Fabric Nest, and questions about inspiration.

I have really been enjoying the posts on the blog of Nina Bagley lately, on her blog
Ornamental. In this crazy city i live in, it is nice to see that there is a bit of peace out there in the world. As well, Nina makes some of the most beautiful nature inspired jewelry i've ever seen.

Is it bad that when i saw her lovely lovely nest necklace, and couldn't resist trying to make a fabric nest of my own? I was simply so inspired by her that i couldn't help it... the fingers just started reaching for the lace, needle and thread of their own volition. What is the protocol on this exactly? I will definately list her as the inspiration for the necklace, and let her know. I am slightly torn on this, and am wondering what you think out there. On the one hand, I did not copy the entire necklace, just the general idea and then pieced together something of my own ideas from hers. On the other hand, she is a professional artist who earns her living by these designs. I love how genereous she is sharing her lovely designs on her blog. It would be different if this was published in a book (which she is more than talented enough to write!), or in a magazine where she is putting it out there for public inspiration. On the other hand, a blog can be something like this as well... when we put things out here they are officially out in public and anyone can see them. Hmmm.... it is a question i am mulling over in my mind. Any ideas you guys have about this would be greatly appreciated, pro or con.

To be perfectly clear, this necklace is only for my own personal usage (i love it too much to give it away and i am not at the level where i'm ready to sell on etsy just yet). I'll also be sending her a note letting her know how inspiring her blog really is to me, especially that necklace. If i were selling things, this would be a different story altogether.


Without further ado, this is what i created.





I created this fabric nest by first sewing together a long line of different laces, then wrapping them around the wired beads so the different layers show. This is a necklace that BEGS to be touched... the next is very textural. Some of the lace, and also the lace i tied in a knot on the side, is a beautiful gift from one of the street sellers in Dongdaemun. The store specializes in handmade lace for wedding dresses, and when i tried to buy a half meter of it, she said that was too short and gave it to me for free instead. I loved it, and bought a couple other laces there too. Although they did not fit, I have been thinking of making a lacy Marie Antoinette-style choker with varied laces... could be fun.

The acorn was a gift from my mother when i last saw her in canada, which she'd found on the ground. How special, to have an acorn my mother found me in my grandmother's garden... it just adds to the specialness of the necklace for me. The join is a 'trapeeze join', which i learned in Kazmer's book Making Connections.... (i swear the book is amazing). It allows the acorn to spin around it's wire, and swing freely. The chain is from Dongdaemun, as usual.

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend.

Ode to my art table

Well, table, i guess this is goodbye. I'm moving out of this basement suite and you aren't comming with me.

From when I first saw you at Ikea i knew you were the table for me (and not just because you were only 10$). You started out as my table for holding my stereo, but when i moved into the basement here you became my art table.

We had some good times as a table. You were a good drying surface for my myriad of projects. I could splash paint/resin/rust/glue/whatever all over your surface ithout any great concern. When i started jewelry making, i even accidentaly drilled holes in you! You took it all with your stoic, blue ways. I loved being inspired by the splashes of all the different media i worked with.

Things weren't always great. I appologize for the times when I cursed you for your lack of height. It isn't your fault that you are only about 2 feet high, thereby forcing me to sit on the floor and get stiff knees. Nor is it your fault that you were all sticky in the top corner after i spilled some resin there that didn't cure propperly.

Hope it isn't too cold out there...

Dale

So, i am now officially moved out of the basement suite. After 5 days of intensive moving, packing, hauling, and cleaning, I am finally moved in with my boyfriend and his family. This is all only temporary, until my visa is finally processed and i am off to KOREA! Should be gone on only about 2 weeks :).

As for my art table, it was with great sadness that i tossed it in the dumpster. It was sticky and kinda destroyed... too bad. Couldn't resist a silly little 'ode to my table' here.

Hope your week is off to a great start :).

All over the map? Need to somehow connect these dots.

I feel lately like i've been pulled in a million directions. I am absolutely loving creating art lately in the past couple months, to the extend that i feel like i can't decide even where to start. I would say 'mixed-media artists' would be the best way to describe me, emphasis on the 'mixed'. I can't seem to choose or focus on any area. The list of diferent media i would love to do seems so long and varied.

List of those i've tried:

Textile art, using stitching both by machine and by hand
Acrylic painting
Oil pastels
Watercolour
Coloured pencils
Soldering
Collage
Paper folding/paper craft
Wreath making/weaving
Photography/photo altering
Digital art
Image transfering
Altered books and journaling
Wire art

(... and these are just the ones i've tried already, not all the ones that catch my fancy. I'm sure encaustic art is not that far off from joining this list either, nor is feltmaking or paper making. Both are facinating to me as well.)

