This Past Weekend...

...was my birthday weekend! It was one of those landmark b-days too. *Gulp!*

*Not my actual birthday cake.

I took Friday off of work to relax, but wound up running a crazy amount of errands instead. This included taking my hedgehog to the vet, picking up packages at FedEx, and paying a visit to the post office (to name a few).

To all my Mail Artists out there - I sent out letters to everyone interested in participating and included the addresses of everyone in our group. You should be getting them over the course of this week. If you don't get anything by next week, just send me an e-mail at honeydewstudio@gmail.com

I also sold 2 items from my Etsy shop on my birthday! Woo-hoo! Goodbye Cabbee and Tap Dancing Squirrel. Enjoy your new homes!

I had to hit the post office to mail those out. Does anyone else have weird postal workers in their area? Nice. The guy who was shipping out my packages caught sight of my Honeydew Studio logo on the label and started chanting "Honeydew honeydew honeydew!" ...for the entire time I was standing there. I was like, "Er...that's right." and he kept going so I said, "If you keep that up, I'll turn back into a pumpkin." As I turned my back to walk out, I heard, "Honeydew honeydew honeydew!" Honestly, where does the post office find these people? At least he was cheery, I suppose.

I really want to make more items for the Christmas season. With school, I don't know if I'll have time to actually create anything or not but it's a hope. What should I start with? More bee ornaments for the holidays? More original illustrations? I don't know. What do you want to see?

I spoke too soon!

Wow. Just. Wow.

I posted that previous blog WAY too soon! I guess the folks who are on the Etsy forums in the evening are way more enthusiastic than the daytime forum people. My Etsy convo mail box as well as my gmail account has been bombarded. They are now full of e-mails from people wanting to participate in mail art! We gave quite the list of participants now!

I am so excited. I expect to be sending out a list of addresses to everyone who e-mailed me no later than Friday. So if you want to be a part of this, make sure you send me an e-mail or a convo before September 26!!! Then the fun part can begin. (o:

If there are any stragglers out there who are still interested in sending/receiving mail art, and would like to be added to my address list, please feel free to e-mail me at: honeydewstudio@gmail.com

Still going...

I'm back from NY and exhausted. I've got a pile of homework that I clearly haven't been working on all weekend and it was back to work today after arriving home last night. Ugh. (But I had fun!)

I'm still collecting addresses from people who want to participate in mail art. Ideally, I'd like at least a dozen names on the list before I send it out to everyone. LOTS of people seem interested, but only about half of those people have contacted me to participate.

Why?

Lord knows this is the antithesis to junk mail. It's a total artist-to-artist correspondance. It only costs 42 cents to mail an envelope. Don't you want tiny fun art to arrive in your mailbox? Or is it more that you're worried you won't have any time to make some yourself and send it out?

I totally understand that. Though I was able to mail one piece out rather quickly, I've been SWAMPED with school work and have been struggling to finish up another piece. Maybe if I get into doing them regularly, it will become second nature.

Or maybe I've tapped out my resources. I've been posting on Etsy about it, but my thread gets buried in 4 seconds. I've posted on here about it, but I'm pretty sure I only have about 20 readers (oh but how I love you guys who actually visit me!) I even posted on MySpace. But that can be such a black hole.

Any suggestions where else to turn for people who might be interested? Should I resort to a "Tell your friends! Tell your grandma!" type of outreach? Haha!

TGIF!

I'm heading out of state for the weekend to see friends who I haven't seen in ages. I'm hoping that when I come back, I'll find that a bunch of people are really interested in exchanging mail art and have subsequently e-mailed me with their addresses. (Please? Pretty please? It's fun, I promise!)
I'm aiming for at least a dozen people on this list to start off with. I'm almost halfway there! Help me out by participating!!!

In other news, Etsy was on CNN today. Woohoo! Click on the link below th read:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/18/craft.revival/index.html

Snail mail, anyone?

I'm thinking about creating a mail art list for artists and craftspeople to connect and have a fun correspondence with each other. After getting feedback from my other blog posts, and having discussions with fellow artists and Etsians, there seems to be some genuine interest in participating in something like that. Everyone loves mail, right? Especially when it's not a bill!

