"Everyone We Know . . . " Progress Report

From House of Trouble

From House of Trouble

More work on my traveling project http://houseoftrouble.blogspot.com/2009/03/project-that-can-travel.html. The first image was done in pencil and the second in ink. Would love to hear your thoughts and ideas about what these mean in the comments below.

Louise Bourgeois at the Hirshhorn

On Saturday, we took a warm excursion to Union Station, the Hirshhorn, and the movies: Union Station was grand and graceful (and worth the trip despite the retail stores and the atrocious breakfast we had at a restaurant there), the movie was underwhelming . . . but the Hirshhorn, ahhh . . . the Hirshhorn is now in my top five "favorite places in DC" list.

Louise Bourgeois is being exhibited at present.

I was overwhelmed by the emotional power of her installations - there is simply no way to do them justice in writing or pictures. If her work comes to a museum near you, you simply must go and commune with her work in person.

Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine - Look for it on youtube.com. Embedding not permitted.

"The Wind-Up Bird" Embossing

I recently finished a wondrous read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. It was loaned to me by a friend and I made this little "thank you" note to send back with the book.

Philotechnical

From Philotechnical

The Spinner

From Philotechnical

The Weaver

From Philotechnical

The Embroiderer

"Philotechnical" means "love of the arts" and these ink silhouettes are my homage to Craft, beginning with the crafts nearest my heart. As a former costume designer and fashion illustrator, textiles are dear to me. I have a deep admiration for/fascination with the processes that bring textiles into being.

I was inspired to create these silhouettes after admiring some of my favorite papercut artists. Looking for subject matter to make this style my own, I decided to peruse the internet for ancient Greek red-figure pottery. The graceful, precise lines, fine details, and beautiful balance of positive and negative space on these vessels captured my imagination and the depiction of rituals, stories, and daily tasks started me down my creative path. So I also have some ambitions to make silhouettes of musicians, calligraphers, sculptors, cooks, and on and on . . .

The originals for "The Weaver" and "The Spinner" have already been sold but "The Embroiderer" is still available in my Etsy store, and I hope to have prints made of the others soon.

A Sketch for an Embossing

Hope to emboss this soon for my wonderful husband - who inspired it.

Pleat-Love

An out-of-the-blue illustration opportunity arose last week which is taking me away from my personal projects for now. It's a more "fashionista" job, referred to me by some fashion illustration clients from a few years ago - so I'm in a fashion-y mood. And when I'm in a fashion-y mood a few clothing elements dominate my favorites list. First of these is pleats. I love pleats. They must be handled with such skill and trained with utmost care and when they are treated with respect, perform amazing visual and tactile stunts.

Inside my disorder

I have been fighting a losing battle with my ancient camera. Thanks to House of Trouble's modest revenues, however, I now have a shiny, new, tiny, awesome, RED camera on the way. I will soon begin posting progress on personal projects.

In the meantime, I've been wanting to post some original work; my last few posts have been just visual meanderings around the web. I needed something that would scan decently and thought my personal art journal might work nicely.

So here's a sampling of where my creative process starts. I was rather surprised, myself, at how much writing I do. I have to be careful about sketching ideas - I unwittingly end up doing the best version the first time I put it down and then can't recreate it satisfactorily in better materials. Too many of my favorite sketches are on the backs of bulletins and work memos. So I describe my ideas to myself in my journal.

I tried to cover up the most personal stuff, for my own sake. If you're afraid of TMI, may I suggest not zooming in.

Have a bizarre day!
Catherine