Immaculate Incubation

Holy Shit Balls! What a week it has been! I meant to get this post up much earlier in the week but it has been crazy-pants-homework-hell around here for the last several days! In fact, I have been writing, reading, and typing since about 9am and I only took breaks for food, an occasional smoke, and an hour long break for Grimm at 9pm so I was kind of dreading having to sit down and type this before bed tonight (it is now after midnight). A shower and refreshing my ice water improved my mood by leaps and bounds so here we go (be forewarned, I am tired and am feeling a bit lackadaisical so I have no intention of editing this before I post it… Typos Ho!)

In my last post I had just finished the self-portrait I did for an art swap and was jumping into finishing the piece I did for Alicia’s frienniversary gift while trying to keep up on homework and preparing for our trip. I am going to jump right back into the story here so hang on to your seats.

Tuesday was a mad dash to get homework done, which is no fun so that is all the attention I am going to give that here. I had already finished the clay and texture work on Alicia’s piece of art so Wednesday I did my first few coats of paint while chipping away at homework during drying times. The goal was to stay ahead on the homework front so I could post my Saturday assignments early.

This is the stage where a piece really starts coming to life and I get so excited during this time in a work’s creation that I have a difficult time doing anything else. I am more than a little proud of myself for being able to focus on school while doing this but I will tell you that it was torture! I feel like I could hear this piece whispering to me over my shoulder while I was writing essays and doing digital illustrations.

Thursday I finished up the painting on this piece and sealed it. I also laid out the LED circuit I planned to install in it in prep for Friday’s work. This was a really heavy homework day for me and thankfully the product I used to seal this piece needed to dry overnight so I couldn’t fuss with it anymore.

Friday morning I got up and went right to work on wiring my LED circuit into my art piece. I taught myself to do this (with a little help from YouTube) and I was so excited when I snapped the battery in place and the egg lit up that I squealed and clapped so loud my dog started barking and the kitty ran and hid under my bed.

I was up until 2am getting all my homework done and posted, giving feedback and comments in my classrooms, and packing for the trip to Seattle so 5:15 am came very early for me. I groaned and punched my alarm clock when it went off but as soon as I remembered that Alicia and I were heading to Seattle and I was giving her “Immaculate Incubation” I was so anxious to get going that I was instantly awake. I am happy to say that she was thrilled with her gift.

And I was equally as thrilled with her gift to me! She gave me a little painting she called “Katie’s Garden” because she thinks it looks like me when we were younger, it kind of does too!

After we swapped gifts, loaded the car, and kissed kids and husbands goodbye we were on our way to Seattle! Next time I will tell you all about our trip and show you some pictures of our adventures!

The Great Time Management Experiment of 2012

I have been babbling about this time management experiment on my Facebook page off and on a bit so none of this is fresh news to those of you who follow me there, but for those of you who don’t or who want to know what the hell the deal is with this epic grappling match I am having with time, I will fill you in now.

One of my biggest downfalls as an artist is the fact that I am not a very prolific artist. It isn’t that I don’t want to be; I am just not very organized and like all of you, I have other commitments.  I have hundreds of ideas rattling around in my melon, I have note books, and lists detailing these ideas and my plans for them; what I don’t have is enough time in the day to do everything that I want to do.

Once upon a time I was very good at multi-tasking (or at least I thought I was). But the older I get the less able to line up projects in an efficient manner I seem to be. I have had several things that I want/need to do recently and I the name of experimentation I decided to give systematic multi-tasking a try once again.

I have a very work intensive term with school going on right now and with the exception of caring for the living things in my life (son, pets, husband) school has got to be a priority… how can I fit more art into this scenario and still have time to leave my house and spend time with actual people (as opposed to talking through a computer or phone)?

In addition to family life and school, I have been active in a few art swaps as of late and I had plans to go out of town with a friend. So the challenge was to keep up on school and family commitments and still meet swap deadlines so that I could go on a weekend trip with my friend Alicia for our 20-year “frienniversary”. My next few posts will detail how all of this played out and how it continues to fit together.

I guess I started this about two weeks ago (maybe a little less) just after finishing the two spreads for the art journal swap I featured in my last post here.  My goal: to get a major art piece that I would be giving to Alicia as a gift completed in time for our trip, finish a self-portrait for another swap, prep an Altoids tin for a pocket shrine swap, and keep up on my homework so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it when Alicia and I went out of town over the weekend. As I mentioned, this subject will run for several posts but I am going to lay the groundwork here in this one.

