The Ties That Bind

Here is my newest and largest diorama to date. It's based off a crazy night the first time I tried VR and had finally had fun again after two months of crying everyday after Evan died. It's way better in person. Please still come to my art shows. 

Apricot/Epiphany #1

This is an idea I've had stewing for over 4 years now and I finally figured out how to represent it properly and made it happen. It's an exaggeration of something that actually happened to me and the friends depicted in the piece that blew my little mind. This was my first time doing any sort of work like this, and I'm pretty happy with the results. It's 2-D and 3-D simultaneously and is meant to be seen in dim lighting so the LEDs show up but it still looks good in daylight. The LEDs even have switches! The foreground and background are screen printed. I presented it as my final project in my MFA this year. In these photos it's actually lit up with a light box I covered with the cape my self portrait is wearing in the illustration.I got the cape in Grade 1 for my birthday from a Waldorf friend. This is pretty hard to document, so I hope it makes sense what is going on.

This last one is with the light on.

Acrylic Ink Training

I'm learning to use yet another kind of paint: colour acrylic inks are the flavour of the semester. I made these paintings to try and learn to use them. I digitized all my family videos in January so I decided to make use of that colossal procrastination and paint stills from them. The background is the wallpaper we had in our kitchen. Robyn was just a baby on the fateful day the rest of us sat on that kitchen floor, so this is her on her 3rd Birthday. I did her last so she is the best and the most her likeness.

The real thing:

Open Studio/Blog

It was open studio week at school a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I should probably spread the openness to my blog. As well as having our studios open of the rushing frenzy of the eager public (like 5 people showed up), I had my work from last semester up in the ''Sub Gallery''. This is a windowless white cube in the basement of the Concordia Visual Arts Building. Originally I was just going to have my print there, but they specially requested my 4 part panel that I'm going to wheat paste in the spring. I was going to not reveal it until then, but I don't care anymore.

Now for the grand tour of my studio. It is also in the glorious basement of the VA building. It's basically a windowless bunker with the more outlets than an entire house and gorgeous fluorescent lighting. We are there busy preparing for the apocalypse. My studio mate Jacinthe is the bomb and an amazing artist. She makes huge, weird, creepy paper mache room installations and screen print collage paintings. 

Here's my little corner set up for open studio week. I pretty much just come in here to smell my grass collection.

Here's another version of my print I did on craft paper. Turns out it looks way better but only one copy really worked out. Tear.

Ink and Dogs

I also practiced drawing dogs all weekend. 

Ink and Portraits

This weekend I decided I need to get back to the basics and actually learn how to draw, and draw bigger. So I did some portraits. Liquid ink is fun. 

Jacqueline

 Nasuna
(She ended up looking like Jennifer Aniston)

Self Portrait
(Hadn't done one of these since high school)

The Ball

This is a screen print of the sketch from The Planter's Ball I posted a while back. It's is my first real screen print in a while, 3 years to be exact. It was a real pain in the ass. 9 colours. 9 pain staking colours. Sweat and tears went into every print so they may not be acid free anymore (blood free guaranteed though)?