However, with me being in school, commuting, plus working full time -- I certainly don't have the time required to run or coordinate anything, let alone a group!

Instead, I was thinking that what I could do was collect addresses from interested parties, compile them in a big list, and send them out to everyone. That way people could choose random names off the list of people, and start mailing little fun postcards, collages, doodles, tiny paintings (or whatever) to fellow artists all over.

If you aren't sure what mail art is, please click on this link. The options for what you send are wide open since the definition of art is pretty broad. The only rule that I absolutely want to stick to is that if you receive something, you should definitely send a little piece of art back to that person in return. Participate! Really, it's only fair. You can't just sit back and get cool art in the mail without sending any in return.

What do you think? Does anyone want to participate? Maybe I should put a deadline on submitting your address so the group doesn't get out-of-control huge. What do you think? Does that sound good? I'm completely open to any suggestions. I've never tried to put together anything like this before.

If you're interested (or have any suggestions) please e-mail me at honeydewstudio@gmail.com or you can just write me with your snail-mail address. Let's see where this goes!

A blog about not blogging

My brain is mush right now, which is why I'm posting so much later in the day than usual. I try really hard to avoid complaining and negativity on this blog, but since this rant is sort of art and design related....

I have my evening classes tonight and tomorrow, and am not feeling so confident in the homework projects I'm about to present. Worse yet, I don't feel like I've been getting any helpful feedback or direction so far in my classes. I'm pretty disappointed. Which might have led to the aforementioned lack of confidence.

Maybe the upcoming weeks will prove me wrong - maybe it'll be great,...maybe I'll get a lot out of it. But I'm feeling like this is going to be a lOOoooOoong semester.

Last night, I had to wrestle with giant printing fiasco (why does 11x17 seem like a reasonable presentation size to teachers??? I do not live anywhere near my school, so I can't "pop into" the computer lab.) I've tried copy stores, and that is a hot mess and a waste of money. The only other people I know who can print that large are my parents. My dad is a self-taught photographer and has a great big printer for his photos. So, last night I was up with my poor mother at my parents' house until 12:30-12:45 trying to figure out why red on the computer screen was printing up as brown on the printer. Sigh.

Eventually, my mother figured it out. Everything is all set now...except my mood. Wish me luck tonight. I'll need it (that, and a bucket of coffee!).

You Know You're an Icon When...

For one of my homework assignments this week, I decided to make the point that the Mona Lisa long ago surpassed being a mere portrait. I did this, in part, by stenciling the word "recycle" over the image. It has passed into history as an artistic icon. I'd also say it is officially in the realm of symbol and metaphor...that people all over the world use time and time again. You know how to tell if your work has reached this level?

You know your painting is more than a painting when....

Lego's has built a representation of it,

Miss Piggy...

Lisa Simpson ...

The Far Side cartoons ...

Kim Possible ...

and Madame Tussuad's have all imitated it. And that's not even the tip of the iceberg! I used probably about 100 images of interpretations, parodies, recreations, and reinventions of the Mona Lisa for my project. And there's so many more out there. It's infinite.

I have my BFA in illustration and have quite a few years of art history under my belt. I know all the Mona Lisa history and even some of her "secrets", and I'm still not really sure why it is so popular.

I studied for a winter in France. I went to the Louvre. There were other paintings by Da Vinci that I found much more interesting hanging right outside the door to the gallery that the Mona Lisa was in. Yet, the crowd was so thick around this small portrait that you could barely get through. I might get some backlash for this, but....though it was nice to see it in person, I wasn't super impressed. I wanted to go look at Da Vinci's ginormous painting of Saint Anne, Mary, and Jesus outside in the long gallery:

Gorgeous, right? And no one was standing in front of it except me with my sketchbook. Sigh. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the Mona Lisa. It's just that people miss out on a lot of fabulous work when they narrow their view on art history down to a couple paintings. What are your favorite (non-iconic) paintings?