I prepped for my experiment by cleaning my office/studio and setting out everything that I would need for the projects I listed.

 

 

 

 

 

I was pretty ahead of the game for homework at this point and I began my projects by doing some rough sketches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All three projects involved some epoxy-resin clay work so my next step was to get all of that done at once but I ran into a couple of issues here. The first being that this clay air cures and you have a window of time to get your sculpting done in. I did get a little behind in school work at this point but was easily able to catch up. The bigger issue was that I seem to be allergic to the clay I use! I had a reaction to it once before that was very similar to the one I had this time and it only seems to happen with prolonged exposure and no gloves (I hate wearing gloves with I work with clay! It just doesn’t feel right!). I took two days to get all of my sculpting finished and by the end of the second I had a rash on the back of my hands and on my face where I apparently habitually rub/touch my face while I am working. I got my clay work finished and managed to stay caught up on my schoolwork but had an anxious week hoping and waiting for the rash to clear up before my trip!

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I waited for the scab to fall off my nose I moved forward with my projects. The first in line was my self portrait as it had a May 7^th deadline.  I spent Sunday painting and prepping all the pieces for this and Monday putting them together and really didn’t’ do so great with the homework end of things that day (which made for a stressful Tuesday).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This little lady is on her way to Nova Scotia (she should arrive any day now) and Tuesday was a mad dash to get homework done, clean my nasty-ass kitchen, and catch up on laundry (I forgot to factor housework into this scenario)!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up was the big art piece I did for Alicia that had to be done by Friday so I could give it to her Saturday morning before we left for Seattle. I will tell you about that in a couple of days though… right now homework is calling my name and I think I can actually smell my dishes in the sink downstairs.

Back to School Blues

Man, I love school, I really do! That doesn’t meant that I am not having a hard time getting back into the swing of things after taking six weeks off. I will get there but the combination of this beautiful weather we have been having, my spring allergies kicking into high gear, and six weeks of blissfully doing absolutely nothing that I didn’t want to do is making for a slow start. That is why I am glad I have been doing this art journal swap… it is giving me a little motivation and is so far out of the norm for me I kind of feel like I am kicking my heels up a bit.

Because school is in session again and I have a huge workload from both of my classes I am not holding a lot of hope for the time to do regular blog updates but at least I have the journal swap to write about! Before I go any further with this I feel like I should again remind you all that the swap is a bit dark in theme and the work I will be posting is very sexual in nature. If you are easily offended please just sit this post out.

Now on to the freaky stuff!  I am having so much fun with this! As I mentioned before, I have a really smutty Italian graphic novel and it has been sitting around my house for years because I always thought it would be cool to do something with but never had occasion to use it. When I was invited to this swap that was the first thing that I thought of and I ran it by the ladies I am swapping with and they were all for Italian smut, so I am using images from that book in everyone’s journals.

I just finished my second book in the swap and I must say that it has been quite a challenge coming up with ideas for the pages I am doing. I mean, I don’t want to just go around pasting smut in journals for no good reason. I am weird and a little creepy, but not that weird and creepy. For this one I started by trying to come up with the message I wanted to deliver with my smut. I mean, random smut is great but purposeful smut is much more sophisticated (LOL! Sophisticated smut! That made me snort!).

I have been feeling like the world is just a little too sex negative as of late and thought that this would be a good opportunity to speak to that so for my first two page spread in this book I wanted to express that we all think dirty, dark thoughts and it is more than OK to be thinking them. I started with the phrase “Even the purest of hearts fuels the darkest of thoughts” and then went from there.

I started with the heart and painted it with my favorite Golden iridescent paints in gold, silver, and copper tones.  I had a lot of fun playing with my new Woodies (a water soluble crayon of sorts) on this, which is what I used to do the background and blood on the left page. On the right page I ended up mixing a small amount of acrylic paint with matte gel medium so that it would be transparent enough to cover the collaged bits I put on the page but allow them to be seen clearly.

The concept for my second set of pages took me a few days to come up with but I finally decided on looking at the beauty of sexuality and the fact that there is a kink for everyone! The copy I came up with for this one is “If you are brave enough to look, you will always find the strange in beauty and the beauty in strange.”, then I made what Big Orange referred to as “the brightest and cheeriest whipping scene ever witnessed”.

