Love for Lichtenstein

Regardless if art makes your top ten loves list or not, everyone has a favorite artist.  You may not even know his/her name, it might just be a piece you saw in that one gallery in New York your family drug you too in high school or maybe you know their life story, but there is a favorite.  My favorite artist is Roy Lichtenstein!  He's a pop artist, often loved by those who also love Andy Warhol, but their art is quite different.  I would LOVE to own an original at some point in my life, but considering he has work in the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) I realize my chances are quite slim hahaha

I was going through an artistic slump last winter, it was during my midwinter break and I had an entire week break from my grad school and decided to use that opportunity to make art... however when I whipped out my sketchbook and sat down to draw I was having some serious artist block... I decided to back to a practice we learned in school, start drawing one of your favorite pieces by one of your favorite artists and have it take on a life of its own one you get started.  The obvious choice was Roy Lichtenstein's "Drowning Girl", by far my favorite art piece ever.  

My piece ended up being quite similar, but I decided to do mine in linoleum block print form and hand print it, hence the uneven ink pattern.   Sure enough, it helped lift the artist block too :)

Art as Procrastination

While I should probably just suck it up and finish the last of the busy work assignments and reflection paper due at the end of the week, I've decided that making art sounds like more fun, especially when after I found out today that I passed my final case study/assessment and have thus become a real teacher.  It's hard to stay motivated towards busy work, when you know that you've already passed grad school even if you don't do the assignments, however with that being said, as I'm getting my Masters in teaching, I should probably not have a double standard and slack on my assignments lol So yes, I will actually get them done, but until then, here is some more art to keep you occupied.  A couple are new and a couple are from the past year, but they are all portraits, therefore they get posted together!

The frist two are rappers, lil wayne (aka Weezy) and Ludacris (aka Luda), two of my favorites and they lend themselves well to being drawn :)  

Oh! the Auction! Well I ended up dragging Nat, we had a blast and turned the whole thing into a girls night.  As far as the art goes, I was kind of disappointed but hey, at least my piece was bid on.  It only sold for $50, but many pieces didn't get bid on at all, and two artists who have work in major galleries in Seattle who had starting bids of $750 did not get bid on, and thus someone was able to get both paintings for $50!

I shouldn't have been surprised though, art at auctions is really only bid on by a certain niche of people, pop art even smaller group, and urban art is even smaller, so the fact my piece was bid on at all makes me happy :)

More work to come, I'm thinking there will be more pin ups, after I finish the one I'm working on, I'll be sure to post it!

Auction Art!

Greetings! Wow it's been a long time!  Since I have started making art again, there was a year long break more or less while I was finishing my masters, I decided to bring back the blog!  A past co-worker of mine from the Bellevue Boys & Girls Club asked me if I would do a work of art for an auction in which the proceeds go towards putting a water well in a village in Africa.  While timing was not ideal, during the last 2 weeks of my masters, I decided there was no better cause to support or time to start making art again, and gladly accepted the challenge!  I decided to do a piece of social commentary, the title being "Peace Not War".  We'll see how it is received at the auction.

 Below are a couple of other pieces I've done in the last couple months too!

the pin up!

-back to urban street art style, maybe ill turn it into a painting in the future

Basketball Boys & Possible Future Projects!

So I've been running around like a crazy lady for the past week or so, well not really running as I'm finally getting over the pneumonia and am in no rush for it to come back due to over exertion.  Anyway, the point is my goal has been to post once a week on my new creative endeavors, however it is the week before finals week, well I guess now it's the weekend before, but regardless for those of you that remember your college days or are still in them, that means sleepless nights, and way more hours spent in a library than is sane! (even for a bookworm like myself haha).  So because of the need to actually keep up with my studies, yes mom and dad I actually am studying, I've kind of neglected the blog, my apologies.  

Now that I got that out of the way, there is something about needing to finish an essay that makes you want to clean your room, do laundry, heck even clean the bathroom to avoid writing the darn paper, oh procrastination.  While the paper is getting written, slowly, like snail speed slowly, I have taken advantage of my desperate desire to do ANYTHING but write my paper to catch up here.  

In my previous post I talked about the gallery show that I had my UW sports quilt in.  Well, I am talking the same class that puts on a gallery show at the end of quarter, this up coming spring quarter.  So of course in true procrastination fashion I have been thinking a lot about what kind of project I want to do for the Spring IVA Exhibition. 

 I think I've narrowed it down to two options:

1.  For those of you that know me well, you know that I am a bit of a sports fanatic, and when I say fanatic I mean camping out the night before a Pac 10 basketball game at the arena entrance to ensure that I get a good seat for the game the following evening.  I mean after all who else is going to support my basketball boys? That being said I am also friends with several of the guys on the UW basketball team and they are the inspiration behind idea #1.  This year they won the Pac 10 Championship for the first time since the 1950's, so Congrats Boys & Go Dawgs!  Because of that and because I like doing portraits so much I'm thinking of painting a large canvas, like 5 feet x 4 feet large, that says Pac 1o Champions 2009 or something to that effect in graffiti style writing at the top center with black and white portraits, in the same style as those on my quilt, surrounding the text with the coach's portrait cutting down the net in the middle center 

below the text.  I think it would be fun, and enjoyable to create as well as meaningful to the guys.  Since I know a couple of them I know they will be 

able to see my lovely creation and would consider giving it to the basketball program if its something they would be interested in keeping, if not I would gladly

 hang it on my wall for eternity!  Here is a couple of images I have started to sketch of some of the guys on the team.

