The Deadline Scramble!

Not the deadline which looms so inspiring and haunting over the horizon of each project. No, I mean the deadline to update your portfolio before an interview cause you never updated it after that false alarm hard drive crash. Thankfully it wasn't the hard drive that died in January; it was the start-up program. A good friend graciously fixed it so I was able to retrieve and back up EVERYTHING only I never organized, updated or tweaked my portfolios or resume until getting an interview request yesterday.

'Cause that's totally how I roll when I lose track of time under too many hours of odd jobs and too few hours of art.

I've racked my brain wondering how to reflect the past few months and rearranged the portfolio according to direction from a wonderful art-friend. This time around I'm able to include a few physical samples like the program from my wedding, the dust jacket from Honest Lewis's Parasites and a few birthday and baby shower invitations.

My favorite addition is a project from this year for a friend's nursing graduation gift. A friend surprised his wife (another friend) with her favorite double-red home brew craft beer and named it after her recent accomplishment of becoming a nurse, Nurse Rachel's Flatline IPA. It was an amazing beer and her reaction to realizing her face was on the bottle was priceless!

Little mockup to show full label

Lined up and ready to celebrate her graduation!

"Is that my face!? :squee!:

I wanted to use a healthy heartbeat which flowed into the flatlining, not any of that cartoony randomness. My heartline was approved by the nursing grad herself!
I also rewrote the "Consumer Warning" on the edge to read: "EDUCATED GUESS: Consuption of alcoholic bererages impairs your ability to stress the small shit and enhances freedrom felt once graduating nursing school. WHOOHOOOO - LET’S DANCE!"*

*typos to illustrate the amazing time you'll have.





Her husband had ordered the waterproof labels for us to print at the local shop and stick on ourselves. Note to fellow labelmakers: keep your eye on whether you're getting laser or ink jet self adhesive labels. 90% of the local shops won't put laser paper in their machines. But we found one that saved the day by doing it!







Look at that face! That's the face of a woman who's gone through the hell and high water of nursing school to hang out with friends when.....hold a second, this is a damn big beer. What kind is it? ME?!














Now. Here's to hoping I land a regular gig and can cut some odd-jobs out in order to make regular room in my schedule for all this art again!

0_0 has it truly been a year and a half since the last post?!!!

And, yes, it has. So much has changed, evolved and flipped but honestly my hands don't have the time to clack it out all in interwebs fashion.

Let's do bullet points!

Worked in the screen printing industry all of 2012 until a sudden layout January 2013. Did the usual scramble waltz looking for work until I landed a marketing/event coordinator in July 2013 and felt so at home with the team. I helped them cut many unnecessary costs, especially with my design skills. But, no matter the hard work you put into a sinking ship, you may get thrown a life-raft as they remove your position; which they did just a few days ago.

I've added a part time gig to my list working doors at local events. I've also contacted the temp agency and the design company I do mockup for in times like this. I've also signed on my previous employer as a regular freelance client and plan to land their parent company.

In the hopes of increasing a more cohesive online presence I'm going to make a point to post something interesting more often, 2-5 times a week at least. Among other things.

Unfortunately my old hard drive died in December so I'm building everything from the ground up until a friend can confirm it's dead-dead or recover files in February.

Anything more, including revamping this blog, will have to wait til hours between working.

Remember, sketch, write, make notes and observe your world.

Pew Pew Pew

That's the sound of the months exploding into little clounds of dust. At least...that's how fast this year is passing for me.

The day job is wonderfully productive and I'm really digging all the shirt designs that have been assigned to me. There are the usual small jobs and typesets thrown in, but I created two illustrations by February for a company who licenses Chevy and the landed on the cover for their 2012 catalogue. Not the last awesome thing, but it was the first.

I also joined the board for Untitled, the Nashville art group who hosts quarterly shows, and am currently chairing PR. The seasoned members help me learn the new skills and it's pretty interesting to see how everything works even further behind the scenes.

