Cosmic Galapagos Pattern

Brad Haubrich and I are chipping away at our Cosmic Galapagos show, which opens March 24th at Masthead Print Studio and Gallery. Here's a look at our collaborative work (a pattern!):

Cosmic Galapagos is coming on March 24

Brad and I have been working hard on our drawings for Cosmic Galapagos, our continuing Aloha Utopia partnership has given way to this new show of intergalactic exploration through drawing, screen print, and installation. Opens Saturday, March 24th at Masthead.

We pass drawings back and forth to each other over an extended period of time, adding one element at a time until we feel that it is complete. Below is one example, which will eventually transform into a screen print.

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Thinking About Line

From December 2011

I realized I never posted all of the newer patterns that I've been making since I've been away in Hong Kong and then immediately starting the spring semester in grad classes, working full time, and gallery shows. It's endlessly busy and endlessly productive.

I spend last semester exploring the theme of "Seductive Deception" - There is volatility in deceit and masked in femininity. Pastels, pastels, pastels in a whole new way.

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Little Project: Bag, tote and backpack

I wanted to make a bag that would have two ways of carrying - on the back and on the shoulder. I love wearables that transform so why not choose something that many people use? These bags' original surface patterns and design construction were made this past winter by yours truly.

digitally printed designs on linen canvas

rivets and snaps

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Little Project: Miniatures

A simple project: make tiny paintings (4"x6") in gouache, sold in packs of 4. These are silhouettes of different animals, ranging from reptiles, insects, birds, and sea creatures. Each one painted lovingly by yours truly this past winter.

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Trip to Hong Kong

 I took a trip to Hong Kong over the past 2 weeks in January and found some great sources of inspiration while I was there. I was in awe of some of the artwork that I saw at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, which was a great resource of asian art, cinema, and happenings in HK, patterns that I found all over the urban jungle of the city like the use of clay hexagons at the Botanical and Zoological Gardens, which is free and open to the public, and the mid-century buildings in pastel colors of seafoam green and pinks!

Enjoy the photos:

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DEC Competition

These past few months have been endlessly busy, but extremely productive, full of pattern explorations, painting, drawing, photography, sewing, and collaboration.

I'm happy to announce that my pattern design, based on photographs of bike chains and other mechanical objects, arranged in a fleur de lis / damask pattern is being considered as  an upholstery jacquard fabric for the new DEC building at Philadelphia University. The second round of judging will continue over the winter after samples of woven fabric are made!

Fingers crossed!


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Underwater Drawings

I'm creating a new series of patterns based on a concept I've named "Imitation Temptation": One of the patterns use these drawings of undersea volcanoes, coral reefs, and poisonous fish. Other patterns use painted snakes and candy, drawn mushrooms, and weird paisleys. Finished work soon to follow!

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Natural Dye Workshop with Kelly Cobb

Design Philadelphia is a great opportunity to learn new things! This past weekend, I went to a compost dye workshop, held by the lovely, Kelly Cobb! We learned about different ways of dyeing with natural material (sourced directly from Greensgrow Farm) from solar, fermentation, to compost dyeing! My favorite part was learning hapa zome - which is basically just beating the natural dye into your fabric. It's a satisfying way to dye! (No pun intended, really!)

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September is for Florals

I've been combining hand painted material with the digital process and came up with a few new patterns:

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Summer Internship 2011

I had an internship this past summer at Anthropologie, making displays at the Wayne, PA store. I loved every minute of every day there. I would be incredibly happy to wake up every morning to make displays for one of their stores! I'm sad that the summer is over, but hopeful for the new projects coming up!

Some of the projects I was involved with:

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Wild Countryside

This past summer, I spent a lot of my free time on nights and weekends hunched over on the floor painting this giant 50" x 50" piece with gouache! It took up all of my floor space, but was well worth it.

I've decided to start making separate colorways for past designs and mapping into spaces in the near future. Look out for it!


