Eureka 2!

Earlier this week, I posted pictures from my Eureka Springs birthday trip. I took some Holga images, so I hope to post those soon. For now, I have a few more Instax Wide pictures. Enjoy!

DoubleParlour Interview and Self Portrait Inspriation

Recently, I mentioned that I am teaching a class at a local art center. The class is called Art Lounge and it is geared towards high school students. 

One requirement of the class is to create art using a variety of traditional materials...my goal is to keep things as current as possible. 

The next nine weeks is devoted to creating self-portraits. I directed students to look at a Missouri art teacher who is on a quest to create 365 self-portraits...or a self-portrait-a-day. Wow! What a task! You can follow him here. The fact that he has the stamina to create such varied and interesting self-portraits every day, AND write a blog post about each one is so impressive!

I had my students look at Jim's artwork and then create a drawn portrait. (I will share their images later)

As I continued to research artists creating interesting, modern and wonderful self-portraits, I found  DoubleParlour on Etsy and I was immediately intrigued. 

Their artwork reminded me of a couple of books in our school library.

I decided it would be necessary for my students to see the images in the books...and images by the artists in order to design a clay self-portrait. I encouraged them to plan their portrait to be about 12" tall, similar to an action figure. You can see more of DoubleParlour's artwork on Flickr.
Here are a few of my favorites: 

1. Amia, 2. maiya, 3. leona, 4. group, 5. lydie no.1, 6. birthday ghost no.2, 7. Carrieanne, 8. Sabelle, 9. Fletcher #1

In order to get a bit of insight into their creative process, I sent the artists a little list of questions and they were happy to oblige! Thank goodness for sweet internet artists!

Doubleparlour Cassandra and Ernie Velasco San Francisco, CA

1. Where do you find inspiration for your sculptures? Are they based on real people, self portraits or aspects of your personality? Do you take commissions?

We find inspiration for our sculptures from all sort of places....including natural science, architecture, music, decay, humor, social norms and deviance. Some of our characters are based on aspects of real people from photos in news clippings, movies, acquaintances, and strangers. There is always something unique about every person, even if that person appears to be dull, normal, or blends in with the crowd. However, more often then not, our characters come directly from our imaginations...probably a kaleidoscope of images and thoughts we have throughout the day.

We sell our artwork online, in galleries and at local craft fairs. We do commissioned work, primarily requests from on-line collectors. Some commissions are requests to make a sculpture similar to a piece that has sold. Once in a while we receive requests to create a sculpture of a loved one based on photos with particular elements such a favorite animal or dress. Those pieces are difficult as it is hard to know what the requester has pictured as the final outcome.


2. Tell us a little bit about your process, do you draw the characters before you make them? Do all of the drawings become sculptures or paintings?

Although we collaborate on a few of our sculptures, generally we work separately, creating most of our pieces individually from start to finish. I would say each sculpture starts with an idea and sometimes a quick sketch. We prefer to do little planning and to let each piece evolve. We do more detailed drawings for paintings or illustrations...some of which become prints. A sculpture begins with an armature of aluminum foil and wire. The armature is then skinned with polymer clay for small parts with delicate details (i.e. faces), baked, and then skinned with an air dry two-part resin. The majority of the sculpture is usually formed with resin, as it is less fragile.


3. It is awesome that you collaborate on some of the characters. Most of them appear to be ambivalent, sad or they have forced smiles. Is that some thing you do intentionally or do they take on a life of their own? What do you want your audience to feel when they look at one of your sculptures?

Our characters generally have a contemplative look, like they are lost in thought or hiding something. I suppose we want our audience to feel curious or sympathetic to the character's personality or perceived emotional state.

4. My favorite sculpture is Doreeh.

What is your favorite?

Cassandra's favorite piece is "Can't see the forest for the trees"....it was one of my most difficult pieces to make, I love it! 

 Ernie's favorite is Bezz and Dezz.

