done!

four hours on sunday and an hour or so on saturday and i finished the beady*.

finally. also, yay!

 i am looking forward to some other pastimes that do not leave my eyes, shoulders and back sore and exhausted. but overall, putting myself through that (for the second time...heh) was worth it, and since you're probably wondering why i would bother with such a weird project, now might be a good time to provide some answers:

1) it is shiny. i love shiny things.

2) as an artist, i am fascinated by the relationship between order and chaos. a lot of my work features imagery that seems chaotic from a distance, but is actually extremely (obsessively?) and, i hope, elegantly organized and controlled when viewed close up. some work conveys that back-and-forth relationship multiple times: orderly when viewed close up, then chaotic from a slight distance, and then orderly again from a greater distance. in this case, the patterns of the beads seem pretty chaotic, but each bead had to be individually sewn onto the canvas, which takes a lot of meticulous, patient work. in my own life (specifically during my high school years), i have experienced ordeals that seemed completely out of (my) control, but i know that god has everything under control; now that some time has passed, god has been showing me just how in control of those circumstances he was. i find that beautiful.

3) i find interactions and relationships between people fascinating as well. having moved around as a child, i am thrilled when i meet people with a connection to a place i have lived. this became especially important after moving three thousand miles across the country to go to college, and i reflected this in my art with abstract imagery that suggested interconnectedness- weaving together, working together, or branching apart. the beady is full of shapes that are connected to other shapes, whether linked together by color or line, or by variations in pattern. while at school, meeting people from moscow (idaho), or towns near potsdam (new york) instilled the "small world" perspective in me, and by extension, though it's been beaten to death, the idea that we are all connected. and god has a beautiful plan for it all, which is another reason i strive for beauty in my work.

and there you have it. :)

*if anyone can think of a more elegant term, i would be much obliged.

beadi and sushi

hi there! 

so last weekend was our first anniversary- hooray! we ate a lot of sushi and ice cream and pie went to the beach :) here's a bad picture of the sushi we made, and below that is what we had last night for dinner- "scattered" sushi, or basically "lazy-man's" sushi. just throw it all in a bowl and dive in...YUM. the neon orange stuff is smelt eggs, which are amazing flavor bursts; think of eating mildly sweet and tangy tiny bubble wrap. we found it at a market in little tokyo, a very convenient ride on the gold line away. also, scallops are amazing- somehow i'd never realized this before last week.

and then we have updates on the progress of the beady...it's grooowwwing! i am getting pretty close to being done- so maybe 6-8 more hours. :)

 

 

we found two lovely white table lamps next to our dumpster last week and i am working on making a lampshade for one of them- i have some really nice paper to use (and this is why i will never stop being a pack-rat: it's the paper that someone used to wrap one of our wedding presents!). because i care about things like this, i will probably post a picture when it's completed (hey- i have the same birthday as martha stewart, so i'm bound to get excited about home decor now and then).

happy friday!

beadquence?

here i am, finally beginning the documentation process for a project after i'm already half-way through with it. this is a beady thing that i'm working on pretty much just for fun- the glass beads are beautiful and shiny, and i like making free-form, spontaneous patterns with them. i sew them onto light-weight canvas attached to an 8-inch hoop. you can see pencil lines on the cloth- that's from a project i started earlier and then ripped out. i was going to try to create one giant snowflake-type form with radial symmetry, but it was too complicated. the circles and lines were to help me keep the proportions right as i got further and further out. anyway, the additions you see in these pictures represent about a day's-worth of work (anywhere from one to three hours per day). the last one, from yesterday, has a lot of additions. b was gone aaaalll day (3:45 am - after 10pm) and i was bored and missed him; therefore, i beaded. 

more to come :)

 

 

shifting focus?

i think i'm going to try focusing on art-related things in this blog. i'm getting tired of writing lists of things i/we do, and i haven't had many thoughts to share (not any that i want to share on a blog, anyway).

that said, i just got back from a 6.5 mi walk/jog. to be honest, i felt like i had walked/jogged to the end of the world and back, so i was surprised (and a tiny bit disappointed) when i got home and realized i'd only been out for less than an hour and a half. i really want to get back into running, buuut...i just don't enjoy running by myself. or rather, i do...but i don't. you know? i guess what i'm trying to say is that i already get a lot of alone time, and while walking and jogging alone can be very nice, it's also sort of like concentrated alone time, which can be a bit over-whelming. but then...not very many people are available to go jogging during the day. maybe i'll just have to invest in more gorrillaz, genesis and belle & sebastian- music can be a good companion, though i don't think it's necessarily good to resort to that all the time.

so i'm working on four artsy projects (um, "commissions" might be a better word). i can't really post about any of them yet, beyond the fact that they exist. there's not really a point to, because they're all in the planning stages still. once they are finalized and i can get to the fun part, i may write about them.

i'm also working on another fun artsy thing in my spare time, and i've been taking pictures of it as i make progress. maybe i'll post them later today.

hmmm...i like thursdays.