I painted the background for this one with really watered down gouache, painted the vines in acrylic, and then collaged all the bits on. I wanted to use my calligraphy pen to write the copy but the ink ran a bit too much on gouache base so I used sharpie instead. The wings on the fairies are made from scraps of tulle that I used to make my nice a sparkly princess dress a couple of years ago.

Both pages are sealed with Dorland’s Wax Medium, which is a product I am very new to. I use to seal my work with Mod Podge, which has its place, but I find that it stays a bit too sticky for my liking sometimes and when dealing with pages that are going to touch each other when closed I feel like that is asking for trouble. A friend of mine suggested I try the wax medium and I am pretty happy with it. I think I got a little heavy handed with it but it is going to take a little trial and error to get my technique down.

Well, I had best get back to reading my textbooks and lectures for this week so I don’t get behind. I will try to keep up here but again, this session in school is going to be a doozy so no matter how many times I write “work on blog post” in the 10 am – 11:30 am slot on the daily schedule I pretend to follow, I can’t make any promises.

Since WordPress is being really weird with the format of this post for some reason I am adding the closeup shots of the pages down here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cree-pee!!!

Under most circumstances I take a bit of umbrage when someone tells me that my art is creepy or weird. I don’t really think there is anything creepy about what I do or the things I am interested in and being someone with an impressive list of phobias, I consider myself a bit of an expert on what is and isn’t creepy. Bearing in mind the statements I just made, I am sure you will all be just as shocked as I was to find out that I have completely creeped the shit out of myself with one of my projects! For the first time ever my phobias have crossed paths with something I have created… so much so that I actually had a nightmare about it last night!

I won’t go into the details of the nightmare because it is just too horrific to relive right now but I will introduce you to the subject of said nightmare momentarily. I recently joined an art exchange group for artists who enjoy doing work that is a little out of the box. Last week (or maybe the week before) a new swap was announced for “altered stuffed animals” and I thought it would be a fun project to get my feet wet with (without considering my lengthy catalog of phobias).

I hit the post Easter plush toy sale rack at Fred Meyer the other day and picked up a sweet little lamb in a green sparkly dress to start with. When I got home I dug around my studio, which is filled with strange odds and ends, and found a dirty old stuffed monkey that I rescued from my dog several years ago, then dug through some of the action figures that my son still has laying around his room (with his permission of course). This is what I came up with to build my altered stuffed animal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had to swap action figures because when I double checked with my son about using the one I initially chose he said “but that is the Master Chief”! He will be 17 in August so I was a little flabbergasted by his response but secretly delighted that in spite of all his coolness, he still has a sweet attachment to some child-like things. I didn’t have the heart to use the “Master Chief” so I found an old Power Ranger and some other weird little dude as well as a few bits and pieces and went to work disemboweling stuffed animals and relieving action figures of their limbs (a process that really pissed off my dog as he gets in quite a bit of trouble for doing such things).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I actually had a lot of fun tearing stuff apart and deciding how I was going to put it all together until I got the head done and the arms put on the body last night. It was this partially finished vision that got me all creeped out and caused the bad dreams last night. I know I said I wasn’t going to get into dream details but I will tell you that it involved this creature climbing on my face and sewing my eyes shut.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got up this morning and knew that I had to finish that thing and get it the hell out of my house the minute my feet hit the floor. I didn’t even take the time to eat breakfast or make a pot of coffee! I just loaded up on cough drops and went to work. I was actually in hopes that he might freak me out less as he progressed but that was not to case. I did have a couple of problems with this; the piece of mica tile that I used to cover the brain box in his belly cracked when I stuffed his body so I just had to rip it off. Also, when I finished I noticed that I put his ears on backward but my friend Amy and I decided that he would hear things coming up behind him better that way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honestly, I cannot stand to look at this guy now! He is giving me the heebie-jeebies so I am stuffing his creepy little ass in a flat rate box and sending him out the door first thing in the morning (or sooner of I can catch the mail man this afternoon).  The last thing I will see of him is his nasty little tail as I seal the box! *shudder*

 

Short and Weird

No, I am not describing myself, although according to many I know “short and weird” would be fitting were I describing myself. I had big plans for posts this week but I seem to have contracted a vile plague that has had me absolutely miserable. I have sneezed more in the last three days than I have in my entire life! I even sneezed so hard while we were eating dinner last night that I stabbed myself in the forehead with my fork! Since I am still feeling like hammered shit and I am busy plotting my revenge on Big Orange, who not only gave me this cold, but went to see Social Distortion without me last night, I thought I would give you a quick gander at the journal pages I recently finished for a round robin I am doing.