5. Where do you live? Do you have another job or do you get to make art full time?

We live in San Francisco, we have live here for about 16 years now in the BEST neighborhood...Lower Haight. Cassandra works full-time at a hospital and creates art part-time. Ernie quit his job as a pastry chef about 2 years ago to do art full-time.

I am so grateful to Ernie and Cassandra, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions!! Watch for an updated post soon, with student work!

Eureka!

For my birthday, I went on a photo adventure with my Instax Wide around Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It was a lot of fun!
 Here are a few of my favorite images of the trip:

The Cresent Hotel. Lots of history there. It may or may not be haunted...

This is one of my favorite pictures of the entire weekend. This is on the porch at the Cresent, probably left behind by an evening party guest at the hotel...but I like to think an art loving-drunk ghost floated away, forgetting his two olives. (An ode to Ed Ruscha)

This might seriously be the MOST beautiful time of year to visit--all the dogwood trees are in bloom.

Yes, room for one please. Sometimes I need a vacation here.


Check back later this week for a few more Instax images!

So inspired by Art Lounge

I haven't even had time to share the new class I am teaching at the local art center.

Art Lounge, a hip safe place for students to explore the visual arts.

Each week a group of 14-18 year-old students meet at the art center for art making and dinner. It is super fun to work with the older students, I really love it!

One aspect of the class is creating a group artists blog.

The students designed and named the blog: Art Juggler. 

Check it out and be come a  follower here!

One of my goals for the class is to share with them living, breathing artists so they can get a feel for what it is like to be a real artist in this world, and they can learn how to use technology to share their work with an audience.

Here are a few recent projects:

Polaroid Self-Portraits 

Inspired by Danny Brito's Polaroid Project

I shared this interview with my students. 

Shadow Street Art

Inspired by Color Me Katie 

See more of her street art here.

Read about our adventures here and here.

Paint-By-Number Style Acrylic Canvas Paintings 

Inspired by the Birds of a Feather blog

This week, we are working on 'Action Figure Self-Portraits'. I will share the details soon! Be sure to check out the http://artjuggler.blogspot.com/ Share the link with anyone you think might be interested! Thanks for reading!

And now back to your regularly scheduled blog posts.....

Happy Sunday!!
I've just returned from an amazing weekend in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I went on a photography adventure with my Instax Wide.

The weather today has been lovely. If you've been following my blog for a while, I apologize for the absence. I have many posts scheduled for the week, thanks for your support and readership!

Don't you just love the bottom of this dress?

Happy Birthday Post!

A friend sent me an awesome link to some really creative and fun art birthday party decorations. I especially love the colorful cake balls displayed in the paint palette. Check out Inspired Birthday Party Themes for more ideas and more photos!

This would be such a fun birthday party--the invitations would be so cute and so fun to make!

Today is my birthday, I am 28!! Inching my way towards 30,  it will be here before I know it. Read about some of my other birthday adventures here, I haven't always had the best luck on my birthday. (Let's hope I don't get a ticket for 'body parts outside the vehicle' again!)

This day has started out beautifully. My entire school sang happy birthday to me in the bus room. Each class of the day has showered me with birthday notes and paintings.

My student teacher made me a super cute owl apron and an entire bouquet of owl pops! So cute!! This is my first owl apron-- I own tons of aprons but none have owls!

 Cutest thing ever! I am in LOVE!

 Totally cute and creative. I need this book now! I think I may have a new obsession!

Watch for a post on Monday entitled 'My Birthday in Food'...it looks like I will be spending a lot of time eating this weekend--and I am excited about that!

Thanks for reading! I am excited to get back to blogging soon. I have lots of great ideas for posts, just need to find time to get them written. I am hoping to have a bit more time in the coming weeks.

Is there any thing you want me to write about? Art teacher stuff? Lesson plans? Funny stories? Crafting projects? Leave me some requests in the comments!

Live Blogging at Nelliepalooza!

