (it's horrifyingly embarassing) but will try to post of mid clean up, and when it finally becomes a studio (as opposed to a "studio").

In related news, I'm also happy to have one less reason to use airquotes in my daily life.

This new set-up idea is my cuppa tea (maybe I'll even get a comfy chair to sip my cuppa tea in my studio!).

(and see, I promised a shorter post, and delivered!)

Listing and Credit..

So, listing. Yes, I'm posting about listing.  And credit (not the bank kind, the giving kind).

Annnnnnnd go:
So, I'm all about giving credit: you know, the kind of credit where credit is due type of stuff.  So, telling people when they've done a great job, or tried really hard, or blew my mind, if my work's been inspired by someone else's, if someone's helped with something, or if I figured out a roadblock by talking it out with something (etc etc this list goes on and on).  Most people roll this way, and I think it's awesome.  It's awesome anywhere, and I think especially awesome and needed in the creative fields where so many lines can be blurry.  Essentially - it just makes for good community and I'm all about community.

The one type of credit I have a hard time giving however, is to myself.  Rarely ever do I feel at the end of the day that I've done enough.  This has led to me listing: I make crazy lists all the time of all the things I want to get done.  This can range from the necessary (have a shower, drink tea), to the mundane (fold laundry, hang laundry), to my creative pursuits (research quilts 1 hour, cut patterns), and the ridiculous (smarten up, get life in order [and yes, both of these phrases make it my lists fairly often]).  I feel good when I cross things off, but how do I feel when not everything gets crossed off (which never happens)?  Not that great.

After telling an advisor last semester that I was feeling frustrated with what I was getting done, she suggested I make lists, cross things off, and carry over the important stuff and said that I likely was doing a tonne of things that I just wasn't giving myself credit for.

Bullseye.

I think this is something a lot of people, not just the creatives, deal with (including the advisor with the advice: she advised out of past experience).  There is SO MUCH we do in a day that we don't deem important, and so don't address the fact that it was done.  I know I berrate myself for all the things I didn't do while ignoring the stuff I did.  I once saw an artist who at the end of each day drew pictures & notes in a journal about everything he did that day, thereby acknowledging his triumphs (small and large) and feeling good.  He'd even write in watching an hour of tv as an accomplishment cause sometimes you just need to veg.  It's all part of the experience (so long as vegging isn't your only experience).

As I walked back from the grocery store this evening I got onto this idea of how much I'd done, how I hadn't blogged in enough days, or done enough homework, or whatever, and my brain started hamstering over this idea of giving credit to everything (credit to my friend Benita for the lovely term hamstering - amazing) and I decided to do this blog post and just for fun, make out a list of all the things I did today.  EVERYTHING(ish).  I know I won't draw a cute journal everynight (it'll become one more thing I didn't do at the end of an evening) but I think it's a good start just to recognize once in awhile all that does take place in the space of a day.

So... Get ready for the longest sentence of your life....
Today I got up early and snuggled with Fritz, made my tea and went to work for 8:30, did inventory all morning at work, went and had a quick lunch with two of my besties (shout out to C-Dubs and K-Unit!), got back and went to a local church hall to check out a display of sacred textiles, picked up some school binders for a friend, came back to work, fixed a door that had fallen off, copied blog photo files from school, went to class where we took photos for our exhibit promo and waded through all our assignments and deadlines for the next month (much more involved and braintwisty than that sounds), came home and loved on Fritz some more, cut out and sewed part of skirt (just for fun, cause you know I don't have that much to do and a girl needs skirts), talked to the Fox on the Fone (twice cause he's out of town), chilled and watch an hour of tv, folded laundry, got together a load of laundry, and did a rough copy of an assignment while watching tv, went to the grocery store (where my debit card refused to be read so they asked me to come back tomorrow and pay - the honour system is why I love places that aren't huge cities), emailed all my old friends about plans for when I'm in town coming up, made supper, read a bit of a magazine regarding my spiritual pursuits (I believe no matter what you're faith, religion, or spirituality - even if soccer's your religion or you worship at the Church of Jazz - you need to take time out to feed your soul), wrote up my assignment and emailed it to my prof, took out the garbage, and started this post.
There we have it - it's 10:10 and I still have quite a bit I plan to do, and somehow, it just never feels like enough.  But I'm going to start to at least acknowledge what I have done and just accept that there's always lots to do; it's what keeps life interesting and keeps us moving forward, isn't it?

