Catalysts

KIRSTEN HASSENFELD - traverse more of her worlds here. Reminds me of Tord Bjoonte.

And this is already all over the internet but bears repeating:

Wataru Itou - via Dark Roasted Blend

My own attempts at paper sculpture are entirely dwarfed by the above paper or paper-like engineering feats. Truly, these have inspired me to try again.

Naming the Muse: An Embossing Give-Away!

I would like to invite you to participate in a very important decision: a name for my muse. To honor this sacred event (a little snickering as I type that) I'm going to do my first give-away. The prize will be a 4"x4" embossing which I will create for the winner.

To participate, please make your name suggestion by commenting on this post. A little exposition on meaning or why you think it's the perfect name would be welcome.

*Gentle Facebook Readers, please go directly to the blog to comment if you would like to be entered in the drawing. (Click on the title and you should be taken directly to this post.) Facebook comments will not be entered in the drawing for the prize but the names suggested will certainly be considered for the muse.

The winner of the personalized embossing will be randomly selected from all comments that suggest a new name. So the more new and original recommendations you make, the better your chance of winning. Comments about an already suggested name will not be counted. Comments must be received by 5:00 am EST, Monday, June 15th. The contest winner will be announced later that day. Whoever wins must then contact me about your embossing within 48 hours. If I do not hear from the first winner, another name will be drawn. Instructions for contacting me will be on the post announcing the winner.

As to the name I actually choose for my muse . . . wait on. I see another give-away in my future.

Now, for your consideration - this muse's characteristics:
Willful, deeply loyal and oddly fearless but very slothful, insanely fun to ride, wiry, aloof, illusive, distracted, mercurial, original but not witty, vaguely annoying but deeply endearing

In Between

In between illustration commissions and Etsy orders I've been stitching away at my own version of an embroidery sampler: my own rendering of "Death and the Maiden." I plan to work in every kind of stitch, floss, ribbon I can find and learn. (Needle'n Thread has a wonderful video library of how to perform many different stitches.) I am obsessed with white-on-white in most things I do; finding this obsession quite a cleanliness-challenge - I'm not succeeding at present.

I learned many of these techniques as a child but have only recently revisited this craft. I've found I love embroidering - so calming. Making lots of mistakes and stumbling upon little tricks now and then.

Fine artists are also taking this craft to a new level:

ELIN
http://elintm.blogspot.com/

Rosalind Wyatt

Jenny Hart

Animated Embroidery

"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.

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

Already behind on posting . . . . I do have a legitimate excuse, though. Bit o' cold brought on by too many late nights with an old friend over the weekend. Some Etsy orders have been coming in this week - this a relief since I thought my shop had been entirely forgotten in cyberspace! Here's a few things I've been musing on this week; have been on a bit of a carnival-kick lately. Hope to post some updates on my work soon.

From top to bottom:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/photogalleries/sea-animals/photo5.html
http://www.madphotoworld.com/2008/04/circus-arena-at-night.html
http://www.anthropologie.com/ - gladiator bird, raven
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sfduggan/62199231/

Adventures in Daydreaming

Alexander McQueen from 2006, some lovely hand-tooled book covers, and a wonderfully mono-chromatic medieval illumination. These are the elements inspiring me this week.

Making an impression . . .

How to make a striking and memorable impression with my first blog post? Hmmm. How about taking that a little more literally?


I'm currently in the throws of remaking my store front on Etsy and attempting to actually execute a few art projects I've had on my heart for some time now. It has me in a very happy-hap-hazard way. Despite the erratic way in which I've been working, there are a few results and I've posted the beginnings here for you.


So, back to literal impressions - these are paper embossings I've been doing by hand on light-weight, cotton-rag paper, using tin-embossing tools. I'm loving the way these turn out! However, I cannot use my right hand for the rest of the day after completing one. This is a bit inconvenient. I'm going to try an even lighter weight paper on the next one. If this does not solve the hand-ache problem, I'm hoping that practice will strengthen my hand muscles. (I'm a notoriously light-touch when drawing - art profs used to yell at me to "press down".) Either way I don't intend to stop doing them.

As to what these embossings are - initially, I was going to name my shop "Efemera". That didn't really work; somehow it brings up visions of libraries. I love libraries, but that's not what my art is all about. And the lettering style is a bit more "Ren Faire" than I intended. I'm not a very focused artist. My creative productivity manifests itself rather inconsistently and my inspirations tend to be incoherent. Simply put, my "muse" suffers from attention deficit disorder. She needs therapy. "House of Trouble" surfaced while I was looking at old carnival and sanatorium images on Google. And there it is.

The centauress is what I imagine my muse would look like if she appeared in bodily form. Mythical, strong, and a little, well, bizarre, but not unfriendly. I intend to Photoshop her into the "House of Trouble" lettering to create a banner/logo for my store. We'll see how that goes.

Other plans include creating a stamp or embosser with the logo for creating hangtags, letterhead, and other such nonsense. I will be impressed if any of those materialize - maybe your watching my progress on this blog will inspire me to more responsible execution. Please keep an eye on me!

Cheers,
Catherine