I’m so thankful to be surrounded by such beauty all the time.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, for all those celebrating in the states.
Archive for November, 2008
Today I discovered a post that used my artwork to illustrate a challenge. I thought that it was kind of cool so I thought I’d share it you. It is a creative challenge to create a piece of artwork and leave it somewhere anonymously. They also mention Found Art Tuesday as well.
Yesterday I realized that my show goes up THIS WEEKEND! Yes, people, just a few days away. It is major cram time. I was freaking out when I realized this, but now I think I am just getting excited. Excited for the show…um, not so much. I’m still nervous about the show, but excited to do all the things that I have felt too guilty to do for the last couple months. You know the saying “you always want what you can’t have”, well, that saying can sum me up since I’ve announced that I would be having a show. Instead of working on artwork and all my BIG PLANS for the show, all I’ve been wanting to do is knit, and spin, and even cook. Yes, you read that right. Cook. “But, Robyn,” you say, “You hate cooking!”Other things I’ve wanted to do: geocache, redesign my entire website (long overdue), and buy one of those kids’ kits to make dozens of woven potholders.
One last thing – Watch or just listen to this youtube video for Ben Folds’ music video You Don’t Know Me (featuring Regina Spektor). After I discovered it last week It’s been getting some heavy play. It might be a little scary for some, as it’s directed by Tim and Eric, of the Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! on Adult Swim. Matt loves this show and makes me watch it occassionally. It can be very funny, but also very disturbing. There are just some things on there that are so weird, disturbing or gross that I have to look away. Anyway, the song is great, and very catchy, so just check it out.
A while ago one of my chums and I were emailing back and forth about the phenomenon of rediscovering a song. I’m not talking about when you just recently heard that NKOTB song and unbeknown to you and mortifying-ly, you still held all the lyrics in that great melon on top of your shoulders. What I am talking about is when you’ve heard a song a bajillion times, you probably even know the lyrics, but you’ve never REALLY LISTENED to them. Or maybe you understood to the best of your knowledge, but then life happens and your life experiences broaden and now the song you’ve heard dozens of times all of a sudden makes SO MUCH SENSE to you and your life. Well, my friend, recently had this happen to her and blogged about it. And now, here I am blogging about it as well… and now here I am blogging about blogging. Okay, wait, back on track.
So, I was listening to my ipod at work, probably on shuffle and this Ben Folds song came on. The first track on the above tape. It has a sad feeling to it, as does a lot of music I really love. All of a sudden I hear the lyrics “Elliott, man you played a fine guitar and some dirty basketball” and like that I got chills. Now, I’ve had this album since it first came out and it’s only now that I have realized the song was about Elliott Smith, another sad singer/songwriter that I love. I had the fortune/misfortune of seeing him live before he died. I say fortune/misfortune because I got invited to a private show for a different artist and then discovered Elliott was opening. Beyond thrilled, just slightly. Now comes the misfortune. He never made it through his songs. He attempted over a dozen of his songs, but would have to stop. He apologized to the audience and explained it was because he had fallen asleep on the plane in a weird position and had no feeling in his hand. Each song was like a little heartbreak when he just couldn’t finish it. At this point I had already heard about his substance abuse issues and worried it might have more to do with that then the poor circulation and nerves. I found an article here by a critic who mentions the performance. It was probably within a year I was sitting in my mom’s classroom. I was working at the middle school myself at the time and I was on her computer when I read that he had died. No more new music, no more chances to see him live and be redeemed. After hearing the Ben Folds song I checked out Elliott’s wikipedia page to discover there have been several other artists who have written song for or about him after he passed. Rilo Kiley’s “It just is” and “Ripchord” and Rhett Miller’s “The Believer” to name a few.
So, as I’m composing this post I’m listening to a Ryan Adams station I’ve created on Pandora and guess what. The Ben Folds song above just came on. More chills.
The first issue of Underground Art School came in the mail the other day and it is fantabulous. It’s printed on a real nice quality satiny stock paper and there is color on all pages. I have to fight the urges to dismantle it and hang up pages.
This magazine is published by a flickr friend Rachael, the little illustrator, but contains artwork from a variety of artists. The first issue is themed on handmade typography and from a designers eye, it is lovely and right up my alley.
I can’t wait for future issues to come out.
I love this post on Design Sponge.
I have a couple of ikea shelves (like the one pictured above) and I think that it would be great to paint and embellish them in a similar manner as shown in the DS post above.
