Exhibit at the Manitoba Crafts Museum and Library

The Manitoba Crafts Museum and Library has an exhibit opening next week on Sept 26th called X Y Me: New Craft Generations. I have a batik piece that will be on display. There is an opening reception wed from 6:30-8pm. The exhibit runs from Sept 26th until January 2013. The idea behind the exhibit is that is to host work by "X", "Y", and "Me" generation crafters. The Manitoba Crafts Museum and Library is what is left of the former Manitoba Craft Guild. Years ago the craft guild disbanded, but the space was still supported as a craft library,and also a display space. It is located at 1B – 183 Kennedy Street, in Winnipeg.
Regular Hours of Operation
Tuesday and Wednesday: 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
Saturday: 12:00 noon – 4:00 pm

Colour in Pastels...

I was fooling around with some oil pastels today. I always forget about them as a colour medium, but I actually really love how you can get the effects of paint, but the control of drawing. Once there are a lot of thick colours built up they can be a lot of fun to smear around. This one was done using a combination of paint thinner and a smudging stick.

Tales from the East Coast

Wowza, is it mid September already?! I owe this blog some drawings! The drawing wasn't stopped, but the blogging was because I took a trip all the way to Newfoundland and back. You can read about my adventure's on Lindsey's blog here at omycanada.blogspot.ca/. Basically we drove and drove and drove and drove from the mid-way point of Canada all the way as far east as we could go. We had a lot of hijinks along the way, and it will definitely go down as my best camping trip ever (at least to this date). We made our way from Winnipeg, drove down through the states through to Detroit and then traveled back through Canada over to Niagara Falls. After Niagara it was off to Toronto where we did the CN Tower, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and actually saw, touched, and climbed into the inside of Mr. Dress-ups tree house. As unimaginable as it is, it actually happened, and I will save that story for another day. This set the bar pretty high on our travels because fulfilling that childhood dream happened within only a few days of leaving Manitoba. Canada's provinces didn't disappoint me however, there was a never ending supply of activities and sights to see if only we had another 3, 4, 5, or 6 weeks to spend touring.
From Toronto we traveled onward to Quebec City, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. Then we made our way back stopping in Halifax, PEI(where I did see the Anne of Green Gables house!), the Bay of Fundy, Quebec City, Montreal, and then onto our last stop to cap off the trip with a Light show on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Then it was a long drive all the way back through the Canadian shield stopping only briefly in Sudbury, and Thunder Bay. Ah, what a trip, but now it's back to teaching, back to life, and planning that big life-changing event that's coming up quickly which is my wedding.
Drawings from the trip will be posted soon, I'm still catching up on everything...

Art in the Park

I will be participating in this year's Art in the Park hosted by the Portage Avenue Church at Omand's Creek Park this Sunday the 22nd. Several artists will be participating, and there will be several local bands playing. Start time is at 6:30. Come by for some music, some art and a general good time. Art in the park is always an enjoyable evening. I will have some items for sale along with the other artists. Omand's Creek Park is located at the end of Wolseley's west side, just before the portage street underpass if you are heading west.

Folk Fest Art

The 39th annual Winnipeg Folk Fest has just finished, and I am so happy with the piece that was included as a part of the Prairie Outdoor Exhibition. My dad and I worked on it together this year. he built the structure and I painted it. It actually turned out even better and bigger than I imagined. Now we have to figure out what to do with it now that the festival is over...

Introducing Sherlock

In January I got a tiny little dog from the pet shelter Hull's Haven. Despite specializing in Border Collies this rescue shelter takes in small dogs as well and I found Sherlock while in foster care. He is part chihuahua, and probably part miniature pincher. Most of the time he is a little sweetheart because he loves to cuddle, and fits perfectly on my lap, which is where he is resting right now as I write this. Sometimes he can be a little monkey, and show some neediness and co-dependency, but overall he is a fantastic little dog, and I can barely remember how boring and bland my house was before I got him.

This one is a self-portrait.

When Pride rears its ugly head...

A drawing inspired by a sermon at Riverwood Church by Wayne Seimens.

Illustration Friday-Sight

Ink and acrylic on paper.

