Musings

I did a trial run of some homemade texture paste the other day. I mixed joint compound, acrylic paint, white glue, and water together to make a nice "Royal Icing" frosting-esque viscosity of paste that I was happy with. I'd planned on making a thickened version that was more like Butter Cream.Then I sealed it, intending to come back to it later, and promptly forgot I'd made it in the first place. I wasted half my materials.  But it was a blessing in disguise. I discovered more recipes, did more research, and learned that maybe I should add some different stuff in different amounts.   So today, I got those supplies, plus a bunch of tools I was missing to accurately measure, mix, and store it for a short while. I also got stuff to then clean my tools afterwards without using my sink and perplexing the literally ancient plumbing in my Queen Anne Victorian house. I'm feeling good about it. I've got less and less of an excuse to finish the endeavor I've been thinking about for a vey long time. I'm yet another step closer to creating work inspired by one of my art heroes, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. I already glued the burlap onto the substrates I was gifted by my friend Squeaky as sample canvases (like MMM did). But I've also gessoed the surface to sort of pull the color of the burlap back toward white, using contemporary acrylic gesso which didn't exist when MMM was doing her work. I have a LOT of new materials that I'm going to be substituting for the materials she had at hand.   My biggest hurdle all along has been the texture paste. MMM used traditional gesso, prepared in a way that I can't do. She slaked Plaster of Paris, then let the remains dry to a powder, which she then dissolved with melted rabbit skin glue and whiting (which was essentially gypsum powder). In other words, she did her work using stone minerals held together with glue.   Not something I can do. Her pieces were heavy. I mean--HEAVY. Like, 40lbs for an artwork, which is much much heavier than the average person today can hang up on their own walls by themselves.   I dunno about you all, but I don't have the skills to hang a 40lb. piece of art on my wall. Let alone construct a frame which could hold it. So I'm passing on that. My current plan is to use a recipe that looks like this:  A Plaster of Paris base mixed with water to pancake batter consistency white Elmer's Glue-All white acrylic paint additional joint compound to thicken things (USG Easy Sand 90) and finally contemporary acrylic modeling paste to smooth things out Acrylic paint retarder to extend the storage longevity of the paste Water on hand just in case things get too thick I have a rough idea of proportions, which I didn't have last time, so I made far too much.  But I learned that the mix I made didn't dry white, which is important. I need it to dry in a tone that isn't gray, because I don't think I can go back over it with white gesso afterwards to pull all the tones together. I will absolutely need to layer more paste over the top of layers beneath it, and it will need to adhere to those layers without gesso being in the way. So no overpainting.  I'm excited. I've seen so much wonderful stuff done with texture painting, and I'm really hopeful I'll be able to pull off the effects I'm interested in achieving. I have glass and rhinestones to embed in the paste in different places, and I've purchased a short caulking gun tool that uses small 10oz. refillable tubes that I can hopefully fill with my paste mixture. I need a more controllable and consistent way of extruding lines of a thinned version of the past onto the canvas without putting in years of practice doing cake decorating with an icing bag (which is what MMM used).  It's all terribly fascinating and now I just have to do it. I'm happy with my paste recipe, and I'm very curious to see how it works.  But what I'm most excited about is the capacity to express myself in a non-digital way. All my life I've worked in fabric and costume crafts, making physical items. It'll be nice to step back into that world once in a while, away from digital.   

In which I discuss feeling overwhelmed, reassuring myself I'm not, and a new owl print.

Fairytales often contain themes that can speak to us across the ages.

In which I share the installation of my first personal exhibition of some of my pieces at a local bagel shop.

In which I discuss how my perspectives shifted this week due to a purchase of a print, and the piece I made in response.

Over the last couple days, I've been creating new print listings. A lot of listings. I am happy to say that I now have over 50 different prints available for sale in my shop. I've still got a long way to go, but I'm pretty happy with what I've got up there so far. I've put a variety of different pieces up on my store, ranging from the birds I've become known for to almost my entire fairytale collection. I've even listed some pieces that are stand-alone expressions that mean a lot to me. As I said, I have many more too put up. Over time, I've illustrated tons of birds and I've just scratched the surface of that body of work. I still have a few of my favorite owl illustrations to list. Additionally, I have some other Art Nouveau expressions to make available as well.  But all the prints--regardless of their subject matter--are printed at 11x17". And I do that for two reasons: it's one of the largest sized I can print at home, and it's also the best scale at which to see all the detail and texture I work hard to incorporate. Many of my pieces have layers of subtlety that aren't apparent when reproduced as a greeting card. Yes, each card is richly saturated and finely printed, but when viewed at a size three times as large my work looks even better.  Additionally, since I print these pieces at home on bright white double-sided mat photographic paper, each image is visually adjusted to look best with my own eyes. I don't send these out to be manufactured by print-on-demand companies because I never really know how they'll turn out if I do that--at least not without a proof. And I simply can't get proof copies of my entire body of work--that would be cost prohibitive.  So I render my pieces knowing they'll end up being a specific size and that I'll be able to make adjustments myself mid-process if I need to, not after receiving a complaint about the quality of a product I've actually never seen. I use a Pixma Pro 200 8-color dye-based printer that I'm very happy with, and it enables me to print full bleed (edge-to-edge).  Printing them myself also allows me to print directly on the back of the double-sided paper. I can make sure that an actual Certificate of Authenticity that includes a signature, a number for the print, and details about the paper and printer directly on the back side of each print, making it impossible to accidentally lose the accompanying printed Certificate.  I ship the prints in a 13x19" rigid mailer that I secure even more with additional chipboard sheets to make it even stiffer and mitigate potential accidental folding in the mail system. For those who live locally in Humboldt County, I'll deliver purchases myself from my studio to customer locations up to a radius of 10 miles.  Getting prints up for sale has been a dream of mine. I had always imagined, in the back of my mind, someday being able to sell prints outright but I'd always "protected myself" by saying I had to be successful in some other way to somehow "justify" the selling of prints. I'd started out wanting to make prints all along, but I never let myself believe I could or even should.  Moving to Humboldt County last year changed all that. I achieved some small success at local fairs and festivals, where I got a much-needed ego boost and some validity. And some of my print pieces sold at the Redwood Art Association's member gallery as well, so in the end I didn't have an excuse. I realized my dream was a reality, and I had to do it or I'd lose the opportunity.  And so, here I am getting it done. And proudly. This is how my work should be seen and collected. I am incredibly excited that I can do this now!! And I have so many more prints waiting in the wings to be listed!Onward!

Putting together an art display for a local bagel shop is turning out to be quite the endeavor, and quite the opportunity as well.

Transitioning out of Goimagine into Shopify, and bringing my creative home website with it.

Working on some non-digital artwork inspired by an art hero.