Still going strong on reducing my inbox, and bringing you fun links and inspiration along the way.
A while ago I read this blog post on the Drawn blog. It’s about the artist Randel Plowman who offers a brand new original piece of artwork every day. I’ve read about daily artists before and I really love the idea. Doing a little research I found this article about the painting-a-day phenomenon on ebay. The article says that there are possibly hundreds of artists out there who produce and offer for sale their original work on a daily schedule. Furthermore, the author says, and this is paraphrased, that by combining the practice of daily production, blogging and selling on their own, artists are then able to offer their work and buyers might be able to purchase and collect work at a more affordable price because the gallery and/or consignment fees are cut out and sold directly to the buyers.
I really have admiration for those who have the stick-to-it-iveness to do something daily like this. At the beginning of the year I committed to doing a quick daily collage in my page-a-day book. Well, that didn’t really last for very long. I’d love to try and do a piece and add it to my etsy shop each day for a month. That sounds more do-able. When I see a month coming up where things aren’t so hectic I hope to give it a whirl.
It’s SNOWING!
And inspired by Tiffany, I’m baking pumpkin bread. Curiously, I had all the ingredients already on the shelves.
That never happens. Never.
Yo-Yo set, originally uploaded by robayre.
More links to share:
There is a really great design blog that is new to me. Mint is run by Ellie, in North Carolina who is a fellow graphic designer. She was kind enough to feature my framed yo-yo sets (like the one seen above, and in my shop) on her post about yo-yos.
I absolutely love this post from Mint recently where she introduced me to Daily Poetics. DP also has a flickr here for you to enjoy.
A few links of things that caught my eye:
Matt and I recently bought the Playstation 3 video game Little Big Planet. In the game you customize your character, a little knit sackguy. After that you can go on to customize and build your own levels to play and share with other online players. Last week I discovered this flickr pool group where people are creating their own real life sack guys based on their player characters. How inspiring is that? I want to build my own sackguy. He is the white one pictured above. He is wearing a red and white striped undershirt and undies, an elizabethan collar and bunny ears.
My next link I’d like to share is a post about printmaking with styrofoam food packaging. I found this link on Craft Magaine’s blog. When I was in college I probably took enough printmaking classes to have a minor in it, but they didn’t offer minors in printmaking, or at least not for the degree that I earned. I know, I tried at the time. Anyway, with all the printmaking I’ve done, I’ve never printed using styrofoam. I feel like it was one of those missed life experiences that all kids have in elementary or middle school. Printing with styrofoam and pinhole photography from a coffee can/oatmeal box. And since I missed both of those rights of passage I’ve always wanted to desperately do them. Well, seeing this post only added to that desire. After printing with litho stones, etched metal plates, carved blocks of wood, and silk screens, I imaged the quality of styrofoam would be, ya know, ehh, but don’t these pieces look fabulous?
And now my last link for right now is another tutorial I found via Craft magazine’s blog. This post is for a two step tutorial on how to make Japanese kusudama, or an origami ball. I thought it might be really beautiful to make a whole bunch of these to decorate an entire Christmas tree. You can use old newspaper ads and they would be colorful, recycled and still just as beautiful.
The inspiration never ceases, and instead of sharing, my inbox has begun to swell with messages to myself and links to pass on. It’s too much, and would overwhelm anyone, in one post alone, so I will attempt to share bit by bit.
On lope’s journal she posted a video of Danny Gregory’s about his new book. It is a book collecting a variety of artist’s sketchbook pages. In his words: “I’ve been looking for this book as a boy… and because I never found it, I had to make it myself.” That’s funny because it is exactly the book I was looking for as well. Ever since college I’ve kept a sketchbook, often times it’s filled with more writing of concepts, ideas and loose sketches. I was looking for a book that would show me how other people fill their sketchbooks when I purchased the book “Artist Journals and Sketchbooks” online. If you’ve ever seen the book Artist’s Journals and Sketchbooks, you will understand that it is not about sketchbooks in the sense that I was looking for. In fact, I was so disappointed that I put the book away on a shelf for a long time before rediscovering it and enjoying it for what it was, a technique book for creating books as an art. Once I did discover it, it really helped open up my world to all sorts of new art procedures. So, it is years later and now here is that book that I think I might be looking for again. Will it be what I hoped for? Or maybe different than what I thought, but just as important again.