Banksy and Other Anonymous Art

Whenever my husband and I travel overseas, we love taking pictures not only of the local markets and scenic bits, but of the local graffiti and ads on the street. This summer, we were in London. We were strolling around, taking a shortcut to Speaker's Corner when I spotted this piece of graffiti next to a CCTV camera:

I just thought that was brilliant. A little piece of guerrilla art can easily make my day. I halted the whole family so that I could take a picture.

Fast forward to my graphic design class last week. We had this assignment where we had to pick one word from a list, and set it with a picture so that it gave you another message than either the word or the picture could do alone. As our teacher said "1+1=3". Anyway, long story short, one of my pieces involved my word stenciled graffiti-like onto the page. The comment was made by a couple classmates that it reminded them of Banksy. I scribbled the name in my notebook to look up when I got home.

As it turns out, I'm already very familiar with his work...I am just horrible with remembering names. In fact, the aformentioned graffiti I saw in London this summer was actually a piece by Banksy. (This part I didn't know.) The pieces that I did recognize were these:






As I searched online, I continued to find more photos of Banksy pieces. I'm totally in love:






This blog could easily become the length of a thesis if I started to talk about guerrilla artists or anonymous public art. I recommend that you check out the Banksy links I posted above. There's also loads of stuff online to look at if the topic in general interests you . I don't know about you, but it inspires me.

Even a small piece of guerrilla art is still something. For example, the same night someone mentioned Banksy to me in class - I found a small anonymous typewritten note taped to the inside of a stall in the women's room at my college. It said, "What was the last thing that made you cry laughing?" Simple, but I found myself actually wondering about that. It took me out of my life for a second.

Another favorite public art project of mine is The Lemon Project - invented by Heather, a fellow Etsy seller. You can read all about on her blog. Make sure you read parts 1-3. It still makes me smile. Thoughts?

That's Disheartening

Some of you have heard some of this story already, so I apologize in advance.

In July of 2007, I was taped for an episode of HGTV's That's Clever. (National exposure for my work = very exciting, non?) I was told to e-mail them in the spring of 2008 for an air date. I did...and was provided with an episode number, but no date. I was told to contact them again in the fall.

This month, I wrote once again to the woman with whom I'd been conversing...and the e-mail bounced back to me! I've since been combing the internet trying to find out what's going on. Is the show canceled? There's absolutely no sign of it on HGTV's daily show schedule, though it's still on the website as an "active" show.

Today I had a tiny breakthrough when I found this blog by a fellow That's Clever participant*.

There's a little something you should know...I was taped for the 500 series. The 400 series is set to air in January of '09??? Assuming they'll even air the 500 series, that means I can probably expect my episode to air sometime in 2010? Oh. My. God. That's three years after the taping. Who knows if I'll even be doing the same type of projects by then? I guess exposure 3 years late is better than none at all. I really hope the show doesn't get canceled before my episode airs. I have to admit, I'm a little bummed.

*Thanks so much to Jama for posting the above linked blog, and also for answering my question so fast!

Mail Art

The image above is one of Ray Johnson's mail art pieces.

For the past year, I've been interested in ATCs (artist trading cards). I even spoke with a fellow Etsian who referred me to the ATC group that she participates in. The problem is that with school, I don't have too much time to create and trade mini works of art, as much as I'd love to.

As I mentioned a couple blogs ago, I recently saw the documentary How To Draw a Bunny which reignited my interest in mail art. Though at the time I didn't know it had a name, I used to do this my friends. I don't think I could keep up with ATCs right now, but I do think I might be able to send out the occasional mail art piece.

Much to my delight, I found a thread on the Etsy forums posted by sparklerama who had also recently seen (and been inspired by) How to Draw a Bunny. We're making plans to send each other some mail art. I'm pretty excited about the prospect.

I'm wondering if anyone out there is involved in an organized mail art group? I've been able to find ATC groups, but just started wondering about mail art. If not, I wonder if it would be possible to get some sort of mail art group together. How would that work? Would you have to send a piece to each person in the group all at once? Or do we all take turns sending one piece to a different person each time? If anyone can enlighten me, I'd be interested to hear it. (o:

Recycled Couture

I was searching the internet this weekend -- looking for images I could use in a homework assignment when I ran across these photos (above and below). As usual, I'm a bit behind the times as these creations made their debut last year - but I figured they were still worth posting.