On my list for tonight?  Work on my organza dress, put away groceries & supper, eat some snacks, watch some tv, tackle another assignment, tidy more, try not to be so verbose, and dye some bones (yes that's what I said) are just a few things on the list.

Anyone have any suggestions for tracking what we do? Prioritizing? Giving credit to oneself?  If you're a lister - how do you list? Any good OCD listing rituals going on? I'm curious to know if/how others struggle with the same things, or if I'm just ultra crazy.

Now, this was crazy verbose, so don't worry, next one will be shorter, I promise, but future ones might be longer, we'll see!

And for fun, here's some photos of lists (and I can add took photos of lists, and uploaded photos to the above list now!)

Tonight's list - can't wait to start crossing off!

Yes, sometimes they get messy.

Numbered lists are my favourite (and check out #16 on the left - that's my favourite part of that list)



Fairly run-of-the-mill list, with my usual title "ToDo ToDay" (cause it makes me chuckle).



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Work In Progress: silk dress

Yes, silk dress.  I almost always have a hard time giving titles (usually cause my instinct is to alliterate or come up with something that makes me snicker - not always the best move for work that's supposed to address serious ideas).  This piece is no expection so for now it'll just be referred to as silk dress.

I started this piece before I really got into the habit of blogging, and before I got into the habit of taking a tonne of in progress pics, so I haven't mentioned it before.  Well, lots of in progress pictures to come (but not this morning! Woke up late, need to get to work, but felt the need to post seeing as how my last posts had 12 days between them and I got called out.

This work essentially is a very fluid silk organza dress, very sheer, very drapey and references some innocent but grown up experiences from when I was in highschool.  I'm totally in love with it now, but it's gone through quite the transformation.

I'll sum this up better when I have the pictures of it uploaded, but basically when I started this I very much had my Fashion Designer brain in gear and had planned all these ruffles on an underskirt and details that had nothing to do with the conceptual aspects, but just would have made a pretty dress.  However, this dress isn't meant to be worn, it's purpose is completely different from the purposes that influence fashion design so I had to stop thinking like a fashion designer.  It's funny too cause I think instinctively I knew I was approaching it wrong.   I started it, got to a point I loved, and then stopped.  For months.  Now sometimes that stopping and not going further on a project is straight up procrastination; sometimes it's fear.  But sometimes, SOMETIMES I think it's instinct - instinct that something needs to be rethought before it's gone too far.  The trick is figuring out when it's fear, procrastination, or instinct, and not using that as an excuse to get no work done.

At any rate, in one of our classes we had to come up with a Value Proposition, like from a business plan, about our art work and ourselves.  We had to sum up exactly what it is we do in a sentence.  For someone as verbose as me, let me tell you that was hard.

I'll put up my value prop soon but essentially it helped me define what matters to me in my work, and see how I was things to go in the future.  This fashion dress that had one conceptual element did not fit in.  But I loved the idea behind it. 

The solutions:  words.  I decided to use words along the hem to get across my point.
The next job: computers... le sigh.  Not my favourite part of making, but I always love the results.  So I spent a few hours in the computer lab playing with a couple lines from an old favourite poem of mine.  Here's a screen shot of what I was doing.  Brownie points for anyone who can name the poem (and can you catch my spelling mistake? Thank goodness someone in the lab did! Thank goodness for people who care enough to tell me when I'm wrong [or just plain careless]).