I showed you the first pages in my journal for the swap back at the beginning of March or tail end of February. Again, because this is meant to be a creepy/twisted/dark journal that participants feel free to do stuff they might not normally do, this work is a bit… well… weird-ish.

Honestly, I have no real motivation other than what I thought would look cool and what was rattling around in my head at the time I did these. I have had this really disgusting Italian porno graphic novel around the house for a few years and thought this round robin would be a perfect opportunity to use some of the images (which is a big relief because I really don’t want anyone thinking I have been keeping it around for anything other than artistic purposes).

I hope that I start feeling better soon because I really do hate being sick and I have shit to do! I will be back later in the week to tell you about the altered stuffed animal swap I am doing in a different art group. Until then enjoy the weirdness while I go dose myself on NyQuil and read until I drift off into a drug induced semi-coma.

Oh, just so you know, there is some freaky-nasty nudity (and just regular nudity) in these pages (just in case the Italian porno graphic novel didn’t clue you in to that fact) so if you offend easily look away now!

On this first page I painted the background with fairly diluted gouache; the body of the sea-witch is from the smutty Italian book and I drew her tentacles and hair then colored them with my new favorite, Stabilo Woodies! The bubbles are bits of sheet music and other images that have been covered with transparency that I printed bubbles with a gradient on (this part didn’t turn out quite as I had hoped).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I painted the background and flames for the second page with thickly applied acrylic paint. The dude is from the dirty book and his head was something that I had sitting around the studio just waiting to be used for something cool. The guts are from a different image and I tied the dude to a piece of stained balsa wood. The text was applied with these really cool steel stamps that I have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, I hear the bottle of NyQuil calling my name so I will catch you all later!

Death Becomes Her

Not “Death Becomes Her” as in the shitty 90s’ movie, “Death Becomes Her” as in the title/theme of my first ever art journal/altered book!  I have long avoided doing something like this and until I finally accepted an invitation to be a part of a round robin art journal situation I didn’t realize why I had been avoiding it. The truth is that although I have been putting my work out there more in the last year, selling something on Etsy or talking about it on my blog keeps a safe layer of detachment to buffer any possible criticism or rejection and that makes it safe. I mean, I don’t know that something in my Etsy shop isn’t selling because people hate it so it is easy for my ego to assume that Etsy is such a huge market that it is difficult to get the exposure you need to make a ton of sales. When you are putting your work into someone’s art journal there is a lot more riding on it. I don’t want to do something that someone hates! I would feel horrible!!!!

That being said, I have pulled up my big girl panties and am putting on my brave face to participate in the round robin I was recently invited to do. Part of the reason I decided to do it is because the women involved in this project are pretty special people. Now, this project is intended to have a darker theme and because of that a level of privacy/secrecy has been requested so I will not be sharing the names of these wonderful ladies and I will not be sharing any of the art they put in my journal but I will say that they are all amazingly funny, real people and I am delighted to be getting to know them through this process (ladies, you know who you are and you rock).

My first task in this project was learning to bind my own journal. FYI there are some really great video tutorials on YouTube for this and after watching several that explained several different methods I figured out what would work best for me. My biggest issue was that because my book cover will take a while to finish I really wanted to bind my journal in a way that would allow for adding the cover after. I ended cutting a strip of file folder and covering it with pretty paper to use as a spine so that it can be glued into my cover once the journal has been returned to me. I have no idea what this stitch is called but I like it because it allows the book to lay flat no matter where it is opened.

The first page that I did in the journal was the title/sign-in page.   For this I decided to do a really textural piece with a little door in it that opens to the sign in. I created the textured outer piece separately and then glued it over the sign-in sheet so that the door opens to it. For the sign in I used a wash of watercolor to give the paper a little aged look and in the lower corner I drew a heart and used watercolor pencils to paint it; the blood was done in acrylic paint.