And the latest addition: glass art. Specifically, stained glass and clear glass. This is my latest interest now, i just went to this FABULOUS stained glass store and found myself completely enchanted. I loved touching the bumpy, bubbled glass...looking through all the different colours and textures available... it was wonderful. I couldn't resist buying a glass cutter, some copper tape (my entire reason for going there, for soldering purposes), and some small pieces of glass. The man there was so very nice too. I walked in, and was immediately reminded of being back in the midevil (sp?) towns i toured with my parents in germany. Wood and glass, everywhere, with classical music in the background. Two old men speaking german/hungarian/polish/? (sorry... don't know but something from that region) at the front of the store. One was so very helpful. He helped me find a glass cutter i could affort, the best copper tape for my project and gave me space to just look around. The other did not speak english, but was generous enough to share his chocolate easter eggs. I was completely enchanted by the store. The owner was kind enough to show me how to use the glass cutter and everything. This was a shopping experience walmart couldn't ever provide in my wildest dreams. The convenience of big box stores is alluring, but the experience is highly lacking. They were even nice enough to throw in a couple pieces of extra clear glass and mirror to practice on before using my nicer, harder to cut glass. The pic shows the stained glass and copper tape i picked out :)

So, now that i have this glass, what on earth will i do with it? I have a couple ideas perculating in my mind... maybe making charms with stained glass backing and clear glass front, with a picture of some kind inside? Soldered together using the copper tape? I can just see it now :). Now if only i can get the hang of soldering well enough to do this project. Or even lighting the torch. But will the torch mar the glass? I hope not. My soldering iron is completely useless... my glue gun gets hotter than it does. I guess that's what you get when you buy a 4$ soldering iron hahaha.

As i was saying earlier, i have what i see as fairly varied interests in mediums. What i need to do is find projects that tie together a couple of the interests. Projects such as the frame i found in Summerset Studios magazine a couple posts ago. I need to find a way to 'connect the dots' from my projects from all over the map. I think one way to do this may be to begin creating 'charms' and such using a couple of the different techniques. The idea of charms have always fascinated me, with the beautiful pictures/objects sandwiched between two pieces of glass. I guess i will just wait and see where this takes me? I find myself quite excited.

Mackenzie Art Gallery

For a about a month, i have been informally searching for a way to feel a part of a local arts community. I am finding that the only way to really find out about these things is to talk to people. THere is no central place where you can go, or no central person, where you can just ask 'I want to be part of the local arts scene... where should i go? what should i do?'. However, if you casually ask around about these things, you slowly get little tidbits of what to do, where to go, who to talk to. I find this fascinating. You talk to one person, and they show you what they know, leading you down one path. Others lead you down another. I find there is actually quite a lot happening in my small city, but it is just all beneath the radar. If you aren't tapped into the arts scene, it's all kind of hidden to you. I wonder why that is?

I went to an ATC session at the Mackenzie Art Gallery today. The facilitator there from the gallery mentioned that he had a mat cutter available in the back, and when i went to use it i saw that they had full studios back there! I guess it makes sense, since they have all the artists there and such, but i had always pictured the making of this art as seperate... something created at home and then brought to the gallery. I bet there are many that are like that, but as i saw from the space there, that is not the case with all artists. I was amazed to see all the different materials they had there... my fingers just started to itch when i saw the big bucket of wax... "just take the wax and run" hahaha (i have recently been facinated by encaustic art). So i started talking with the facilitator, asking I could get in on this great space they had there. And he was all like 'Oh, we have Studio Sundays, where they are open to the public. Didn't you know?' Hunh. I definately didn't know. I love getting to know more and more about my city, and the things that hare happening 'below the radar' of the general public's knowledge.

THe trading yesterday was great. They had a small workshop about how to do packing tape transfers. Exciting, cheap, easy and it looks good. How could you go wrong with that?