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Geometric Abstractions

Final Critique in my Design Studio class ended last week! What a relief! I'm going to be able to get some travel time in before the Fall semester starts. Until then, here are some of the last pattern designs from the summer. They are abstracted images from observational drawings.

From a close up view of a multi-tool:

From a box full of skeleton keys:

I'm currently in the process of digitizing a giant hand painted 46"x48" pattern. It was hours of mixing gouache, painting on my floor (the only space big enough to do the work!), and hard work, but well worth the effort. I've scanned all the pieces in and now I'll have to tile the images and reconstruct the whole thing in Adobe Illustrator. More soon!

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Brimfield Market, Massachusetts

I went to Providence, RI this past weekend and my friend took me to an amazing antique market in Massachusetts! There was everything under the sun there, including, but not limited to amazing mantlepieces, antique hardware, jewelry supplies, and I bought an awesome new tool: a hatchet/hammer/crowbar.

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Lightness and Weight opened last Friday

My submission for the show is a screenprint on tracing paper, paper, and a transparency. Real life photoshop.

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Weekend of Markets

This weekend was packed with the crafty shows: Flag Day Festival in front of the Betsy Ross House was quite an event! It was my first official craft show and I had all of my goods displayed under a tent (which came in handy when a quick rainstorm came through!)

Print your own t-shirt along with my other wares of the day

There were so many different people there, from craft vendors to street performers. I loved the guy in the next tent in front of the Betsy Ross House. They hired a soap sculptor to recreate Betsy's likeliness in soap. The excess soap was given away for donation towards the Betsy Ross House.

Awesome Mustache Soap Sculptor

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Summer is for Studio Daze

This is the first time that I've had so much uninterrupted time to work in the studio and it feels GREAT. I've been juggling multiple projects like making a piece for the Lightness and Weight show put together by the Soapbox Gallery and making a ton of stuff for the Flag Day Festival in Old City on Saturday.

Today, I've been dying fabric and articles of clothing, sorting out materials for the print-your-own table I'll set up on Saturday, and printing on fabric!

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See the 2011 Sketchbook Project online!

The sketchbook I submitted for the Art House Co-op's 2011 Sketchbook Project has been digitized!

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Strange Garden Color Board

The color board for "Strange Garden", which is the fresh garden with an Alice in Wonderland twist. The board is made of layers of imagery that stick out. The orange and green protrude from the board the most, the blues are a second layer, and then acid pink and yellows are the bottom layer.

Matchmaker

Does this screen print look like the sketch?

print on fabric

VERSUS

pastel on paper

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Lightness and Weight

Making some new work for a print that will be in a show at The Clip Art Gallery (put together by the lovely folks that bring you The Soapbox Gallery!) called "Lightness and Weight"..

I'm exploring more clouds and moving further towards some buildings.

Carving Stamps

I've been preparing for Flag Festival, a Victorian-themed festival in Old City, Philadelphia on June 11. I've been creating hand-carved stamps, carved out of rubber and mounted onto pieces of wood that were branch pieces. The images include, hot air balloons, ladders, gears, and feathers so far.

In the next few weeks, I'll be getting together prints and other goods for sale and will have a print-your-own-shirt station for the festival goers! Come out and join the fun!

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Sweet Summer Shirt Dress

I love my Japanese pattern books. They are full of endless and easy clothing possibilities, which is just what I need since I've decided that I wouldn't buy any more clothing and commit myself to making clothing.

I made a new summer shirt dress from Sweet Dress Recipe:

zigzag!

Even though I can't read Japanese, the book makes everything super easy with illustrated steps and good pattern layout. All of the patterns offered in the book are on one big page overlapping each other. In some books, it is impossible to find all of the patterns pieces and Sweet Dress Recipe makes it easy for your by organizing patterns by page number.

Sketch -> Print

I am going to attempt to make an exact replica of this sketch from my sketchbook of the PECO area in Gray's Ferry, Philadelphia into a screenprint without any digital processing. We shall see how this turns out...  So far, I've been armed with a filme opaquer marker for obvious non-textured line work and making china marker rubbings on acetate to simulate the pastel/paper texture.


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