New

I just added this to my shop. It's my favorite picture I've taken. The mask was given to me by my best friend Claudia. Go take a look!

Today I feel like this.

Tough day.

This morning when the alarm clock was going off and I was going in and out of sleep I dreamt for a moment that two people with houses for heads were kissing. I think it was because of the image above. I was checking out these cards yesterday from Miseryland. I'm absolutely jealous that the artist beat me at turning houses into people. But I say we tied and turned ghosts into girls at the same time.

Thank you to those who answered my questions in my last blog. It's exciting to see that I have readers from all parts of the world. We could make our own "We Are The World" video. Seriously. Lets do that.

Fine

I just discovered this lovely blog called Fine Little Day by Swedish stylist and prop designer Elisabeth Dunker. The pictures on her blog are beautiful and she also has a fine little shop filled with gorgeous vintage items.

On her blog she asked her readers to respond to a few questions so she could know who she was talking to. I thought it was a neat idea so I'm hoping you'll answer the questions, top. Just takes a second. If you are reading this could you tell me:

1. Age?

2. Country?

3. How often are you here?

It can be completely anonymous. Thank you in advance!

Down Low and in the Garden

We did it! We pulled off our group show and despite the crummy weather we had a pretty good turn-out. I just realized the other day this is the first time I've really shown a lot of my work in this town. I've had pieces in shows here and there but this is the first big one. I was really pleased. Also I think I had more fun making the flier than anything else. I may go into the flier making business after all.

Here are a ton of photos. Click to enlarge:

These pieces belong to Joanna Goss. I'm kicking myself for not getting better pictures. I think she has some good ones so maybe I can update this. Her work was gorgeous. I'd never seen it before so it was a treat for me.
The following pieces belong to Adam Cox. His work has a pretty perverse sense of humor. That's why we love Adam.




These two lovelies belong to Jane Ryder. She graduated last year from grad school and I've been a little lost without her around. She came in for the show so we spent the whole day after lazing around and reading magazines at Barnes and Nobles with Cassie. Best day ever.
I've talked about Christian Campos' (blog is not for work) work on here time and again. Now you can see why I love his work so much. I tell him all the time that his lines have a definite Campos signature and that's what really attracts me to his pieces.

I love this hanging piece of Christian's. It was kind of spooky and creepy but funny at the same time.

There's Christian hanging the lights.

And this is an image of Christian's work on the left and mine on the right.
This was a fun opportunity for me to show a set of work that would have otherwise only lived in my studio. I didn't know what to do with these pieces but they seemed perfect for this show. This piece may go into my Etsy shop soon. It is cut to the exact size of the hair.




This was my installation! I've always wanted to do a wall piece with streamers and balloons. It was titled: The Party I Always Wanted. I had so much fun putting this up.



There is Joanna enjoying the party. I took this picture toward the end of the night and realized I wish I would have set something up Prom style where everyone had their pictures taken in front of it. Another time...
Thanks so much for all the encouraging words of those in blogland and to everyone who was able to make it out. Here are some of those people:

These are three of my grad classmates: Jessica, Adrian and Kyle.

Jane Ryder and Cassie Edwards of blogland... Check out Cassie's blog for more photos of the show.

Sneak Peak

Phew! I just got home from a rough class day. Now I'm going to head to the gallery and finish up the show. Here's a little sneak peak of my installation. I can't wait for tonight! Everyone please send wishes of good weather.

Away We Go

What an exciting couple of days!

I found out I made the Etsy front page twice in just a few days time. That was a real relief because I was starting to feel like my poor little shop was getting lost in the big internet marketplace. This is mostly my fault. I've been so busy with my graduate work so I've been a little neglectful of the work going in there. But! I made two new photos for the shop that I'm pretty pleased with. I love the photo medium and it's so easy to make prints. I'm still looking into making prints of my work so keep your eyes open for that to happen.