I did a two page spread in my journal honoring my great-great-grandmother. I have been thinking about her story a lot while working on this piece and I have to say that it is no wonder I turned out to be a little “creepy”. I don’t really feel that I am creepy but there has been a household vote and my son and Big Orange have decided that I am so I guess I must be.

My first name comes from two women in my family, my great-great-grandmother Katie Morris, who was a known “seer” (or so the family legend goes), and my great-great-grandmother Katie Beavis Bradley Bailey (maiden name, first husband’s name, and second husband’s name in case you were wondering). This is the woman my pages are about. Knowing that I was named after these two women made me have a special interest in them as a child but knowing that one of them was a small town psychic and the other was murdered at 37 made me obsess about them.

The short version of Katie Bailey is this: Her marriage to my great-great-grandfather, Louis Bradley, ended in the early 1900’s and she remarried to a man named Charles Bailey. Her second husband turned out to be a wife-beating drunk and she left him several times during the course of their three-year marriage. In 1907 Katie decided to leave him for good and go back to her first husband. She was renting a room in a house in S.E. Portland while she took care of all the arrangements to make this happen and when Charles Bailey found out that she was going back to Louis he snapped.

On the afternoon of September 5^th, 1907, Charles Bailey went to my great, great grandmother’s house and shot her in the head, shot and killed her 12-year-old daughter Rhoda, and then killed himself. The saddest part of this story is that Katie did not die from her injuries that day. She lived in a coma for another three years before passing and because they didn’t know what to do with people in that condition back then, she lived her final years in the Oregon State Insane Asylum (the name was later changed to the Oregon State Hospital, this is where One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed ).

The photos on this page are of Katie and the Oregon State Insane Asylum circa 1907.  The text around the revolver is actual snippets from the articles written in The Morning Oregonian in the days after the tragedy.  I did have a little mistake on this page that I am kind of bummed about but am trying to ignore. I ran out of the tissue paper I use to print the ghostly text and photos on so I tried using tracing paper and this didn’t work very well. It was fine until I attacked it with Mod Podge and then everything rapidly went to hell. Because you can’t really read that section of text I will just type it here:

And here she withered for the next three years, awaiting death’s embrace.

Thus ends the sad, sad tale of a woman who was shown no grace.     

Here are a few detail shots of the pages:

I am very excited to get this packaged up and shipped to the first amazing artist who will be working my journal so I am off to search for a box it will fit in. I might post about this once more after I finish the cover so I can show you but I will not be sharing the rest of the art in my journal when I get it back as it is for my eyes only.

Pill Bug Annihilation and Other Insect Tragedies

Tags

acrylic paint, art, art with a cause, Asperger's art, call to artists, fundraiser, Katie Chaill, little bug studio, mixed-media art, nonprofit art group, painting

Do you ever have one of those projects that just refuses to go as planned/as you would like it to no matter what you do? Well that has been the case with these little bug paintings from the moment my 3=H, Grip 2001, Faber-Castell pencil touched those dinky little canvases I told you about earlier in the week. I had a vision for this series of paintings but soon realized that painting bugs on such a small scale is not something that I excel at.

My original thought was to have very realistic paintings done on fun, sassy backgrounds and for the most part the sketches I did on my canvases turned out rather promising. Musca domestica, otherwise known as the common house fly, was the first of many exceptions to numerous rules… I couldn’t draw one and if I couldn’t draw a simple little fly on a 2” x 2” square canvas then there was no hope in hell of painting one. In one of many bug frustration filled phone calls to my friend Alicia I complained about my inability to draw a fly, to which she jokingly responded, “You can draw the entire human skeletal system! What in the hell do you mean you can’t draw a fly”?!?!? I have been asking myself this question all week…

My inability to draw a tiny fly aside (I have plans for a large redemption drawing btw), the first real tragedy of the week was the poor Pill Bugs (otherwise known as Potato Bugs, Sow Bugs, or Crustacea isopodalem). I had just finished the background for this painting and was pondering the color I chose as it didn’t seem all that festive when I stood up to set it aside and dropped it. With visions of nightmarish raw umber stains on blue carpet I lunged forward to try and catch the canvas before it landed wet side down on the floor. I failed in my attempt at catching it but did manage to just nick the corner; of course this only served to bat the canvas farther from my reach requiring that I step forward for another crack at snapping it up before disaster took place. It was too late and this last bit was all in vain… rather than the miraculous last minute interception I was hoping for I ended up stepping on the canvas just as it made contact with the floor and crushing it in a spectacle that resembled Godzilla taking out a building in Tokyo (my cat witnessed all of this and left in disgust after briefly stopping to give me a look that told me exactly how ridiculously stupid she thinks I am).

