A Special Dedication

Percy secretly called during my little hiatus a couple weeks back and I quietly mounted up for a ride. Sometimes deadlines for other work must be put off for things of the heart. I created these as a gift for my parents, who have been tremendously supportive to my husband and I recently.

The Harpist

My mother is a wonderful pianist, runs her own piano studio, occasionally composes sweetly yearning pieces, AND owns a lovely Andean folk harp she acquired while we lived in Ecuador. She only had a few lessons on it before the rest of life took over and the harp was put to slumber prettily in our living room corner. I hope that someday she will take it up again. The harp in this silhouette is modeled - loosely - after hers.

The Harpmaker

My father tunes pianos for a little extra income. As the provider of my mother's pianos, and mechanic to them, he inspired me to create a harpmaker. This piece was quite a challenge to compose. I decided to use an ancient Egyptian harp as the basis for the composition so that I could keep everything oriented horizontally - the Egyptian harp lends itself to horizontal lines because it is visually heavier at the bottom, unlike more contemporary harp shapes. Every time I sketched in a contemporary harp on it's side the composition felt awkward and overly complicated. I also like that it is in keeping with the general theme of ancient art that inspires most of my silhouettes.

I have plans for a new take on my silhouettes when I create a piece inspired by my Grandmother. But these will have to wait until I get back to and meet my current deadlines for commissions, etc.

Thanks for peeping in again! Have a lovely week!

"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.

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!