December 31, 2007

I find it interesting how these two drawings I made today both have strikingly similar compositions and metaphors, even though they're completely different styles. Funny how the brain works, eh?


This drawing is about growing your own beanstalk. Because over the holidays an idea was planted in my head that seems so obvious yet it wasn't something I ever honestly considered: to get my doctorate in art ed and become a professor. The thought has been growing, and now it's looming there if I choose to climb it. It's my beanstalk. (I drew myself in my New Years outfit which I'll be donning later...)


On the same day I was brainstorming how exactly to draw my thought-plant, I discovered that my little cactus Dennis had died! The irony wasn't lost on me. Because I've never ever been able to keep a potted plant alive, but mentally I have the greenest of thumbs. Go figure.

December 29, 2007

I got back to New York yesterday bearing (among my holiday spoils) a frighteningly-empty 2008 planner and a heavy bag full of my comic books. It's good to be back.


For years now I've been able to sleep soundly in my own bed, but not in the bed at my parents' house. Then the other night I figured it out! I'm so used to sleeping in tiny beds that I'm uncomfortable I have a big bed all to myself! Once I squished myself onto one side of the bed I slept like a rock...oh, the small revelations.


I saw this image in my head the other day when I was thinking about the difficulty in really truly connecting with other people in your life. We may cultivate meaningful relationships (friendship, family, romantic) with other people, but we essentially all live our lives in our own little boats. We can't really know each other and we can't share those boats. And that's okay. To me this drawing isn't meant to be sad, but the fact I came to this this conclusion is undeniably bittersweet. A N Y W A Y.

Here's a close-up:

December 24, 2007

Merry Christmas, everyone! Here, have some art!


I got that idea last week standing in the Strand with my friend Matt. It pretty much sums me up.



So I was riding the Chinatown bus on Friday and listening to The Thrills. And the bright jingley-jangley guitar parts just conjured up these colorful shapes in my mind. And when I mentally panned back, they were tissue paper flowers circa third grade. So I tried to paint it. (The specific song was "Restaurant"...which you can hear on their myspace page here.)



This painting was the first version that I made. I really really don't like it, but I thought I'd share it anyway.


Today I received a truly fabulous Christmas gift in the mail...my copies of Laura Lee and the Seven Doors!! It contains the artwork from my first six months in New York. It's 44 pages, zine size, full color, and I'm selling it to folks for $7. So if you'd like one, please email me!

December 21, 2007

Playing tourguide all week + computer virus + refusing to admit I'm probably coming down with something + coming home for the holidays = not as much art as I would like. But here's what I made yesterday!


This drawing was inspired the other day while I was walking around the village with Diana and we spotted this mitten stuck up in a tree. We found it amusing. Concerning the silhouette style, I was mentally referencing the covers of the report cards I used to get back in elementary school. Considering what a bad memory I have for things in my own past, those little graphics made a strangely lasting impression.



This drawing is about my poor computer. This week it's become infected with spyware stuff and it seems to also have a virus of some kind. It's been SO frustrating! (As I type this blog on my dad's computer, he is sitting next to me wrestling with my laptop) So I'm now at the mercy of other people's computers...sigh, I want a mac.

December 16, 2007

These new drawings actually feature my redheaded-painter-playmate-Amanda, I hope you enjoy them!

This was the first sketch I did of Amanda and I standing in Grand Central Station this past week during rush hour. We were standing there in our bright purple and teal coats amid the busy black-coated commuters, simply admiring the beautiful ceiling after painting ourselves all day in Connecticut. I just had to draw that moment. And I adore train stations.


Here's the second version of the drawing. (Sorry it's a bit blurry, it was too big for my scanner so I had to take a digital)


This comic shows our differing thought bubbles. I actually got the idea from a dream that Amanda had about us, so I can't take credit for the blowing-smoke-ring-thought-bubble concept. (I'm always thankful when friends are willing to put up with my persistent mind-wandering! I can't help that I'm always mentally blowing bubbles...)

December 13, 2007

I like how this drawing is really open for interpretation. For me...it is about strangers on the street acting as doppelgangers for the real people in your life. It is about certain places in the city that for me are haunted by the individuals who stubbournly appear in my dreams. It is about a Jayhawks lyric (Angelyne) that plays in my head, "Hopes haunt me like ghosts, they point their fingers..." It is my bizarre Abbey Road tribute. It is a lot of things.