I've become more selective with freelancing and plan on shifting that energy primarily into helping develop the publishing company, DNR Publishing, with my business partner and best friend/partner in crime. Currently we're running full speed to get his book, Parasites, ready for print at the end of the month, which we hope to have in hand during an event we're pulling together in August. We're hoping to build a partnership with a fellow artist and host monthly writing/performance events for the slightly ignored authors and poets around here. I may be wrong, mainly cause I'm not that privy to poetry/prose reading nights, but the response for my friend's first night spoke volumes in the lack of outlets for them.

Maybe eventually I'll find downtime to pick up my own art and continue the Dimensional Series. I had tenatively hoped to do so and have enough pieces to approach local galleries about showing, but I'm still stuck at 3 of 10 ideas, so it's pushed back a little.

This past Saturday, the 7th, I did attend an Artists' Block Party hosted by the gracious Robert Cortner, who had supplies donated by Jerry's Artarama (hit them up in Antioch on Bell Road!) It's essentially a casual gathering where the artist picked a spot, chose their medium, chatted and set to work creating a quick piece of art which Robert would haul down to Nashville's Art Crawl that evening to place in random public locations for a lucky passer-by to adopt for free. I made a little duck-guy based from a coffee stain turned pen sketching. Everyone who came created stunning pieces in a 4-5 hour span, look up Robert on Facebook so you can see the rest of the images.

I'll wrap this up for now, and hopefully will return to regular updates with process images, works in progress, show information and other tidbits that make an art blog an interesting read!

This is the end...

of 2011, and I can't honestly say that I'll miss this year. Usually I have a "year in review" wrap-up post with blogs, but let's use this as a placeholder for now. Cause honestly, even though I really would love to sit and pound out my views of 2011, I have to shower, run errands which include the dreaded DMV where I'll FINALLY update my driver's license to reflect the married name.

Why go today when it has taken me over a year? Cause I hate the DMV, dur, but it has to be today since I start a brand-spanken' new job first thing 2012! No, don't need it For the job, but my time to go to the dreaded DMV is closing to an end.

So, yeah, placeholder til I have a moment to dedicate to one of the best commisions of 2011 and the year in review posts.

Christmas Crafts

I stumbled upon a cute idea on how to upcycled those wonderful holiday cards last year so I carefully saved the cutest/most sentimental in order to make one this year. It's a simply theory:

Gather your tools. Preferably an exacto (or sharp scissors) a pencil (to trace out possible designs on the interior as guides) glue stick, ruler, cutting mat, hole punch, ribbon and coffee (optional)


Take your old cards, cut the front off or a cute holiday themed shape from the design, punch a hole and then viola! Banner.


Takes waayy more time than that, and you should probably take the time to organize the cards and think of what designs/shapes/covers will be next to each other.
I measured a length of ribbon to about 10', just to keep the banner manageable, and estimated to tie the cut cards about every 10". Mine happened to come together from sheer coincidence, but I did end up with 5 extras that didn't fit at all. For now they sit in my tree.
A 10' length drapes nicely when pinned midway, or you can pin a VERY long ribbon every 5'....though folding/storing the banner may prove messy and create knots.





And, of course, for the current cards I simply pin them to a length of ribbon that frames the hall entrance for our enjoyment.



And now I leave you with a very rough, very quickly whipped together holiday greeting in order to work on this year's actual holiday greeting.

Breaking Boundaries

A Great Close Friend, aka "Brother" even though we share no blood, once told me that in order to make "art" you have to break boundaries. It's not enough to make a pretty picture or something creepy or something pretty in order to really rip into the viewer and unveil the ugly truth of emotion and life. He even says the word "art" in quotes to seperate it from the highly skilled creatives he knows who do make livings from their illustrations, their tattoo skills, their paintings and such. He means fine art. The art that is supposed to bring a subject to the harsh revealing light of scientific disection to reveal the base motivation and emotion.

Break boundaries.

So I thought. And remembered. And sketched. And, of course, had another beer, because most of our mad conversations revolve around strong black coffee or cheap beer (mainly because we are a poor folk of writers and artists....)