This is the third round of Nelliepalooza. I started it last year for my birthday, and it was so successful that everyone voted for a second session in the fall and now its my birthday season again so we are at the campground for another weekend of fun.

I've got a bunch of craft-loving ladies at a local campground. It is super cheap to reserve for a couple of nights and everyone pitches in on food so we get to eat tons of yummy snacks and home-cooked meals.

Tonight we had yummy enchiladas and now we are all working on individual projects. I am quilting.

Some people are scrapbooking.

My friend Caralee brought her spin art machine and we were wow-ed by its spinning powers.

Michelle brought her extreme couponing notebook and people are taking notes, learning her way of amazing money saving using coupons.

This is one of my favorite places to be: surrounded by friends, good food, and working on inspirational projects. It reminds me of camp. When I was a kid, church camp was my favorite thing to do every summer.

I just wanted to take a minute and reflect. Back to work!

Story and a photo.

Gum, black hole and dog tags......

One day a few months ago one of my students had on a necklace. It was one of those key chain dog tags and it had been personalized with his name and football number on it. It was very shiny and new. I told him it was very cool. After that, he just HAD to give it to me. I knew his mom would probably be wondering where it was eventually, so I put it somewhere safe so that when he came to me later I would be able to give it back to him. My safe spot just happened to be a special zipper pouch that I tuck into my purse where I carry my lipstick.

Today my student came to me during class wondering where ’my’ necklace was that he gave me...I told him that it was safe, in my purse. Of course, being an inquisitive 10 year-old, he wanted to see it...to make sure that it was safe. I went to my purse and unzipped the lipstick pouch...but the necklace was missing. I knew that I hadn’t taken it out of my purse so I began searching for it. I looked in the side zipper part. No, it wasn’t there either. So I started to remove a few of the bigger things, my wallet, my address book, a bottle of lotion, my checkbook, some ink pens, my gianormous set of keys, a granola bar.....

Finally, I spotted the shiny silver dog tag at the bottom of my purse....That’s right...it was buried beneath the bottomless pit of bobby pins, paper clips, buttons, earrings, pennys, rocks, scraps of paper, gum wrappers, tiny chunks of trident that have wriggled free from the wrapper, rubber bands, reciepts ...there it was....luckily I had found his necklace...but....when I rescued it from the rubble I realized that it had been slimed with some of that yucky spearmint gum...chunks of the gum had somehow goo-ed up the chain and his once-shiny namesake was now minty fresh with rubbed on gum residue. He saw the gum immediately.

He looked up at me. ’What did you do to my necklace?’ All I could do was laugh. ’I am sorry’ ’your necklace got gummed’ was all I could giggle. I went straight to the sink and got some soap as he watched me frantically trying to clean off his precious un-shiny dog tag key chain. Other students started to gather around at this point and I tried to explain that I didn’t realize it had slipped from the safe spot into the bog of junk in the bottom of my purse. I scrubbed and scrubbed, but the gum was stuck...Lime green gum.....I vowed to take it home and use some special gum remover to clean it off. "My mom’s purse wouldn’t have had yucky gum in the bottom of it" he said...."I know, but this kind of thing happens to me, I’m so sorry" I laughed, embarrassed.....

Um, yeah...my purse is not going to be a safe spot for children’s treasures ever again!!

five hot dogs heading back in space.

You might be wondering why I would post an image of some hot dogs after a silly story about dog tags and gum at the bottom of my purse.....well....recently, I participated in a photography scavenger hunt and one of the photos I had to take involved linear perspective. This photo is 'five hot dogs heading back in space'.....they aren't exactly lined up to be in 'linear perspective' and they also aren't in outer space...I wanted to create a little play on words with this title...to encourage the viewer to ask questions and think a little longer at they photo than they might normally do if they just saw a photo of hot dogs.

This is a lomography photo--taken with black and white film, fish eye lens on a Diana Camera.

Finding a Balance.

Your startup disk is almost full.

