Tonight and Various Ramblings.

Tonight!

 

It's been a busy week with friends, work, and I even squeezed in a tiny bit of time to paint Wednesday night. I got a rejection for a craft show I applied to which is a bummer, but I can't get in to every single thing I apply for. Gotta keep chugging along! I'm really happy and confident in the work I've been making recently and my goal is to show in more galleries and more consistently in the next few years. I've been playing around with the thought of grad school too so I'm not sure how I would balance everything, but one thing at a time right now...  

April Goals



I know it's a few days into April but I wanted to share some goals I have in mind for the month art wise. 

 Back to the basics: I want to do some observational sketching, especially of people, these skills get rusty when I don't use them for awhile. 

 Get new pieces ready to hang: I don't have any shows scheduled at the moment but it's so easy to forget to put hanging hardware on a piece and then when it's time to show I'm doing everything at once to prepare. Trying to save myself the trouble down the road! 

 Work out ideas more: I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about my art when I'm outside the studio and by the time I actually get to work I'm dying to get started and often don't have a specific vision, just more the idea, and just start to put paint on the canvas and see where things go. There's nothing wrong with this, some of my favorite pieces have started this way but I want to switch up how I work. I want to have a ton of sketches and collages to work from so when the time comes when I can start working on a new piece and I'll know I have the basic layout/design good to go and can play around a bit more with materials and technique. 

 Make Make Make: I've been slow in getting things done lately and need to pick up the pace! If I find Netflix to be a distraction I need to put on music and just zone out to focus. 

 I already started to work on some new collages tonight and have a few ideas brewing for a new series. Exciting! 

Photos by Derek Fulmer


My friend Derek and I spent a recent morning and afternoon together hanging out in my studio and around Logan Square where I live. I had a great time doing the photo shoot and typically I have an awful forced smile when I'm having posed shots taken but he was a great photographer and made me feel super comfortable. We also had some good talks about what art and our work means to us; since I typically am a hermit and work by myself it was nice to sit and paint and have this discussion. It made me realize that I need to reach out more to my creative friends for these sorts of discussions, I typically work by myself and don't look for critique before I move on to the next piece. Definitely time to change that!

Check out more photos here

Creative Types #1- Interview Series




Welcome to the first interview in a new bi-weekly series I am doing called Creative Types. This idea came about when I was thinking about all the amazingly talented people in my life and the people and their work that I am a fan of and constantly find inspiration from. First up is my friend Rosie Peri, who I came to know through some mutual friends in Chicago about 4 or 5 years ago (man, time flies!). Without further ado, here it is!

What inspired you to start pursuing the arts?
There was no singular moment. I grew up in a creatively charged household, where I was given the freedom and encouragement to be weird from the start, so it felt like a pretty natural progression. Funny enough, I didn’t direct this energy toward painting until college. Once I picked up that brush, though, there was no going back- I was in love.

You use people and food as the subjects of your work often, what draws you to this?
I suppose it has to do a little bit with convenience, but the main reason is I’m a nostalgic sap. The food and people I paint are usually images I associate with home (New Orleans), and a gateway to memories of a past life. Always chasing whimsy.





How do you manage working for your day job and working on your art/design work? Do you find anything helpful for managing your time?
I don’t! Kidding... kind of. Balance is an elusive beast.
For years, my own projects operated on a completely manic schedule. Meaning, I’d get tunnel vision on a project, to the exclusion of all else for a month. But be so burned out at the end that I wouldn’t make anything for 6 months afterward.
These days, I’m shooting for more consistency by treating my art as a second job and scheduling time into my calendar (which, if I remember correctly, you suggested I do- Thanks!). Sounds like a buzzkill, but it’s actually gone a long way toward evening out my productivity swings and keeping me on track.

Where do you find inspiration?
Everywhere, really. Conversations I overhear on the bus, things I see while walking to work, music, dreary mornings, strangers on the street, memories, daydreams, friends, art by other people, you name it. I used to just open the dictionary and point to words as a way of spurring something.

What is your workspace like?
A controlled chaos.

Lastly, what are your favorite things to do for fun?
Well, aside from the art, I captain a skeeball team (not to be confused with “I’m good at skeeball”), experiment with food (as in, for eatin’), drag friends to potentially terrible open mic comedy nights, as well as explore all the other bizarre outings Chicago has to offer.
I’m mostly just a bookworm with crayons, though.



You can find Rosie on these corners of the Internet:
Website
Facebook
Shop
Twitter 




2012 Year in Review

It's been a crazy year! Thanks for reading my little ol' blog and following what I do, it means a lot! Here's a photo collage of some highlights from shows and new pieces I made this year. 

Here's to a great 2013, Cheers!


Showings:
Strawdog Theater
Pick Me Up Cafe
Logan Bar & Grill
Koehnline Museum of Art
Township
Coles
Anysquared

Spontaneous Sale!


So I start training this week at my second job at Lush Cosmetics and I couldn't be more excited! It will be seasonal work/weekend shifts and with a 40 hour a week M-F day job, I'm guessing I'm going to be a bit worn down and have a little less time for art and whatnot. So, since I won't be updating my shop as much in the next few months I wanted to do a little somethin' somethin' now for fun, so I'm having a sale in my Etsy shop! Get 25% off everything through this Friday with the code BUSYBEE. Treat yo' self or start some holiday shopping super early!

Commisions


I don't really talk about this, but I am available for commissions and wanted to get the word out there! Above is a commissioned painting I did on canvas which lives in a fun bar area of a Lincoln Park home. Shoot me an email if you have any questions or are interested! heartless (dot) arts (at) gmail (dot) com