These gowns are all made out of recycled material. The colorful dress above is created from cans and (I think) boxes. The first dress below is newspaper. The final dress is recycled jeans...which makes sense since all of these gowns were designed by Gary Harvey, who was formerly the Creative Director for Levi's.


My best friend from college and former roommate does work like this. I thought she was the only nut making ballgowns from candy wrappers. That is, until I saw these! I'll have to post some pictures of the dresses she made on another post.

In the meantime, to see more recycled couture, click here.

Featured again!

I was notified yesterday that my little panda illustration made it to a treasury created by Lancerika. Click here to check it out!!!

Year 2, Semester 1, Day 1

I had my first class of the fall semester last night. It's Graphic Design 1. So far, so good.

For some reason, I'm not as afraid of a graphic design class as I was of typography last semester. Maybe it's because my teacher for this class is exactly my age. He graduated from Mass Art the same year I graduated from RISD...which is a little weird. But since I clearly haven't made a name for myself in my own field after all these years, maybe he can help me break into his. /o:

In any case, he seemed to be speaking about design on a level I can understand. It seems like all of the principles I learned from being an illustration major can be applied in a different format to graphic design. Good design is good design, right? I'm still nervous about Intermediate Typeography next week. Something about type still makes me vaguely nervous. Guess I'm going to have to get over that, huh?

In a little aside - we all had to get new IDs last night since the college changed its logo and ID format. I got a new photo too since the last one was wretched. I have to say, the new one isn't much better. I'm pretty sure that even supermodels look like crap in their school IDs and licences, but is it really necessary for me to look like Popeye in mine?

Hahaha! Oh well. Happy Friday, everyone!

How to Draw A Bunny

My best friend lives on the opposite side of the country, but was home for a visit almost the entire month of August. For some reason we did a lot of Olympics-watching together, and filled in the gaps between events with movies he rented from Netflix.

One of these was the documentary How To Draw A Bunny. It's about the life of artist Ray Johnson. We might be a little behind the times since the documentary was released in 2002 and we're just getting around to watching it now. So, if this film is old news to you - you can just skip this entire blog. (Or at least scroll down to the end!)

Ray Johnson was a collage artist in the Pop Art movement. He hung around with the likes of Warhol, Christo, Chuck Close, etc. I won't get into details of his life since you really should see the documentary for yourself. But I will say my favorite thing about him is that he was the founding father of Mail Art - which I think is just brilliant.

When I first got to college, my best friends and I (the above mentioned pal included) would send each other the most crazy items of snail mail. I once opened a envelope and what looked like nearly 4 ounces of glitter poured out onto my floor. I received letters that had been cut up into puzzle pieces that I had to put back together in order to read. In return, I would rip funny fliers down from posts around town, photocopy photos and draw on them, or illustrate comic strips about my day and mail them off.

Of course, we were no Ray Johnson...

The documentary made me simultaneously sad and inspired. Sad because I feel like I don't have time to work on my own creative projects anymore. Not even the small ones like sending your friend a collage through the mail. In fact, e-mail has taken over any fun correspondence at all. I was inspired because Ray Johnson lived his art. It seemed like everything he did had an artistic purpose...even his death. The Mail Art thing was just one amazing piece of it.

After my best friend went back home to the West Coast, I started putting a fun little envelope together for him. I hope I can get it into the mail soon. I don't know if I'll be able to keep up with it...especially once school starts up again tomorrow, but it's certainly worth a shot. Kind of like the 21 Day Challenge I did this summer.

If you're looking for a little inspiration, I would recommend this documentary. But be forewarned - there's a lot of very brief jazz drumming interludes between interviews with artists. For no good reason. It's fun and artsy for about 25 minutes. After that, I was ready to poke out my own eyes. If you enjoy incessant jazz drumming, you'll love it! (o:

Anyway, I'm looking for recommendations for other inspirational artsy documentaries. (Just so you know, I've already seen Helvetica). (o;