Once I was over that indignation and my kitty decided we could again enter the studio with our heads held reasonably high I went back at it and after days of listening to the brutal art critic who lives in my head, I finished the final bug yesterday afternoon. I hated every single one of them. I hated them so much that I couldn’t even look at them and had to leave the room. I hated them so much that I muttered to myself all afternoon and into the evening but after dinner and torturing my  16-year-old son with a couple episodes of Oddities (one of my favorite shows) I felt settled enough to give them a second look.

In the process of loathing my bug paintings earlier in the day I had once again called on my poor friend Alicia for a little arty tantrum ranting and she let me in on a secret of hers. She told me that when she hates a painting that she has done, she paints the sides of the canvas a fun color and then gives it polka dots. I had no idea why on earth this would improve my outlook on the situation but I decided to give it a try and was pleasantly surprised! I don’t know if it was the process of doing something so simple or the polka dots themselves that cheered me up but I was once again smiling about the little critters.

After I got them all dotted up I glued little ribbon hangers to them (which added to my cheer) and glued backing on all of them, leaving them to dry until morning. My cheer was momentarily dashed this morning when I awoke to find that I got a little carried away with my 2am glue application and the brown paper backing on all of the paintings wrinkled. I left the room to grab a cup of coffee and have a smoke on the porch where I changed my mind about what the paintings were supposed to be all along. You see, I was still stuck on the original vision that I had for them and this was the cause of all my aggravation. Once I convinced myself that the paintings were supposed to be fun, whimsical little depictions of real bugs and not friggin’ photo perfect paintings suitable for a damned Audubon Society Field Guide I lightened up quite a bit. Then I remembered why I was doing them in the first place and that knocked me off my high horse.

These little bug paintings are a donation my friend Alicia’s “Mum and Finn” Etsy shop that I mentioned last Monday in my “Call to All My Handy, Arty, and Bighearted Friends” post. I have them boxed up and ready to go to Alicia’s first thing tomorrow and so I am sure they will be added to the store in the next day or so. I am not sure what they will be priced at yet but I am thinking it will be around $8 – $10 each and 100% of the proceeds will go toward funding the “Little Bug Studio”, a nonprofit art group for children with Asperger’s Syndrome and Autism (if you haven’t already you can read all about it in the post I linked above).

Here is a closer look at my silly little bugs! Make sure to visit the “Mum and Finn” shop to get these little guys and other wonderful creations. Decorate your world while helping to support a great cause! It will make you feel good, I promise!

Boisea trivittatus (Boxelder Beetle – nymph)   

Chrysina gloriosa (Jewelled Beetle) 

Chrysochus aurtus (Dogbane Beetle)

Coccinella septempunctata (Lady Bug)

Cotinis nitida (June Bug)

Leptinotarsa decemlineate (Colorado Potato) Beetle

Melanoplus differentialis (Grasshopper) 

Solenpsis invicta (Fire Ant)

  

Garden Party

Tags

art, epoxy resin clay, Katie Chaill, mixed-media art

With all of the holiday hubbub I didn’t have much time or inclination to work on art through November and December but I am happy to report that I have finally finished “Garden Party”. Sometimes these pieces take me a while to figure out because I have a mental vision of what I want them to be but don’t always get the logistics worked out right away. This was the case with “Garden Party” (you may remember it from an earlier post titled “The Trees Stand Alone”).

I think the most helpful thing in getting momentum going on this piece has been the fact that I have a pretty low pressure class in school right now so I am not running around like a maniac to keep up on things (that and I haven’t done the dishes or laundry in three or four days despite knowing that I will be having company this week).

I think I might be getting a little tired of this style of work but I am so in love with the way these textural pieces end up looking that I am hesitant to move away from them. I probably just need to change it up for a while. Anyway, back to THIS piece. The concept for “Garden Party” was born almost a year ago when my mother was planning her birthday party. Right around this time I discovered tiny Lucite shoes (think glass slippers) on one my favorite websites for alterables and this in combination with the grand soirée my mom was busy cooking up put the idea of princesses playing  croquet in a garden into my head. I floundered with this for a long time and when I finally started it I was still going in that direction.