This morning I got a sweet note in my Etsy email informing me that I'd been featured on the blog Going Home To Roost. Great name, right? GHTR is a very cute blog that posts a lot of items from etsy. There is also an etsy shop. So thank you Bonnie for that feature and hello to any of Bonnie's readers who may have found themselves at my place. Have a seat, drink some coffee, take your shoes off.

Last exciting thing of the week: My friends and I are having an art show at the Bad Dog Gallery this Thursday. We started hanging the show last night and I think it's going to look really great. We are five like-minded people when it comes to art so there have been no arguments or worries about anything. It all came together really organically. I'm going to the gallery later today to work on a little installation. I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow and I'll be sure to post plenty of pictures of the opening.

Phew, that was a long post... Or did I just take so many breaks during the post writing that I thought I wrote more? If you hung in this long, Thanks! See you tomorrow!

New in Etsy

I just added these two new photos in my shop. There are five of each and I'm printing them on 8"x10" paper. If you like them and are interested in getting them printed a bigger size contact me. Go take a look!

Yummy Art

After having a lot of critiques last week I found an artist I really loved thanks to a teacher's suggestion. I'm using a lot of collage in my work right now and I was told to check out Michelle Wasson's work. When I looked up her page I realized I'd seen her paintings before in New American Paintings. I love those but I also love these collages. I like how she uses different elements to build each image. It's so hard for me to not want to fill a whole page with information. These are a lot more stark and pretty powerful. Check out her page for more work.

These paintings below were part of a collaboration Michelle did with one of my faculty members Nina Rizzo. I really love these.

Another blog about Where the Wild Things Are

With the blogosphere abuzz about Where the Wild Things Are, here's one more blog about Where the Wild Things Are.

My two cents.

I loved this movie. For many reasons. First of all, it is not a children's movie. Sorry to those who thought it was. But it's not. I think it's too dark for children and the themes handled in the movie are too complex for children. I sat next to a kid and there was a part where all the adults laughed and she laughed too but then asked her mom what was funny. This seemed to be the case through most of the movie. I'm really glad it was not a children's movie. I actually really don't like children's movies that can also cater to adults. The humor is annoying to me. I'm one of the jerky people in the world that hated Finding Nemo! We are a rare breed so I tried to keep those opinions to myself.

Obviously the movie was very visually stunning. I was in a constant state of chills. The art in the movie was gorgeous and the monsters were my cup of tea. I loved the voices that came out of them.

And Dave Eggers did a great job writing the movie. I've admittedly never read any of his books before but I'd like to check them out now. The story is something that could be talked about in discussion groups for days. It was so complex and so painfully truthful about the loneliness of being a child. I think through most of the movie I kept thinking about how blown away I was by the plot.

Only complaint. It got a little slow at times. The pacing can be a bit weird. This also adds to the Why It's Not A Children's Movie list. The girl next to me? She slept through most of it. It was cute.

I really felt bad for all the kids there because it got a little scary at times. I was hoping it wouldn't give them bad dreams. If you have kids and you want them to see it definitely pre-screen before taking them. Maybe you'll decide it's not too dark. I was listening to This American Life the other day and they were talking about nightmares. One of the stories was about a grown man who saw The Shining when he was small and how that movie terrorized him. I know these are two very different movies but they talked about how you never know what scares children. I used to be afraid of everything when I was little. A list:

E.T.

That alien guy in meatballs 2

an animal skull my sister and i found

in the indiana jones movie when the rock covers the cave door. i thought that would happen to my bedroom door when i went to sleep at night.

abandonment

my My Buddy doll

dogs

our living room (it seemed haunted)

and probably countless other things.

I hope you like my review. Go see the movie if you haven't already! Let me know what you thought of it.

I'm very excited about my weekend. Tonight my best friend Joanna is coming to town and staying with me until Sunday. Saturday and Sunday we are going to have a yard sale. Tonight we are baking cookies for the yard sale. And tomorrow night? We are going to see Where the Wild Things Are!

So, Im closing up shop for the weekend but will see you on Monday!