Courageous Creatives: Mati Rose McDonough

Firstly, let me apologize for the absence of posts - I've been sick.  When I'm sick I lie on the couch and try everything to bribe my cat to come lay with me; I ache, I complain, I dose, I think the world is going to end (much to the Fox's chagrin).  I also don't really do any work which, I think is the most frustrating part of being sick.

However, I'm Back! Well, sort of - back enough to do blog posts and go to work (in 10 mins).

[editing note: this did not take me 10 mins to do, instead it took me about 3 days. Writing about other people's work intimidates me apparently but I'm just gonna blame the sickness.]

I wanted to do another Courageous Creatives post - not because I haven't done any work (I have enough work & topics from the last two weeks to keep me going) but because I haven't done one in a while (and really, I've only done one other) and I think it's really important to celebrate creative work, share the stories of others, and do my part to help expose new people to new work.  I'm a true believer in community, and isn't that how community works?  Not just helping yourself out, but helping others.  And really, would I want people to do the same if they like my work?
Enough interluding (did I use that work right? I'm still sick, so I'm not checking).

Mati Rose McDonough is an illustrator and artist who I happened to come across years ago on a now closed online consignment shop Plain Mabel (still so sad it's gone).  I was perusing all the different artists and came across this:

sergio tiger kitten, 2008, 4x4, acrylic

It's one of her paintings and I immediately orderd a print.  I think it's actually the first print I've ever bought that wasn't touristy or kitschy.  It was the beginning of my very small art collection.

I saw this piece and it instantly reminded me of one of my sisters.  It's like it's a weird portrait that gets right to her soul (the shifty-eyed, tube sock wearing, mustachioed lion part of her soul).  And after polling family and friends, they all agreed.  It's not just me being crazy.

(Incidently, years after sharing this with my sister I got some photos in my inbox of HER recreating this drawing - it was amazing.  The only thing missing was a lion suit).

This quote from Ms. McDonough's website pretty much sums it up:
"Mati Rose McDonough is an adult who paints like a child. It has taken her 32 years, 2 schools, and approximately 486 paintings to get to this point."

I'm not going to say too much about her work, cause I want you to go check it out, but I will say that as a deep respecter of whimsy I love her sense of whimsy in her illustrations.  To me, it feels like she just lets her brain go while, and there's a sense of honesty in her work.  I'm no art critic, but I think that's why they appeal to me. 

Also I would like to add: 32 years, 2 schools, and 486 paintings?!?! Yep - art ain't easy.

So I say bravo to Ms McDonough!  She has a style all her own, and one that just frickin' love! (For the sake of clarification - I love the colours, I love the subjects, I love the oddly expressive eyes especially, and I love the juxtapositions of the real and the surreal.  As I said, I'm no art critic, I just know what I love).
 See more work on her website.
 Check out her etsy shop & buy her stuff.

Get one of her prints, and I promise you it will class up the joint.  Whimsy it up too.

flicker bird, 2009, 6x6, acrylic

More images of her work after the jump (just cause I like the suspense)!

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The World Around Us: Edible Pen

Enough said.  Some genius (that genius being David Hakkens) designed and made a pen that is almost entirely edible - brings chewing on your pens to a whole new dimension!

Read more about it.

What a beautiful age we live in!

Work In Progress: Menship & Friendship Part III

Ok, this post I will try to keep short as I have to run off to the studio to do more work!
Last time we left this project, I had finished digitizing and printing and was getting pretty excited about the results!  Next step was no where near as fun, but just as necessary: ironing.  See, these prints on fabric are only set once they've been ironed (kinda like the crease in your pants when you were a little kid and your mom INSISTED you have a crease).  Otherwise the minute they get wet (ie washed) the ink runs and you're left with fabric that looks like a rough watercolour painting (maybe an idea to explore later, but not right now).

