kiki, ezmah's doll, is on the left {named after the incredible artist kiki smith b/c her hair reminded me of hers}, and libby on the right, was made for raine {jonathan named her}.
front
back
these toys were not only made with tons of love, and no money whatsoever, but with 100% recycled materials as well.
all the fabric, rick-rack, and ribbons were hand-me-down scraps from a gracious soul {probably circa 1980ish}, the dowel rods were simply found, the dolls are stuffed with plastic grocery bags (they remain really soft and you can’t hear the bags), the inside of the wands are supported by 6 circle cardboard pieces cut from the bottom of my canned chicken broth package (this was really nice because the perfect cirlces were already made by the indentions that the cans left).
and to boot, the girls love them, though raine has renamed her doll “sam”….
raine has recently began writing and illustrating her own books and coloring books. i am planning on marketing these real soon….no lie.
our friend suzanne recently made a limited edition coloring book with crayons and we were fortunate enough to get the artist’s proof. well….raine was lucky enough to get it!
an outdoor installation obviously influenced by the work of the spectacular andy goldsworthy.
this year i received some pretty incredible gifts for my birthday. amazing enough that i thought i should share with you and show a bit of appreciation.
included in the photo is a new {much needed and larger} french press from jonathan. he also printed photos and updated the frames around our house as an added gift {hence the framed photo of the girls}, abby made an incredible hardbound book for me {that is blank inside} which probably deserves its own photo, the book and the precious stuffed owl were from both abby and suzanne. raine made a halloween themed triptych to give me, you can only see part of it in the background {it includes a bat (shown), a witch on a broom, and two cats}, also, my incredible inlaws surprised me with a cast iron chimenea, my mother bought me a ton of new clothes, pops sent money, and on top of it all, i was fed mexican and american delicacies for lunch and dinner!!
here are some photos of a project i completed a few weeks ago. i dont have the final piece photographed yet. im hoping to use a documenting station on campus that will allow for some amazing photos. so hopefully you can see that soon! until then, here is a glimpse, which seems to be all i have been showing you lately. sorry about that.
here are a few shots i took before and after our perrodin potluck last saturday. i have been terrible about getting my camera out at our parties lately…..i need to work on that. i thought these were pretty enough to share though. i took a ton of photos with this blanket my mom made from the 70′s….its such a great splash of color!
a little something i made last week. i have been coming back to this chair a lot lately in my work.
jonathan so graciously volunteered to make invitations for our upcoming potluck. he knows that my time is extremely tight these days and that i would want to do more than i had time to do. hes definitely raising the bar. is it fair to say that im fortunate for such an incredible man?
ezmah recently turned one. here is a small glimpse of her incredible party.
a recent sculpture that I made that was on display at the university of arkansas campus. these are cast wax needles with nylon rope acting as the thread. there were four in total, two of which are still on display until the end of this week. the meaning is simply a literal translation of the connection that i feel with nature when sewing something by hand. i was pretty satisfied with the end product, besides the fact that the wax was softened by the heat of the sun, it still worked out.
jen corace
jeff depner
found these today…thought id share some beauty.
have a lovely day!
i took a wheel-throwing class this past summer and this is what i have to show for it. i thoroughly enjoyed this class. though i am almost done with school, i hope to do more of this in the future.
hope you all have a nice weekend!
{this is what happens when you leave a 6 year old alone with a pin cushion!}
…assuming they like peanut butter and croutons.
sorry it has been soo long since i have posted last. life has been….well…just busy. i have been pumping out some prints though, so i hope to get them up here as quickly as i possibly can!! i hope everyone is doing well.
this is an intaglio (aquatint and chine colle).
(and another beard)
i have actually been planning on sewing onto this, but havent yet….as soon as that happens i will let you know!
as promised….here are my newest linoleum cuts. the one with the brown beard turned out a little….eh…..i am partial to the solid blue simply because of its cleaner lines.
once i get my registration lined up again for a print that i have already started…{eh-hem….after a little dilemma in the print shop}, i will have more prints hot off the press!
LOOK what i got!
{this page was bookmarked}
“elle- humour” a picture box book by julie doucet
she has an amazing since of humor tossed in with a delicious dose of creative energy making for one heck of an amazing valentines day present!
Thanks Jonathan.
……………………………………………
look what i gave:
a limited edition print from little paper planes by hannah stouffer
{jonathan trimmed his beard recently, and i plan to cut my hair…seemed appropriate since hair has been the topic of alot of our conversations lately}
happy valentines day!
from abby
from suzanne
our friends abby and suzanne came over the other night and gave us some pretty amazing gifts. 4 porcelain cups made by abby, as well as some fancy napkins with a great pattern on them. suzanne drew us a picture of a robot with some really nice words pasted on the bottom, as well as an amazing 3-plate intaglio etch she made….and a fantastic new garden book for me to draw in!
i love my friends.
another new paper that i recently finished. i have a book from 1968 titled something like americana encyclopedia (i think). its the root of much of my inspiration.
i have been patiently waiting to put this piece online.
the paper was larger than my new scanner (from beautiful suzanne), therefore it needed to be “stitched” together in order to blend the two scans into one. so here she is….i mean, here they are.
its hard to say whether these “women” are pursuing this man, or perhaps hes pursuing them. maybe no ones pursuing anyone and they are merely standing next to one another. its all open to interpretation….but i definitly feel something is happening here more than what meets the eye.
raine has two imaginary friends that she has known since she was two:. dee-dee (the nice one) and tada (pronounced Tah-dah, like the word you used to say as a kid when you finished something amazing; shes the misfit of the two imaginary girls).
the other morning, dee-dee temporarily came to life in the form of a shadow. raine drew her on our frosty glass door and we were pleasantly surprised to see the shadow ghost on the wall next to her. so when i got the camera out, she grabbed dee-dee’s imaginary shadow hand, then turned to her and said “smile dee-dee”.
These are two of my collograph prints. These were rolled with etching ink and then ran through a press. the texture was achieved by gluing 3-dimensional circles and thread onto torn cardboard. i then gessoed the piece and covered it in polyurethane so that it could resist ink so that i could clean it off and reuse it in order to create multiple prints with multiple colors without damaging the plate.
Collograph: in simple terms it is the process of creating a textured medium to rub or print on a press in order to accomplish a mirrored reproduction of the textured piece.
We have all made collographs at some point in our lives. For example, a leaf rubbing. you know, the ones where you place a leaf, stick, penny, or other random object under your paper, then rub a crayon (or something) on top in order to get a reproduction of that object on paper. or what about those people (or maybe its you) that rub names off of head stones, sidewalks, or memorial walls? this too is a simplistic version of a collagraph print.
When done right, collographs can be beautiful…there are endless opportunities as there are countless textured items surrounding us daily that would make incredible prints.
