Posted 7/9/09

Having a little time to sketch, I have been retrieving some images from my trip to Prague last year that I wanted to explore as art ideas. I recorded lots of imagery of vines, and this photo in particular was interesting to me.

I drew several explorations and this image above was an “early in the process” sketch. I do like the fun patterning on the drawing. It’s just not a sophisticated composition.

The image above is the last sketch I drew, and it is my favorite of the lot. Hopefully it will morph into an art quilt this fall and I can show the whole progression! I drew these sketches with sharpies and Inktense/watercolor pencils.

Posted 7/6/09

I drove over to the Austin Museum of Art over the weekend to check out their current exhibit, The Lining of Forgetting: Internal and External Memory in Art.  In my last post, I noted that I have been recently exploring my own visual memories. Most of my memories are visual, and for a long time I thought everyone’s brains worked this way.  My sister noted that she remembers the smell of my parent’s closet, and I can’t place it at all. Contrastingly, my husband’s memories are very auditory.

The exhibition explores memory, forgetting, and editing. The exhibition was really interesting, with lots of interesting pieces. My favorite was a dual screen computer generated work by David Rokeby.  It included a full year’s worth of surveillance of a small area in urban Montreal, with the images of the same little place in the world shown at various dates and times of day.  Really mesmerizing.

I created the woven image above in the hands on section of the museum, trying my hand at a grass mat weaving technique used by one of the artists in the exhibit. The artist, Dinh Q. Le, weaves C-prints together for his work included in this exhibit.

Here is a link to the museum site: http://www.amoa.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ex_exhibitions

BTW, the gift shop was chock full of super crafter items and local artist wares. Thanks for supporting handmade and local, AMOA!

Posted 7/2/09

Here are a few drawings from my mobile studio, my sketchbook.  The above drawing is my cute ipod in it’s crazy holder.

The above drawing is a belated shout out to my Dad for Father’s Day. I recently attempted to draw the contents of my parent’s closet when I was young.  It’s probably weird that I spent so much time there, but my parents had a lot of cool stuff in there. And besides, did YOUR Dad practice a brass instrument in his closet? The drawing of these memories led to more specific drawings of items in their closet. This is just a memory drawing of one of many Audubon guides my Dad always had. As a kid, I spent lots of time flipping through them and considering species of birds and plants.  I really enjoyed drawing the cool plastic texture of the cover. They were drawn with a sharpie, watercolor pencils and my cool watercolor brush.