 So, I set up an impromtu ironing board at home (put a towel over my coffee table) and spent my afternoon ironing fabrics.

In case you're wondering, the Chicago BlackHawks cap is most definitely NOT mine!

(side note: I realized after bringing my piece to school during the April 1st snowstorm, that I didn't iron it enough.  Words got melty where the snowflakes landed.  Apparently I need to iron 3-5 minutes for every section as big as my iron plate, so I think I have a few more hours ironing ahead of me!)

My next step was to get some sampling done.  Ahh the dirty S word: sampling.  Sampling is essentially testing out your ideas without committing yet to doing it on your finished work.  Sampling is essential because guaranteed, nothing EVER winds up working out the way I saw in my head.  Tedious sometimes, yes, but I embrace sampling: doing lots of it only makes my work stronger, I then have the confidence to work on my finsihed piece, plus I have documentation of the process, AND always wind up discovering something new that I may not use now, but will in the future.

For this work, I'm doing an overlay of quilt blocks that will have cut-outs where you can read small pieces of the letters.  I want the letters to still be semi-private and secretive.

I'm a person who needs to see things, and squint at them in order to decide what I like.  So, another good chunk of my day was spent cutting out some tester fabric in different size (6", 5", 4.5", 4", 3.5", 3") and laying them on my fabric to see what I like.  I think I'm going with 4 or 4.5 inches, but realized I wanted a fabric with more translucency.  I tried silk, but it was too "rah-sha-sha" for this quilt about a country adolescence.  So, back to the drawing board.

What did I decide to go with? Well, be prepared for more sampling exploration next time!

Also - I laid out my quilt base for the first time and decided I wanted it bigger, so more printing.

The World Around Us: How To Steal Like An Artist

#1 - Let me preface this post by saying "I do this".  The "this" I'm referring to is making headings and sub headings for this.  You may or may not have noticed I've been tending to try and organize all my posts; this may stem from my habitual list-making (some of which I may one day share on here), or maybe it's just the inside of my brain coming out.  I realize my brain (and my studio) seem/are jumbled and full of meandering paths rather than straight roads that eventually get me to the answers I want, or the actions I need to do, but probably not nearly as quickly or efficiently as others.  I try my best to organize things, because that's the world we live in, but I'll be honest the chances of me finding something I need that I put away to keep safe are a lot less likely than of finding something that's in a weird place, but out in the open, so everytime I walk by it, I register it.  If it's tucked away, I just forget about it's existance - my brain and my world both work this way.  With the exception, of course of the three great F's: family, friends, and the farm (I wish it were four, so the alliteration would be better).

At any rate - right now I'm labelling blog posts, this may work, it may not, I may be over complicating things, or under complicating, or neither.  Just a little bit of suspense to keep life exciting.  But right now "The World Around Us" is my title for things that have come to my attention online, or not, and that are inspiring, thought-provoking, or just plain cool.

#2 - The inspiration for this post:
While perusing my facebook I came across a post on an old classmate's facebook site about her blog (the mulitple layers of social media still blow my mind).  Danielle Meder is the classmate with the blog she's been running for years.
Final Fashion follows her navigating the world of fashion from Toronto, and now London, England where she just moved.
The piece she posted that so inspired me is a post from Texas writer, Austin Kleon, title How To Steal Like An Artist and is a very inspiring, very real look at our world and in particular making your way in the creative field.  However, I think a lot of his insights are applicable to all avenues of life and industry.  Give it a read yourself, and let it inspire you too!  Some of the most memorable quotes to live by:

"Artists aren’t magicians. There’s no penalty for revealing your secrets." (Thankfully there's no Artists Alliance out there waiting to ban you if you spill - a a little nod to Arrested Development, cudos to any of you who got that)

"When you open up your process and invite people in, you learn."  That's what it's all about.

“Do good work and put it where people can see it.” 
(Sometimes the best truths are the simplest ones.)

