Oddments

While cleaning my apartment I found some things I never posted, so here they are:

my first cameo

 Olympic Pajamas

 Nude silhouette 

Fun fact: this one was an early version of Chubby Grim Reaper
which none of you have seen because she was a going away
present for Michelle, just imagine this figure in black
with a scythe in her raised hand and a skull at her feet

Return of the Construction Paper Lady

It's the ladies of summer:

Short Strides - Long Strides

Hot Sand!

Marriage of Equals

Big Words

Last month I wrote and read a monologue as part of Big Words (I forgot to post it until today):
http://big-words-etc.tumblr.com/
Follow the link and see a god awful picture of me and read an excerpt of my monologue, Plus less bad pictures of and monologues by other people.

Gift Wrapping (never buy it)

Late Father's Day/slightly less late birthday present for my dad.

I decorated this 9" x 12" envelope (the quarter is for scale) in reference to A Letter to Amy by Ezra Jack Keats which my dad read to me about a thousand times when I was little.

** I DID NOT MAKE THIS IT IS A REFERENCE PICTURE **

You can see the letter and the dog who I put on the stamp in the hopes that my dad will get the reference (he won't but he'll love it when I explain it to him)

Shape Collages

Dana subscribes to Shape Magazine and sometimes I hack it up and make terrifying chimeras. 

These are they. (The previous sentence is a Venture Brothers Reference)

Altar update... again.

1. Wine box from France

2. blank CD

3. white taper candle, from the drawer in the kitchen

4. tiny trunk from the Tibetan store on Bedford. Containing:

a. white glove from Dana's grandparents (right)

b. balls of black and white yarn from old projects

c. tiny skeleton dog from Mexico

5. Night Circus inspired art. Made of:

a. olive jar

b. rocks from fish tank

c. black and white papers

d. scrap of black fabric

6. white glove from Dana's grandparents (left)

7. Crow chocolate box from Boston

8. matchbox from the previous tenants

9. lava rocks from Iceland

10. tiny mortar and pestle

11. dried rose petals

12. international coins.

Return of the bead loom

This is the last of the Met store posts because I left that job three weeks ago. 

For a while the Empire State Building, masquerade masks and this Coke bottle shaped woman kept popping up in my work

One day I was working on it and a customer informed me that "her hips don't lie".

Sir Metropolitan

More of my art at the Met store. It's a dragon.

Fashion Design Kit

I made these at the Met store. It's a kit, and it's pretty good, despite the resemblance to Bratz Dolls.

Altar update... again

So I just had two play readings, and now they're over, and I don't exactly know what's next, and that's called 'the end of a cycle'. So, here's the new version of my altar. It's very green. I should probably look up what that means.

Elements (top to bottom, left to right):

1. Wine box, gift from my mom, brought back from France.

2. Upside down drying pink rose, gift from Jannifer for my play reading Tuesday 2/21.

3. Tiny trunk, gift from Dana from Tibetan shop on Bedford. Full of spare change and fabric scraps.

4. Edward Gorey's Fantod deck (a nonsense oracle deck published in Esquire Magazine in the sixties and reissued in 1995 and again in 2007), gift from Amanda.

5. Handmade crow box from chocolate shop in Boston, gift from Barbara M.

6. Multi strand button necklace, gift from my mom, bought in Spain.

7. Lava rocks, gift from Danam brought back from Iceland.

8. Matchbook, left by previous tenants.

9. Ruffle foot for sewing machine, bought in garment district New York, NY.

10. Earthenware tile with abstract flower, made in college at pottery studio in Port Chester NY.

11. Candle stub, bought in Lennox MA

12. Fantod cards: The Tunnel, The Child, The Bottle

13. Square of green silk brocade, bought off ebay in high school, mailed from Antioch, CA.

14. Black and white striped cotton shirting, left over from unfinished dress, bought in garment district New York, NY.

Funny Valentine

The day before Valentines day Katherine was lamenting (whining about) the fact that she had not yet received anything from her boyfriend (he's in the UK, which is an ocean away and has frequent mail strikes). Anyway I made her this:

The Art of Self Promotion

After a long absence from the blog I'm posting. I'm putting up images you've already seen: the images from my TWO February theater projects (when it rains I over commit).

This is the flyer for my full-length play.

It went so well I was so proud.

The flyer for my writer's group [subject to change]'s group reading.

Altar update.

The truth is I've actually made a bunch of stuff at work in the past month, and by the end of the week I'll get you pictures. But this is what I did today... well, mostly today: I altered the altar.

Can you spot the differences?

A: Of course you can't, that would be insane. So here they are:

1. Subtract the white glove from the tiny chest (I think that's the only subtraction)

2. Add the Chinese Lantern necklace, (gift from grandfather to grandmother from WWII when he was stationed in Japan)

3. Add the new oracle cards. I'm trying to learn about this stuff (I guess that's the point of the altar too) because I think it's interesting and I like the objects ascetically and the ritual aspect kind of appeals to me, but of course those are the wrong motivations. Look at the cards. I was supposed to get a simple, positive, easy to read deck.

4. Add tiny altar. After reading about all the cleansing and beam-of-light imagining I was supposed to do in connection with the oracle cards I had a little freak out about my nialism and the life of detachment and misery ahead of me. I dealt with that by making this tiny altar on my altar.

