A Look Back at Semester 2…

Well, it turns out that grad school pushes everything else to the side (surprise!) and I have’t updated this baby in umpteen months. Here’s a look at what I’ve been doing for the past 5 months…

When last the internet saw me, I was flailing about with dye and a red cape, I believe. After that, I really had the spark of interest for learning about dye, so I did a few experimental pieces, just playing with color, stitching, form… seeing what I can do with the dye; how it’s like paint and how it isn’t. I was also expanding my range of surface design techniques so I embroidered some sacred geometry-based designs into them, thinking I might take this into actual quilting at some point.

Originally these were conceived of as straight yardage, no pre-conceived functional end-goal, but once they were complete and I was living with them, manipulating them and draping them, I realized that there is really something about clothes that resonates with me. When I hung one on the wall–meh. When I wrapped it around my shoulders, instant shift. Suddenly the piece had a life, purpose, character.

I didn’t want to cut them up, so I worked the pleats in to make the fabric bend around the body as a wrap. I left off any closure or distinctly garment-related findings to let them keep living in this space between garment, wall hanging, pure textile…

I was completely stumped in how to display these for the final show, and I think that ultimately failed. I tried both hanging them on the wall and on a form, and I felt that they fell pretty flat. Which brought me to this semester. This semester I was focused on both honing the concept and narrative behind the work, as well as examining presentation possibilities.

I thought that I’d stick with garments, but let myself go a bit mad with the surface design work. I really wanted to try more dye techniques. I decided to keep the cape as my control garment, to create some parameters/boundaries. Plus, as I’ve been working with concepts of fantasy worlds and transformation, what better garment to use? Capes have such an inherent fantasy feel, and really engulf you into an experience in a way few other types of garment will. This first one is the Seeker cloak: I’ve been reading a lot of Jung, Campbell, and YA fantasy, okay? The visual inspiration for it is Hubble photos of galaxies; I wasn’t trying to say anything particularly spacey, but I am moved by the idea of a type of warrior/seeker/mage character who is wrapped in the fabric of worlds. Also, creating a galaxy with dye sounded hard, thus, something I had to try.

I drafted the pattern and sewed the first one together. It started as pure black velveteen:

…aaaand then threw bleach all over it.

Before anyone gets shirty about it, I did use bleach-stop, so it won’t just eat the fabric away.

Bleach galaxy

Next, to begin adding color:

This is it in stage 2 or 3, after a few rounds of dye:

Then more dye:

Then stars:

To the final:

It’s lined in purple poly satin that is dip-dyed into an ombre effect; dark at the hem, light at the neck. There are long-slit arm vents on either side of the double-breasted facings, for ease of movement and utility of the hands and arms.  It’s also got multiple pockets on the inside facings, as well as two inset pockets in the arm-vents, because adventurers need lots of pockets.

After the Seeker was complete, I simultaneously began work on a second cloak and an installation for them to live in. Being as I had so much dissatisfaction with presentation of last semester’s work, and at the urging of my awesome mentor, I began studying installation art and set design. Fascinating and amazing stuff! With the final show approaching, I realized that I could either keep the installation part somewhat toned down to make sure the capes were front-and-center, OR I could let myself really run with the set install, realizing that it might, for this iteration, take away from the capes as centerpiece. For this go-round, I said fuck it, let’s go crazy. I can always come back more towards the middle to privilege the capes later; let’s build something weird. I’ve been very interested in the blending of worlds, the dichotomies of inside/outside, not to mention the mythology and language of references in well-known stories, so I wanted to build a bit of a forest moment indoors. I also thought, in terms of a forest scene, that perhaps a tree opens, almost as a wardrobe (yes, intentionally). Quickly this came together in my mind as a piece speaking to Campbell’s Call to Adventure and Crossing of the Threshold, a concept that seems particularly resonant these days…

So I began building it:

This was a particularly fun, but also nail-biting, adventure. I’ve never done anything with building, much less installation before, and that, combine with having maybe 3 weeks to do it, equalled, in hind-sight, pure foolishness. But I am nothing if not a fool! I decided to go for it, with the knowledge that some of this would be an exercise in cobbling things together; it didn’t need to be perfectly polished on this go-round.

First I built a closet-form out of MDF board

…and painted it gold. And realized I’d made the damn thing too tall for the spray booth. Oops.

Here’s the door. I found a banged-up piece of mirrored plexi in the studio and cut it into that shape on the band saw.

More on this later, as I have to run out the door now. Tomorrow: Tree-Armoire part TWO!

…Am I flailing hard enough?

They make it pretty clear to us that this year, and particularly this semester, is a time for exploration, experimentation, and other “ex” words that are generally designed to both stimulate you and keep you a bit off-balance. As a respected professor put it, “this is the time to flail about and fail big.”

Am I flailing hard enough yet? Have I failed grandly enough? Would you like some more irony on your toast?

Kids, don’t be artists. Do something easy, like brain surgery.