Chair Lair

Able wholesale is this somewhat eccentric used goods and Liquidation store on Notre Dame Avenue in Winnipeg, except it's not the cool kind of eccentric like Ragpickers, or that antique store in Osborne Village. It's more like the eccentric-eerie kind of store. I drive past it everyday, and one day in summer I couldn't suppress my curiosity anymore: I entered this three story building mish-mash of furniture, housewares, industrial kitchen supplies and other miscellaneous products. As I was walking through this place it just kept on going and I didn't know what I was going to find next. There was at least one flickering florescent light, and in the back part of the industrial kitchen gear there were some guys moving furniture around. To be honest I felt a lot like I shouldn't be in there, like this is the kind of place that isn't so great for a 20-something to be by herself (no-one in there was creepy or acted weird, it was just the general vibe my intuition was giving me). Nevertheless, I love a good bargain, and can't resist the idea of turning something ugly or almost-good into something fabulous. I happened to find an old vintage desk chair that looks a lot like something that Ikea would mimic nowadays. I got the chair for the fair price of 20 dollars, took it home and refinished it. Here are my visuals from that experience.

Robot Machines at the Grocery Store

Paper Cut Nut

Recently an interest has been sparked to search for paper cut artists. There are so many out there who do bloody amazing things with just paper.
In the same realm of paper cut artists are diorama artists and I am really happy to know that there are people out there who have the patience to make pieces of paper into art without paint, or other additions(ok maybe a little glue...)
Here is a great blog post on flavorwire with 10 fabulus paper cut artists: http://flavorwire.com/229698/10-amazing-cut-paper-diorama-artists#10

Also webdesignerdepot.com has a great list of "100 Extraordinary Examples of Paper Cut Art," which is where the above images came from.

Don Nace is Back!

Image by Don Nace.
I want to point out that Don Nace, who I previously mentioned in my blog here and here has started up a drawing-a-day again. I signed up on his email list to get a new drawing emailed every day. He is the artist responsible for the painted strawberries in the film Across the Universe (among his other artistic endeavours...). The new drawings have the same kind of scratchy honesty that drew me in originally, and the biggest difference I can comment on is that colour has been introduced with some.
Check out his drawings at his website: http://thefloor.org/

Dadaism

"Dilemmas may be rebutted in more than one way."
A collage. I think it's dadaist.

A Dragon Postcard. I'm rediscovering oil pastels lately. When I first used oil pastels years ago it was for a poorly set up still life, and I was very frustrated with the results. I have since given them another try, and I'm starting to like their "messy" qaulities. There is a smoothness to oil pastels that are nice to work with. This particular piece was done with a pencil crayon background, a drawing collaged on top, and then oil pastels worked into the background. Markers were also used on the dragon.

Navigation to the Jungle

Using an old book about flight paths and flight calculations I made this a few days ago. It seems I eventually go back to some kind of creepy thing to make. Collage work can be really satisfying. I'd like to experiment with silk screening some collage layers. I think it would work out well if I tried laying the silk screen colours in the same way I would collage elements.

Temperatures this week were dipping around the minus forty mark, which had me cold to the bone at times, and dreading going outside. When Winnipeg's winters become 40 times colder than my freezer I start to get a bit cranky along with a bad case of cabin fever. To soothe this state of mind, I went over to the Assiniboine park conservatory today with Jay, my boyfriend. The conservatory has a nice indoor pathway that winds through layers of tropical trees and Tiki-inspired rock carvings. I brought my sketchbook along to make me sit and enjoy the "jungle" with Jay. Today at least the outside temperature rose up to -4 degrees, making the quest for tropical temperatures a little less necessary.
Here's what I ended up with. It is a marker drawing with water wash.

Prepare- Illustration Friday

An illustration Friday Drawing for Prepare. I find my drawing rather bland, yet I like it at the same time...

Door to Door

Alright just a couple of things I wanted to note about some really cool things on Colossal Art and Design. First my friend sent me a link to some photos of South Korean artist Choi Jeong-Hwa.artist named who created a massive door installation. My friend really likes old doors, and I actually do too. There is a scene in the opening of West side story where the background has a row of multicoloured doors and I just love it(at least in my memory it is in the opening...) This new installation reminded me of that.

Read more and see more pics here.

Second, also found on the Colossal Art and Design website is this fantastic stop motion video by Sean Ohlenkamp and wife Lisa titled "The Joy of Books." It was found here.

Grounded- Illustration Friday

Ok, so this isn't my best work, but here it is anyways. I recently adopted an adorable dog, and he was the inspiration for this work. I'm not sure why I put grass on the ground, when there is snow all over the place currently. I guess it's wishful thinking.

Highlights

There are times when all those end of the year reflections are annoying to me when I see them in the paper, or on TV, but I put together a set of highlights of my last year. I just had my 29th birthday on the second, so the timing of the new year and my birthday makes it easier for year-long resolutions and contemplations.