I thought about all the random stuff I've been collecting through the years. The broken white plastic horse that either belonged to a little cowboy or little girl's carosel. Of the tiny doll hands, which I'm still not sure where they came from. Of the little tins, screws, nails, broken bits of jewelry. The preserved insects and bones that I've collected from railroad ditches. The pretty eggshells from my friend's mother's farm-raised chicken eggs.
And my creative brain gestated.

At some point, the brain started birthing little images; little solutions for all the random things in my collections which might break the boundary of the third dimension to illustrate some memories held a little too close. Some could fall back on the story of "illustrating old sayings" if I felt too closed to explain my real motivations. You see, the main reason I embrace commercial art more readily is because I don't like defending and explaining myself. I got pretty sick of it between the ages of 11-21. Hard freakin' 10 years, if I don't say so myself. Towards the end of that period I essentially gave up trying to explain myself in words and turned toward actions or radio silence. If I was interrupted in a conversation, if I was mocked, if I was over-shadowed, I just closed up and closed off the communications. There were few people that recieved the full treatment, but even they would sometimes instill a silence.

Jump ahead 5-6 years; I'm explaining how I feel and why...and people are accepting it. I'm explaining my plans, with trouble, but sometimes my point is getting across. I grow a little bolder in announcing myself to the world.

Jump to my brother's unspoken dare to break boundaries and you're met with "Walking on Eggshells,"

the first installation of the series but not the first in the chronological sense of memory. I actually have two pages of rough sketches that I return to and flesh out in order of material availabilty and time.

Tonight I wrapped up the next installation which would actually fall a little further down the timeline "Unspoken, Flayed Open, but Unbroken"


I started this piece a little late due to another commission, but even so, I also mis-calculated the amount of time it would take to build a ribcage from paper. It took twice the time to just glue things, nevermind sculpting the shoulders/head from polymer clay and to securely fasten it all to the backing of purple velvet fabric, a remenant from a skirt I made an eon ago. Everything in this piece (minus the frame...but since it's a little beat-up you can stretch the imagination there, too.) Everything means something, no matter how cliche it is for someone in long black skirt to use. Below is the summation I sent to my Brother, after we had an artists' argument about the usage of pages from 1984.

"1984 exemplifies the bindings and restrictions I felt for a very long time. During this time I was also drilled, tortured and questioned about every action, reaction and response I had with life. I felt the Eye of Big Brother every day under two prominent men for a majority of my developmental phases. It's taken less time to regrow my skin, but the scars of such flaying, the social quirks and the lock on my heart still remain to this day.
Like a moth to the flame, I never strayed, always circling and getting singed. Until the flame was extinguished.
Once that wind came, I flew away as quickly as my wings could take me."

I don't share this in the hunt for pity, as you don't know the full details of what went on. I don't share this to make those parties who ARE privey to the details feel guilty, or sadness, or anything negative. I share this information, this inspration, because I kindof made the decision to share my words along with my images.

Yes, I thrive with commercial illustration and design. But I also embrace words and the more abstract meanings that fine art lends itself to.

I didn't have an easy time executing this piece. The elements came together just fine. The idea, the sketch, the feather and moth, the key and ribbon. But the figure, the doll which represents myself, was difficult. That's why it was pretty awesome when I picked up a scrap of 1984 to sign my name and date and realized the words printed on it were "...and with some difficulty, ..."

Yes, with some difficulty I persue this action of exposing my innermost feelings, memeories, growth and thoughts.
But, here they are.

I hope you enjoy them. And I hope you're able to come to Marathon Village, 1305 Clinton Street, this Friday, December 9, 2011 and see what my little crappy phone camera hasn't captured. The event is free, the booze, wine and refreshments are free, and the other 70+ artists hanging alongside are so remarkable that even if you hate mine, you'll find something to love.

What do Boxing Turkeys Have to Do with Thanksgiving?

Nothing, really. But imagine where the loser is!


Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Hope you're comfortably full and surrounded by people who enrich your lives.