"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.

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.

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

A Project That Can Travel

This originally began as a piece to submit to The Sketchbook Project http://www.arthousecoop.com/events/5-the-sketchbook-project. Essentially, Art House Cooperative sent each participating artist a tiny moleskin sketchbook, a theme and some very minimal boundaries, and in return the artists made artwork out of the sketchbooks and submitted them to the show to tour around the country. I didn't make the deadline for submission and rather regret it. We won't get into my lack of discipline today.

The up-side is that this is the perfect purse-size project. It is more focused than my art-journal (another sketchbook I tend to keep with me at all times) but less bulky. I'm sticking to silhouettes and drawings in ink, embossings and paper embroidering. So, depending on the page I'm completing, I can throw in either my pigment pens, my embroidery floss and needle, or my mini embossing tools.

At present, I'm only working on silhouettes so it's my pigment pens going for a ride in the purse. I'm not as big a fan of these Staedtler pens as I am of Pigma Micron pens, but these came in a nifty case. I'm a sucker for nifty cases.

The theme for the show was "Everyone we know . . . " Here's a sampling of the parts I've finished or begun. More pics posted as I fill more of the book. Would love to hear your thoughts on them.

Thanks for rambling by!