Also, #8 - Be Nice.  The World Is A Small Town.
(This small town girl greatly appreciates that sentiment!)

Ok, so rather than reposting his entire article, I'm just gonna say one more thing - #4 is a thing I, and a lot of ppl I know, live by and it is SO rewarding!
Hope that piques your interest if you haven't already, so go ahead, click that link! Read on! Absolutely worth the the 7 minutes it'll take away from your facebooking! ;-)

Works in Progress: Menship & Friendship Part II

Last time I posted regarding this project I showed my digitized fabrics.
So, then on to step 2.  I had to get my scans onto fabric.  How do I do that? Digital printing!!   Believe it or not, you can buy fabric that's been specially prepared and backed with paper to put through a printer. Once your images have been printed, you peel off the paper, heat set the fabric - and BAM! Bob's your Uncle and you can use this fabric much like you'd use any other.
The process sums up nicely, but unfortunately it's quite painstaking.  The prepared fabric actually comes on rolls since it's primary use is to be paired with large industrial printers.  I, however am using a small desktop inkjet.  Awesome for me if I want to continue with this after school, not so awesome for the instructor who had to cut 20-some 11x17 sheets off this roll for me to put through our printed (Thanks Jan!).

In photoshop I arranged all my scans so that with each print two letters would fit on one sheet and thankfull the math worked out perfectly.  The first couple of prints went through the printed quite smoothly, but the images were really bright, and so a lot of the details of shadows from folding, etc that aged the papers were lost.  More fiddling on photoshop with levels & brightness brought those details back.  So now, I jsut had to print them.  Except there's no such thing as "just" in our world.

To print these puppies takes TIME.  These are huge files, and our printer is wee so it takes a long time to think.  From the time you send the file to print, to when it actually starts coming out takes somwhere around 15 minutes.  Per print.  And you can't send more than one thing to print at a time.  I also have to be very careful about loading the paper - one sheet at a time, very precisely so it doesn't jam.  This process means a whole lot of time spent waiting - which can drive me nutty.

My solution - multitasking!  As I sent things to print, I working on other computer projects.  Then I started getting into a really great groove, you know when you can do things automatically, not put too much thought into it and get a lot done? Ya, that's great - except that's always when things start messing up.  Awareness, and mindfulness on the task at hand are key when doing things in my world of fabric, and cutting, and printing, etc cause once you start getting confident about how easy something is to do, you give it less attention, and anything that can go wrong does.  Next thing I knew, as I was feeling good about getting this stuff done was printer jam.  Eff.  I jimmied the paper out, and sent a new one to print, hoping to get as much as I could done until 11 when I have to be out of the school.  This one didn't jam, it printed great!  Until I realized the computer had grabbed two sheets of paper, and had printed my stuff half on my fabric, half on regular paper.  No good.  At about $5.00 a print (paper included) and 20 minutes of my time, 2 eff-ups was a big deal.  One lesson I have learned well is that when things start messing up one after another, it's time to either take a break or call it quits for the night.  Don't push it.  So I called it quits.  3 hours and only 4 prints done.  I needed 40.

I won't bore you with all the details of the next few days, but essentially it went the same way.  Some great prints, some jams (which ruin the paper) and eff ups, and a LOT of time.

In the end, I realized my math had been off and I only needed to print 15 sheets, but this took me about 3 solid nights and some afternoons in the computer lab.

But oh boy, was it ever worth it!  My old highschool letters, now printed on fabric, ready to be sewn, with the detail of every tea stain, crumple, and ink smudge.  So satisfying!  Digital printing on fabric is changing my world!

 Why yes, that's a big man-cat in the background, waiting for his chance to dive into my work.

Looks like paper, but folds like fabric!

 Close-ups.  I love how you can even see a shadow of the writing that was on the back side of the papers.

Even the highlighter letter looks like highlighter!

A stack of stuff waiting for the next steps and of course, gratuitous cat belly.