letting go

here is a little drawing of ME. i am at a bit of a crossroads with school and career and not sure which way to go. i recently lost my job at the art center. the opus school of textile arts, where i was a BA (hons) student, closed a few months ago. i can't even give a link to that anymore, as they have virtually disappeared, after taking our course money. another program has opened in its place, named after the creative and inspiring late julia caprara but i have been hesitant to join, as i am not sure that distance learning was to my advantage. so i applied to and was ACCEPTED to an MFA program at the great and wonderful maine college of art, except now i am trying to figure out how to pay for it. anyway, i have been meditating everyday and writing my gratitude list and letting go. xo to all!

sowebohemian festival

our local sowebohemian arts and music festival was this weekend - great fun, good food and lots of local bands. one of the events that supports the festival is a poster silent auction which will be held on june 7. here are the posters i made:

more community arts

i have been volunteering with an artist-in-residency program at an elementary school with black cherry puppet theater, a local baltimore arts group. we worked with the students to teach them how to make paper mache hand and rod puppets, how to manipulate the puppets, how to make scenery and props, how to block out a show. we will put on a performance for families later this week. sooo much fun...and exhausting. this is all new territory for me. many thanks to b'more's fabulous black cherry puppet theater for letting me tag along for the past two weeks and apprentice with their enormous and hilarious puppet talents. and a shout out to local artist and puppeteer, jen strunge aka cotton monster who is on staff at black cherry and who taught me some good tricks of the trade.

baltimore's kinetic sculpture race

a rite of spring every year here in baltimore is the kinetic sculpture race. this year i had the prestigious job of judging the sock creatures on each vehicle. here i am in all my sock creature regalia. and here are some photos of the fabo sock creatures that were competing. great day!

crocheted sculpture

inspired by the work of liz grobler, i am working with the folks at the local senior center to make a crocheted sculpture. these women are the hardest working, most enthusiastic artists i have ever worked with. we are hoping that our sculpture, called 'warm welcome' will grace some of the local art venues in the coming year.

as you can see, being out of work is giving me lots of good community art time!

doodling

in my last post i mentioned that i had lost my job and decided to make a gratitude list. i have gotten so many good responses from others who like the idea that i am posting our lists on a new blog.

my doodling here is not because i am idle. somehow i seem to be busier in the last few weeks. anyway, just showing some doodles, since they look kind of like quilts. and i will keep you up with my new and exciting adventures in the next posts.

story about losing my job...

so along with lots of other people in this current economy, i recently lost my job. "don't worry," i think to myself, "something better will come along, it always does." here i am knocking on lots of (metaphorical) doors, and nothing yet...

what's a girl to do? write a gratitude list. so that's what i did (along with some collaging, and sewing and painting)... more of the story to come.

collage face

here is what i do when i am supposed to be doing something else - i play with scissors and glue and colorful paper. not a bad way to procrastinate.

i like having my sketchbooks covered with fun stuff. so here are three sketchbooks - all ready to be used for drawing or glueing or thinking out loud.

many of my collage ideas, originated from a workshop with anne marie grgich. great stuff!

doodles and quirky things

doodling about quirky things. guess i'll turn this into stitch one day.

booklie, the sock monkey

i haven't shown a sock monkey post in a while! here is booklie. i don't know where his book is, but he does love to read as you can see by the tatoo on his back. yes, booklie does wear glasses - my stereotype of a reader, and true for me.

painted portraits

last year i practiced painting self portraits. it was good practice for me. now i am working on...i don't know. are these portraits of anyone you know? mostly i am just working on how to mix and lay on color to make paintings pop.

important philosophy...

felted apartment numbers

old sweaters make great felted works! this one is a house number for the door on our apartment. fun to do and keeps me out of trouble:)

embroidered text messages

in keeping with my love of keeping diaries, i have decided to stitch text messages i receive. i can't keep all of them in my phone and they are such a great snapshot of my life and the lives of those i love. another life-long project, that i will probably never finish, but will have a great time working on!