4. Add tiny altar continued. You might remember from the previous post that my strategy for altar construction is visual and intuitive (I just find stuff I like and move it around until it stops making me uncomfortable). That's what I did with this one. Elements are listed from the bottom up.

a. Ceramic tile I made in college. Abstract flower painted in colored slip with a sumi brush onto unfired stoneware slab, matte glaze.

b. scrap torn from problem scene of play in progress.

c. coins moved from the other side of the altar.

d. candle stub.

e. scene from Waiting for Godot drawn with thin tipped Sharpie on card stock given to me by Gina's dad.

I also made some banana bread.

Altar

I don't think of myself as New Age-y. A dabbler. Not a believer. Anyway, I've been a bit shaky lately, stretched a little too thin, and I was talking to Dana about her New Age-y online course and I became convinced that I needed an altar. So with almost no research, on almost entirely aesthetic impulses I made this one:

Components (listed more or less from the top down and left to right):

1. Wine box from France, formerly full of spices (gift from Mom)

2. Hand-made crow box from chocolate shop in Boston (gift from

Barbara M)

3. Matchbook (left by previous tenants)

4. Tiny chest from Tibetan shop on Bedford Ave (gift from Dana)

a. Balls of white, yellow and light blue yarn left over from

Wonder Woman sweater. (bought in Fort Greene, NY)

b. Ball of green tweed yarn left over from various projects. (bought in

Albany, NY)

c. Ball of dark blue yarn left over from aviator hat (bought in Lee,

MA)

d. Vintage white knit glove (origin unknown/not remembered)

5. Piece of modular menorah from Chicago museum of Contemporary Art (gift from Mom)

6. Flawed Hanukkah candles from Lennox, MA (gift from Mom)

7. Slinky (bought in Mamaroneck, NY)

8. Tea lights (gift from Dana to help me with my altar)

9. Lava rocks from Iceland (gift from Dana)

10. Awesome clock (bought from vender with folding table at SUNY Purchase, NY)

11. Spare change, including Bahamas quarter and Canadian penny

(grabbed at random from bowl on top of toaster oven Greenpoint, NY)

12. Silk brocade square with fish (bought on ebay in high school and

mailed from Antioch, CA 5/6/2005)

13. Printed cotton scrap left over from unfinished quilt (bought at

Fabrics Garden 39th st between 7th and 8th New York, NY)

The formatting of this post makes me weep. I've edited it maybe a dozen times trying to get the indents right on the list.

Teaset

We sell this tiny teaset. I spent an obscene amount of time designing an painting one.

It looks like a lot if you put it all together...

Self-explanatory.

Desert.

Ocean.

Forest.

Arctic.

Somebody broke the teacup. No names.

Commissioned Artwork!

This post feature a notebook and diorama I made for Leslie for her sister's birthday.

This is the story of the notebook in the breifest possible terms. (I'm keeping it brief because it's such a sad, beautiful story about such a beautiful object, but it's somebody else's family history and the fact that I was entrusted with it for a little while doesn't really make it mine to put on the internet).

This was Leslie's grandfather's notebook. He was Preacher to an Arminian Congregation at the time of the Arminian Genocide. He lost his homeland and had to be the leader of this group of reeling, mourning refugees whose suffering was not acknowledged by the international community. This was a note book he kept of clippings and quotes cut out of newspapers or typed on English and Armenian typewriters. the cover bears this legend:

Flowers picked

From here and there

While casually roaming

In byways of thought

For my inspiration

I loved having it around. It really is such an amazing collection of quotes and thoughts, and the object itself is simple and remarkable. Anyway, my assignment was so do some light restoration, basically just reinforcing the holes in the paper where they were starting to tear (I was so afraid of this part of the job that I may have done less of it than I should have), And to make a blank replica in happier colors for Leslie's sister.

I didn't realize this photographed so poorly, you'll have to trust me. The cover was made with red cotton fabric over heavy illustration board with metal eyelets. Text was hand-drawn in Extra Fine Sharpie.

I put in the front-plate upside down but it isn't so bad. Scanned and altered from the original with the name changed. Printed on cream-colored label paper

These are interior pages. I scanned some pages from the original and scattered them between the blank pages of the copy.

This part three of the project: a diorama of Leslie's sister's church (she's also a preacher, in Florence MA) made with the paper from the new book plus construction paper. the inside of the box is papered copies of the old book.

This is the original church. This project was made possible by Google Street View.

The following are five nearly identical glamour shots of the box, which is a 6x6x6 cube.

And that's it. Commissioned artwork.

Tea for One and an Arm

It's another thrilling wall display.

This time we're selling a paint your own tea set kit.

An ill-lit longshot.

The Pot. Thanks Van Gogh.

The Cup.

And thanks again. The nice thing about Van Gogh is that if something doesn't look quite right you just add more paint. He kind of just had the one trick.

And a close up of the head.

Fashion Design Kit

So, the big negative comment in my performance review was "we think you spend too much of your time lurking behind the register with your scissors and whatnot" and the solution was to move my table into the middle of the floor and make me craft there, like a performing chimp.

The first thing I did was open this fashion design kit.

The fabrics are mostly acetate, and the dress form is so shapeless it's hard to tell the front from the back (hint: there's a seam down the baak), but it's actually kind of a decent kit in that it encourages creativity rather than achievement. Parents and grandparents do not always agree with that model and I hear a lot of "she can't do that" and "if it's not easy she'll just give up" and "where are the instructions?".

Anyway there's a giant column behind my table, a white monolith in the center of the store, so I've taken to making relevant cut paper displays and mounting them there. 'Cause what else am I going to do?

So without further ado (and there has been rather a lot of ado) the clothes line display:

I've nearly filled the sketchbook and at some point I'll "borrow" that and scan the drawings.