I’m so tired. It’s a beautiful day out, but instead of having a productive afternoon off, I’ll probably fall asleep on the porch swing. School is back in session and that means one thing, the local university newspaper is back in print and now I must work my weird day (going in at 2 am, off at 10 am).
This weekend I was feeling exhausted by my need to work on something, anything creative. I have felt lost for a bit without an inspiring project that consumes my every thought. That thing that can get me through the day, and helps me fall asleep dreaming about it at night. After feeling this emptiness for what seems like an eternity, Saturday evening I hit my personal library and found just the inspiration I needed. 1. from the Complete Craft, a cuff bracelet that was originally done in beadwork, but I will be adapting for my own style (you can see what I’ve done so far in the above picture, and 2. Just the perfect push for an art show this winter, thanks to Erin and the book Kaleidoscope.
But finally when I feel so inspired and just want to dig into my new projects, I feel like I can’t even see straight.
I. Must. Rest. Swing. Is. Calling. Me.
Tag Archive for 'Art'
All right, so we saw Batman and it was pretty great. Worth the wait, but man, I was so tired (it was a midnight showing) and it had been a looong day before that. I’m sure I’ll see it again and appreciate it even more when my eyes can focus straight.
Then yesterday we did a double feature with Hellboy and then Wall-E. I did something I’ve never done before, something very bad and something I’ll never do again. Don’t do this at home kids, er, um, at your local cinemas. I snuck into the second show without paying. After seeing Hellboy I thought, what the hay, and said “Let’s just go see Wall-E” and didn’t think anything really of it, other than a little “woohoo, I’m being sneaky”. But once we were in the theater I started to feel SUPER guilty and was waiting for the cops to show up and take me away. In fact, even though I was sucked into the movie from the very beginning short beforehand, I looked over to Matt with sad eyes, hoping he was feeling the same way I was and hoping he’d say “Let’s leave”. But nope, he just gave me this look like: “what is your problem? You are disrupting my movie going experience.” I enjoyed the rest of the movie and only had a mini panic attack that once were were leaving they’d have guards at the door checking tickets for the two that snuck in, handcuff us and take us off to prison. Friends, this kind of tells you how rebellious of a person I am.
Anyway, I think it was a good order to see these movies in. I have to say Wall-E was my absolute favorite. Beforehand, I’ve had plenty of people saying “Robyn, you MUST SEE Wall-E” and after seeing it, I have to say I think those people know me pretty well. This has instantly become my new favorite Disney movie. I just can’t stop thinking about it, it was that great. Matt and I have decided that I am the Wall-E in our relationship and he is definitely the Eve, which is kind of funny because he is the PC user and I’m the Mac user, so that part is backwards. Also, it’s kind of backwards as he’s more the romantic one, I’m more sentimental though, if that makes any sense. This film is just so beautiful in the way it was illustrated (at times I even forgot that it wasn’t film photography, yeah, I know) and in it’s story as well. Afterwards, while were discussing the movie, we both came to the same conclusion at the same instant; We want to have Wall-E in our home, as our pet or friend or what have you.
Last week I read about this girl who posted a youtube video of herself last winter, crying as she watched and reacted to the trailer for this movie.Her crying watching it, made me just about cry. Here is the link, it’s a pretty cool story, apparently her video was seen and appreciated by Pixar and some pretty cool stuff came from it all. Haha, I just found this link that proves that Wall-E, like myself, is a law breaker!
So, one of the great things about Wall-E, and one of the reasons I related to him was that he was a collector, which brings me to Keri Smith. I just read on her blog that she is releasing a new book “How to be an Explorer: The Portable Art Life Museum” and straight from the page of her new book, “When I look closely at the work of all my favorite artists & designers, I notice they all have one thing in common… They are collectors.”
Today I released my Found Art Tuesday piece into the world. You can see the painting in yesterday’s post here. This is actually a big step for me because I actually left it in my own city, which has always been a fear of mine. I was able to do this by doing it in a more secretive manner. I put it in a geocache that was near the art building at NIU. For this painting I was combining a couple projects in one, Found Art Tuesday and Geocaching. Have you heard of Geocaching? It is a world wide treasure hunt and so much fun. You visit the website and then use a GPS to find coordinates to caches that are hidden around all of us all the time. My hopes are to set up my own cache sometime soon that will be themed for artwork. Sometimes geocaches have booty inside, and if you take something you must leave something behind. Most of the time these treasures are just kid junk like happy meal toys, etc. I want to create a geocache that is filled with original pieces of artwork, for artists to trade.
I know I mentioned it yesterday, but I would like to mention it again. Found Art Tuesday has a new flickr group and I’d love for everyone to join in. It is so much fun. The thing that really appeals to me about found art is the idea of shaking things up. People don’t expect to find artwork for free out in the world. Imagine how most people are just living their lives on autopilot and coming across a piece of artwork makes you snap out of it a bit. Sometimes people are so caught up in this way of life that they don’t even notice it or if they do they pass it up anyway, or that they are too afraid to step out of their bounds of comfort and take a bit of risk and take it. Read Rosa’s experience of this weeks found art piece here.
I hope everyone is having a nice weekend. It was a bit rainy yesterday, but today was absolutely beautiful. This is one of those weekends that sped by and I wish I had another weekend just to recover from it. Before I head to bed, I wanted to catch up on a few things I wanted to share here.
This is a very interesting article about a painting by a contemporary artist that is about to go up for sale for up to $36 million. I especially appreciated the part about the print made of the painting.
Here are instructions on how to build your own garden box.
Tomorrow is the beginning of Polaroid Week. Please join in, there is a flickr group devoted to posting a picture each day.
Have you noticed, I added a list of inspirational links over to the right ——>
Do you see any sites that I might have missed, something that you think I should know about or add? Please let me know.
2.26 banner color adjust, originally uploaded by robayre.
I’ve just finished this banner for my blog. What do you think? Is it horrible? Honest, but constructive criticism please. Do the colors turn you off? Is it too busy? Unbalanced? Whatever, I’d love to hear.
I’m thinking about changing it up quarterly, so it wouldn’t be permanent. But I don’t want to turn away viewers because my banner turns their stomach, lol.
You know what is funny is that whenever I do these kind of things, especially anything with watercolors, I feel that I end up loving the part that goes outside the borders the most. The part that should be cut away or covered up is the part that I just become enamored with. So in the above, there is a pencil border which is supposed to be the edge, but I couldn’t yet bear to crop out all those lovely edges.
Today I found a little inspiration via Craft Magazine’s blog for these paper mache beads.
I think they are so beautiful, but better yet, with this technique you could make so many different things.
It got me thinking about how my internet buddy Natasha makes beautiful paper beads.
It also reminded me of this book that I saw for sale at Dick Blick, but put back on the shelf because I didn’t “REALLY need it” and have been regretting it ever since.
I actually picked it up for a friend, thinking the book would be cool for them, but that paper jewelry wasn’t for me. I thought it has to be very temporary and fragile and a bit “crafty” for me. But looking through the book I was amazed at how much could be done. Paper jewelry can indeed be taken beyond ‘construction paper elementary school craft’ to Functional Art!
Thanks everyone for commenting on the previous posts, I feel loved :)