This drawing is: mysterious voicemail message. I'm sure everyone's experienced this....you receive a message where the sender simply forgot to hang up their phone, so the message contains mysterious sounds and voices that you then try to piece together and place into some sort of context. I got a great one the other day...I felt like I was eavesdropping while detangling the sounds.

This was the first version of that drawing that I made, but I didn't like how it turned out.




Earlier this week I helped Amanda with some painting at a new Two Boots restaurant (the boots being Italy & Louisiana) out in Bridgeport, Connecticut! It was a fun adventure, indeed. (Trying not to vomit on a tin chicken in the back of the van...the soul food restaurant experience...running through the town to catch the train...etc.) :)

December 9, 2007

"The Art of Staring Productively at Naked Bodies"...poignantly, that is the title of the book chapter I am reading at the moment. (Where I left off last night, Kimmelman is writing about figurative painter Philip Pearlstein and the importance of rituals to habitually creative people...) Anyway, here are my favorite drawings I did last night at a figure drawing session down on the Lower East Side. I hadn't been to such a session in months and months, so it was quite a treat!

(This was a short pose with three reclined models)

(I thought that ink would be an appropriate media for the punker model)

(Here the models were lying on top of one another...and I love the whimsical style that I used.)

December 7, 2007

What happens when you have a thoroughly-tenderized-ego and lots of free time that allows you to actually think about things? You stick to the basics...everything that makes you truly happy. Like talking cartoons and drinking too much Guinness with Longo...or sample sale shopping with Amanda (Where I had to "remove my sweater coat" and therefore walk around in a tubetop. We laughed about it over vegan food)...or see "West Side Story" with the Bernsteins and hear Jamie tell stories...these are the things I focus on. In that spirit, these drawings have no meaning behind them. They're just things I like.



That's just a falling maple leaf. Yup.



I drink red wine pretty much every night. Hooray! I really like the weight in the top of the composition combined with the delicate lines in the lower section. This makes me think of my dad! And of a picture that Lisi painted that used to hang in my kitchen when I lived with Devin...she's such a lovely painter...



This isn't a drawing of course...it's just a picture of Shiloh. He's the dog here that wanders into my room more and more frequently these days. He makes me happy.

December 4, 2007

This drawing is about how my sandcastles always get washed away eventually by the tide. (Note the heart shaped mout...) But I always rebuild them for some silly-overly-optimistic reason...perhaps I just keep building them too close to the ocean. Oh, who knows.


All year I have been wearing these little strands of Ghanaian beads tied around my waist. (Kelvin gave them to me...they're traditionally worn by women in Ghana) After this latest blow to my romantic-ego, it seemed like the beads were suddenly mocking me. They were a sign of my sensuality, and I just couldn't take it. I promptly cut them off with my hair shears and threw them on my desk. Then laid out one strand to spell fool. That was that.

December 2, 2007

This watercolor came out exactly how I saw it in my head. It's about the difficulty of encountering real quality people in this city sometimes. Like you're foolishly grasping at straws. So, those hanging shapes are all these flimsy-two-dimensional-abstract arms, with no substance to hold onto. I hang out with three-dimentional people this weekend...which is what reminded me to be so thankful for it.



This drawing is about kissing when it's so cold outside that you can see your breath. And it's almost like the kiss hangs there, suspended in the crisp air. I used a silver pen in some spots, but you can't really tell in the picture...

December 1, 2007

So, I'm...not the most socially-graceful individual. When in a group of people, I tend to speak with very cautious brushstrokes. Like this...



But I really do love to speak with big bold brushstrokes, even though I inevitably stick my foot in my mouth. So I made this painting to remind myself of this. (I can just see it hanging above the desks of some other overly-cautious-creatives that I know...)



So, I'm...a fool. When it dawned on me yesterday that, "He's simply going to let me go...again!" I mentally felt like the woman in the painting The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse. The surprise in realizing he would let me just drift away in my boat offended me, and I admit saddened me a little. But hey, I'd rather think the best of people and be made a fool of for it than be the cynic...
(Here's the painting in case you're not familiar with it.)



So, I'm...a file cabinet. After I made the Shalott-reference drawing, I realized that I had never drawn the mental file cabinet that I see it all the time in my head. It's my collection of all the visual images I've collected in my life (from art, film, life, etc.) that I flip through and reference every day....my visual vocabulary if you will. My professor Kathy in grad school always said that art education was valuable not because it gives you pitures to think about, but rather pictures to think with. I'm so thankful she was right.