Once I got the trees made for this I lost direction and became frustrated with details that weren’t taking shape in the way I would have liked them to (which was sometime in late October, early November). It wasn’t until my friend Alicia announced the themes for the next edition of her mixed media arts zine that I found some creative footing. I won’t give many details here so as not to spoil the surprise when the zine comes out but will tell you that this piece took a complete 180 and its new direction was inspired by the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 (and my weird obsession with all things de Medici). That is about all I am willing to say for now but I have been dying to share this piece so here goes!

Because this is a rather large piece (16” x 20”) it was difficult to get a good close-up with lots of detail so below are a few detail shots.

There is actually so much detail in here that I keep forgetting and rediscovering things! There are things that I am sure you just won’t be able to see here (like the fact that the little lantern lenses glow in the dark… I can’t get a photo that shows this feature well) but never fear! As much as I love seeing it hang on my wall, this piece will be listed for sale in my Etsy shop shortly! Check my “Store” page here to keep an eye out for it; once it is listed there will be a direct link to “Garden Party” in my shop on that page.

Give-Away Announcement!!!!!

Tags

art, cameo, contest, drawing, hand-made, jewelery, mixed-media art, sale, skull

So here is the big give-away announcement I have been promising! I have been working on a new project for about a month; just trying to get everything perfect and I finally have a prototype finished! It turned out very well and I only have a couple of things that I need to change (which are mostly mechanical/function related). Those few changes aside, I am so excited about this project and the related give-away that I decided the prototype turned out well enough to show you.

This is a hand sculpted skull cameo made from epoxy resin clay, the setting is also made from epoxy resin clay (I used a mold for that). I have painted the cameo using the same techniques and treatments that I use in my larger art pieces and I will be selling these little beauties on my blog and Etsy shop in a couple of weeks (I haven’t set a price yet).

To introduce my newest venture I will be giving away two of my skull cameos to my blog readers and FB fans and here is how it will work… When I reach 50 followers on my blog I will do a drawing and randomly choose a winner, and when I reach 100 fans on my Katie Cahill Art FB page I will do another drawing to randomly select a winner. So you have two chances to win (and yes, people who are already followers of my blog and FB fans still qualify for the drawings)!

Furthermore, I will customize the cameo you win by painting the background the color of your choosing! The piece measures approximately 2 ¼ x 1 ¾ and is only available in the faux aged silver setting at this time (I might start making gold as well if I can convince myself that I don’t loath it with a fiery passion). The cameos will be strung from a ribbon with a silver clasp attachment, and I will cut the ribbon to the length that you request.

So there you have it folks! Be the some of the first to own a tiny piece of wearable Katie Cahill Art. And remember, I won’t be doing the drawings until I reach 50 followers here on my blog, and then 100 fans/ “likes” on my Katie Cahill Art Facebook page. So if you are not a follower of my blog all you have to do to become one is scroll up and enter your email address under my photo at the top left of this page, then hit “subscribe”. If you are not a fan on Facebook just go to Katie Cahill Art and click “Like” and you will be entered in the drawings. That is two chances to win. Tell all your friends and tell them to tell their friends!

If you don’t win the drawing I will have these up for sale in about two weeks so keep your eyes peeled!

Vicious Little Cycle

This is a three-piece mixed media series that I finished late last week. I call it “Vicious Little Cycle”; the series consists of “Dirty Untruths” (5 x 5 on canvas), “Festering Gossip” (5 x 5 on canvas), and “Haunting Regret” (8 x 10 on canvas), the three key ingredients to any vicious cycle. Those of you who follow Katie Cahill Art on Facebook got to see a little peek of this project when I finished sculpting the skulls a couple of weeks ago. Just in case you didn’t get to see that post, here is what the pieces looked like at that stage.

This is a bit of a story series, but the story is yours to interpret. The two smaller pieces use lines from “Hamlet” and the larger piece uses lines from a vintage children’s book that I have kicking around.  As you can see, these pieces are done in the same manner that the last few personally generates pieces I have done are. I have plans for three more pieces done in this way and then I will probably move on to other techniques/forms for a while.

Here are the three pieces individually and I will follow those with some close-up detail shots.

This piece will be listed for sale in my etsy shop soon! You will be able to access that shop by going to my store page here and clicking the piece that you want to purchase.