As you were saying in your comment, Andre, i agree. I think it's time for me to start dabbling in larger art. I have been playing around in ATCs... i like them because they are small. It is a good way to experiment with different techniques, medias, methods and such without having a huge time commitment for each project. And I also love collecting the cards.... having little pieces art from all over the place. I find it rather exciting. However, i think it is time for me to start trying some bigger things out there too. Like actually using a canvas maybe? Making something bigger than 3.5 inches? I still want to continue making ATCs, for i do love them, but i want to branch out in other areas as well. Just don't know what direction to go yet. Maybe some time at 'Studio Sunday' will help me today? Just checking out what others are doing and such. Wish me luck :)

Ameba gathering

So, on the recommendation of a friend of mine Andre I went to a gathering of people here called the Amoeba group (the picture is us fooling around in Pac Mall in Toronto, with the funky asian statues.

So, i wasn't very sure what it was. I found the group on facebook (the ultimate group area it seems hahaha), and decided to check it out since Andre has reccomemnded them a couple months ago. I looked at the facebook list... a couple people i knew from jazz band various years were in it. They meet every sunday... and i saw this on saturday. Why not check it out?

So, while they were not an artist group as i thought they might be, there were many other interesting things discussed. I am still not sure exactly what they ARE, other than a group of friends that went to university together, but it seems they do neat things. A group of people, all with various talents and such to show and add to the collective (and no, they are not a cult hahaha). And they meet up for a retreat at Echo Valley once a year. Last year there was cooking, belly dancing, yoga and a variety of other things, along with general fun. Stay tuned for more details as i figure out exactly what this 'cult' like group (jj) exactly is. When i know, i'll let you know hahah.

I have also finished off 2 more atc's this weekend. Well, actually there are 5 but three are editions of the same orange atc.



The first one is a atc inspired by Jen Worden's weekly art challenge (click on the link to see the challenge. Unfortunately, as you will see from the post, I am almost a month late hahah. I saw her weekly challenge when it was fresh, but was currently busy with swaps i had already committed to. However, the ideas for what i could do for the challenge did not follow these practical lines, and kept perculating in my mind. So even though it is too late to submit for the challenge draw, i still wanted to do it since i had some cool ideas happening. I swear, if i had to list my favorite media... i would say newspaper collage. It just looks cool :) So, another monochromatic coloured piece finished! I swear, that is one of my 'things' lately.




On these two, i have a bit of a dilema.... What is the ethical guidelines on using magazine pictures? That i find i am generally ok with. But what about magazine pictures using pieces of other people's art?... that could be iffy. I was simply so very moved by the art of Genevive Pfeiffer that i cut out a chunk of the painting for future inspiration. But then the chunck turned out to be the right size for making an atc.... and it just sort of happened that i turned it into an atc in a flurry of creative inspiration. They elements just seemed to fit together so perfectly.... but then when i looked at it after i was kinda iffy about using it like that. Is this wrong? I have been very careful to credit her on the back of both atcs and every time i post them... but still. Any thoughts on the matter?

Wreath ATC's

Isn't it awesome how a walk around a craft store can be so very inspiring? I find my city rather lacking when it comes to craft stores. However, we do have a large Michael's, and they may be overpriced but they usually end up having the basics that i need. Maybe this lack of adequate craft stores is why i am a mixed media artist who uses odd materials from all over the place? That or maybe i just can't commit to anything hahaha.

Well tried out another new media for my atc's this week. Wreath making! I was out for a wander through my local Michael's, and i espied these totally awesome stick wreaths in the floral aisle. Unfortunately they were slightly too big for atc's (maybe 5 inches diameter?) They looked really neat... all naturalistic and such. I looked at them and thought 'i could do something like that'.



So i wandered through my local park and grabbed some dry twigs (not that hard to find in the dead of a prarie, snowy winter). Weaved together with wire, decorated with natural papers, twine and lace, with little paper roses... I am truly quite pleased with the result :)

Michael's may not be the best craft store there is out there, but it certainly has no lack of inspiration. I love wandering down every aisle of the store, never skipping a one. (Ok, i cheated and skipped the knitting aisles. You caught me.) And i secretly bring my camera with me and take pictures of the really inspirational things. Those 'I could totally do that myself' things that are so cool. My favorite two from that trip were the wreath and some awesomely coloured sea shells. I have a couple handfulls from trips to Mexico, so i totally tried it out. While mine did not turn out as cool as theirs did, it sure was fun to try :) Same with the wreath. If i was looking for a cleaner, more pro looking project, i'd just buy it. But that's totally not what i am looking for, and i think it kind of defeats the purpose of this completely. Really, if i had simply bought the wreath, and then glued two things to it and wired it to a card.... is that really art? Could i actually take credit for that? I think not. It would be like sticking a bunch of pre-done stickers on a card and calling it 'art'. Not in my books :)