Your startup disk is dangerously low on space.

Your startup disk is so low your computer is barely able to function.

These are the worst possible messages for a blogger, photographer and movie maker to see on a computer, but these are the sorts of messages that have been plaguing me for the last two weeks. 

 I have known that I needed to off load a bunch of pictures and movies onto an external hard drive for a couple of weeks but I had a tiny little issue with my external hard drive--it got fried! And the new one isn't formatted to the operating system on my mac. So while I was able to save the info from the fried external hard drive,  I am not able to write anything new to the one terabyte hard drive to clean off my mac hard drive.

With my hard drive almost too full to function, I haven't been able to upload any new photos or do much of anything--especially with my computer running ridiculously slow!

Last night, I was trying to edit a photo in Photoshop and my computer actually informed me that it couldn't save the changes I had made. My startup disk was too full to make one simple change to one photo. Wow.

It was time to delete some stuff. I had to decide what to get rid of to make room for the new stuff. Documents? Photos? Videos? How would I know what was too precious to get rid of? What if I deleted something really important and realized it a little too late?

So I started deleting things....I started with .zip and .mbx files...and then I went into my video folder and realized that I had lots of video footage that needed to go---several gigs worth!

(I am really stressing about not being able to back up the photos and videos I want to keep on my computer so I am hoping to figure out a solution for my external hard drive problem soon)

As I was working to clean off my computer, I started thinking about how I have been too busy to sit down and write anything lately...or edit pictures....or even take pictures. I have started making room on my internal hard drive to fit new things in. I have had to give up some of my old 'things' to make room for new 'things.'

Since the year started, I have been really trying to find a balance between my bad habits and living a healthier life. I didn't really set an official 'resolution', but just 'be healthier' this year....so I have been exercising and eating healthier in order to lose a bit of weight and just feel better about myself.

Successfully, I have stuck with my 'diet'--10 pounds later -- I actually have to keep eating healthy in order to keep it off...

The hardest part of being healthier is finding time to exercise. I realized that I needed to burn about 500 calories a day to lose anything....and that is seven days a week...exercising for at least an hour...

Now, I have found some really fun activities including a spin class, zumba classes and hiking a local trail...but I must admit....I hate getting all sweaty...it ruins my hair...and it is such a pain to change clothes 4-5 times a day if I have to do something after going to the gym.

Working out for a minimum of an hour every day has sliced into my creative time. By the time I get home from the gym and cook a healthy dinner, and prepare a healthy lunch for the next day....there is barely time to relax--forget about doing something creative!

Its a little bit overwhelming. With all this working out, I feel ten times busier than normal.

I am looking ahead to things coming up--evening events at school, family visiting, and even my birthday weekend-- I just don't know how I will function if I can't squeeze a workout in every day...and SOME creative time to blog, take pictures or make something cute. 

I feel like I have committed to this working out thing....and if I don't do it every day then I will lose what I have built up, I will lose motivation, and I will get out of the habit and quit forever.

My startup disk is dangerously full.

My startup disk is barely able to function.

Find a balance. Get rid of some stuff. That is my only option. How do I decide what stays and what goes?

So, for now....I have traded in my craft (and computer time) for the gym...I just hope it pays off....and I find time to make some cute stuff soon. I am going to a crop this weekend....but I will have to skip Friday night in order to make time for my sister who is in town from Hawaii, and go late on Saturday in order to go the gym before, and leave early for a birthday party that night....

Finding a balance. Family. Friends. Work. Exercise. Art. Relaxing. Sleeping. Chores. How should I arrange things? What order should I put everything in?

(Oh, and did I mention, I am teaching an extra class on Wednesday nights 4--7:30 at the local art center....so I work 12 hours on Wednesdays!)

 How do you find a balance?
How do you do everything?
How do you make it all work? What do you give up in order to keep your 'hard drive' from crashing?

 A complete double rainbow last summer....taken with my hipstamatic.