2. While I love the idea of number one, I'm not sure if a month is realistically enough time to finish the painting at the high and perfectionist level that I would like.  Also, I'm loving the paint and fabric dynamic and want to continue exploring that.  So idea #2 would be again working with both fabric and paint and incorporating them into fashion.  I have been thinking about making a high waisted 1950's style skirt in a solid or floral pattern with contemporary urban iconography painted on it.  For example, I would make one to fit myself, one to fit my little sister, and one to hang on the wall, (sizing will probably be based on my room mate Cody as she is readily available for measurements). My lil sis, Mak, is a HUGE Lil Wayne fan and thus would make a cute little above the knee high waisted skirt with a small built in petticoat possibly in the color tourquoise with Lil Wayne's head shot painted on the left side/bottom of the skirt.  For mine I would simply have some graffiti like images, referencing Seattle, painted on side, and the imagery for the final one is undecided.  This project makes me nervous because I have never created a high-waisted skirt so it would be a learning process as I go.  I have sewn clothes before, but that mainly dealt with altering found clothes, like making a XXXL basketball jersey into a cute little jersey dress.  Anyways, I will of course post what I decide and my progress.  

IVA Winter Exhibition!

Whew,  it has been a quite a while and for that I apologize.  The bronchitis I last talked about turned into pneumonia and that not only put a damper on the creative energy but pretty much everything else other than laying in bed.  Anyway, now that we're on the tale end of that there is some exciting that have happened since my last post.  The quilt that I have previously posted was in the University of Washington School of Art IVA Winter Gallery Show.  The gallery show was last Friday evening and turned out great! Around 400 people turned up for the opening and the show looked great!  I just want to congratulate everyone that was a part of the show for an exemplary job! It was also fun seeing fellow artists out of their creative, art making clothes and dressed to the 9's.   The works pictured were two of my favorites!

For those of you that were able to come out and see the show, I hope you guys loved it as much as i did... and for those of you that didn't shame on you, although i suppose it's probably helpful to post about the show before it happens, next time i'll keep that in mind.  There will be another IVA show, the Spring Exhibition, as soon as the dates are finalized I will make sure to let y'all know.   Oh! While I'm thinking of it, the Winter show is still up in the Sand Point Gallery space on N 74th St. & Sandpoint Way NE for those that are just dying to see some lovely art this weekend.  The show runs this weekend only: Friday 5-8, Saturday 12-7, and Sunday 12-5.  

Well now I'm off to the store, it's E Turner's birthday tomorrow and he requested an apple pie, of course, who wants a good old fashioned birthday cake anymore? If i feel so inclined to get creative with the top, i'll make sure to share it with everyone!

Quilts & Treats!

It's been a couple days, sorry all but this being sick thing has caused a bit of a slow down... I finally sucked it up and went to the doctor, I have bronchitis, good news I'm on meds, bad news according to the doc it could take about a month for me to be completely back to normal and probably another week or so before I feel like doing anything again... AWESOME.... NOT - anyways... the silver lining in this whole ordeal is I've had some free time while laying in bed and was able to finish the binding on my UW quilt, its DONE, like completely finished and ready for the opening! That was quite the stress relief, now I don't have to take it to Vegas with me and worry about it getting spilled on during the plane ride, hmm not sure what I'm going to be doing on the plane now but oh well, its done!   Anyways, now I have to find some more fun stuff to do.  

As most of you know, it's Valentine's Day on Saturday... lets just say it not my favorite holiday, in fact you could go as far as saying its my least favorite holiday... that being said my mom is somewhat of a holiday nut, she loves holidays and while the Christmas season is no doubt her favorite its not by much.  Due to her love for the holiday's which has rubbed off on me as well, no holiday is complete without themed decorations, some sort of baked good that matches whatever holiday is being celebrated, and presents, yes, even on Valentine's day there is a present or two in the morning on our respective spots at the kitchen table... 

So being like my mom and loving all holidays, yes even though V-Day is my least favorite I still love it... And that being said I must celebrate in some respect, my celebration of choice is baking.   I have a couple recipes that I'm just dying to try, I just hope I feeling up to baking all of the goodies I have my eye on.  On the list to try are Chocolate-dipped Shortbread Cookies, Meringue Ice-cream Sandwiches, Chocolate Heart Eclairs, and good old fashion Sugar Cookies, frosted of course!  As I try out these heart shaped goodies I will be sure to include the recipes and let you know how they turn out!

Step by step

Goodness gracious! This whole cold/flu deal is really putting a cramp in the creativity!  And the studying... fortunately today I was at least able to drive myself over to the drug store and get some cough meds, the down side, cough meds and studying really don't work so well, which wouldn't be a problem except for that art history midterm tomorrow morning... hmm... that could be a problem, such is life, I guess timing can't be good all the time, on that topic know what is good all the time? Jell-o! Seriously, you can't go wrong with jello, and since I can't eat the chocolate cream pie with a toasted coconut crust I made before influenza decided to take over my life for several days I still get my sugar fix!

Anyways, on to the artistic stuff... since I haven't been creating while i've been sick I'm gonna put up some more stuff from the past couple months... lets continue the printmaking trend and throw some zinc etchings in here... These are a series of etching, some are 11in x 15in and others are 22in x 15in.