I kid, I kid.

Lots of questions as to process, meaning, intention, audience, concept, formal material decisions. I decided to make a cape as a large-scale material exploration. Plus, it’s still working in my conceptual brain– it’s still a piece of outerwear, which y’all know I love– plus it’s a simple enough design as to be fairly easy construction. I don’t have time for no 34 pattern pieces right know–knowwhaddimean?

I wanted to try overdyeing, so I started messing with applique over a white fabric I had in my stash. Apologies for the crap pictures– apparently my iphone and the studio lighting are NOT friends.

I’m also starting to study a lot of surface design techniques, and I love incorporating hand stitching into the work. Obviously it doesn’t make sense to hand-stitch this whole mess, but I love to see the evidence of the hand– it makes it so much more personal and storied.

Sampler!

Hand-stitching and reverse-applique with velvet as the underneath fabric. Very inspired by Alabama Chanin, who I loooove.

I did some color samples, foraying into the world of dye!

And then overdyed the whole damn thing. 

Detail:

I’m really interested in beginning to work with more reclaimed textiles and less new fabrics, so for the lining I took apart two vintage velvet dresses and made franken-lining.

There were some holes in the velvet, that I decided to highlight in mending rather than hiding them. It’s part of the fabric’s story, after all.

Here is is inside-out. I think I might like it best that way actually. 

I inked some secret things in the lining in my coded alphabet. I’m not loving how it looks but it’s a foray into how to incorporate language into the garment.

I’ll have to get some nicer pictures at some point. I still need to figure out what sort of closure I want and finish the hem, but since I don’t think I’ll show this piece in the spring show/last crit it doesn’t seem as important at the moment. There’s a lot I like about this piece and some things I don’t, lots of ideas have been brought up. I think I may step back from garments for a bit (flailing, right?) and just focus on textile and surface design and what I can discover and convey through that medium. There are a few too many variables in the air with a garment, and I’m not sure, in my next crit, that I’m ready to answer questions about who this is for, who wears this, etc. Everyone wants to wear this, right?

The processing of process….

Notes on November

…thus far.

Nothing dries here. Mom bought me a box of sun, which seems to be helping the doomy gloomies a bit.

I think too much about what I could be doing, and berate myself for not living the life I think I want, or am supposed to want, but if I want to be the sort of person who goes to bars alone and practices karate, why don’t I ever actually want to do those things? Perhaps the new coolness is someone who goes from home to school and back again and eats mac and cheese. This is a thing, right?

I think too much, I think. Oh wait. Crap.

School is different the second time around. Better and deeper in many ways, but I can no longer summon that wild, vicious sense of youthful self-import that undergrad held. There is less of a sense of inevitable greatness, though it is replaced with a stronger sense of what I do and why. But I miss feeling like a ball of greatness waiting to explode. Maybe it’s a slow detonation. Also, I drink much less in this iteration, which is probably for the best. I seem to recall a lot of drinking alone and baking cookies while crying at “Friends” the last time.

So, basically, I’m awesome.

I am continuing to work with letterforms. I did the whole alphabet in large, 18″x24″ form:

…and hung the whole shebang up for crit. I kind of want it up forever.

I’m trying to learn to use it, which is trickier than I thought. Learning to write in it is going alright, but reading it is a whole other matter. Makes you realize that we don’t see the individual characters when we read; we just grab the whole word. I can READ the code-language, but I still have to parse it letter by letter. I’m going to try to get some friends to be secret code pen-pals with me to help me learn– I need stuff to read that I did not write, that’s cheating, and really doesn’t work. It’s, in the wise words of my father, like a three-year-old memorizing Go Dog Go and then pronouncing that they can read. I suspect he may be speaking from experience on that one.

I’m not quite sure where the language/code thing is going yet, but I find it compelling. I think, at the core, I’m trying to create the world I want to live in, all magical and shit, and this is perhaps how language looks in that world. It seems very important for me to be able to use it, not just have created it and let it sit there. I have lots of little seeds of ideas of how this might fit into other work later…

I also started to get back into makeup a bit, at the urging of my mentor. Again, not sure where that leads but hey, we’re all about experimenting right now. Can you tell that “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing” is a common theme recently?

This one was mostly practice with a white base makeup I got for Halloween. There was no character theme; just play.

My mentor suggested I remove variables to make the focus really on the face and makeup, so going forward I’m going to try a few set poses, same outfit, no wig, no face expression, just really focus on the makeup.

Oh, and speaking of Halloween, here’s how THAT turned out:

We were pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. Dancing at the Lovecraft ensued and a good time was had by all.

Right. Off to make some capes and write some letters. Huzzah!

…And then it rained forever.

This is our forecast. I am trying to think of this positively. We get so much green! Things grow! It’s not a flaming ball of fire like the other places I consider home!

But still. I don’t know about this at all.

This week has been a lot of ups and downs, focus and weird floaty feelings. Sleep comes hard. Insecurity abounds. I am trying to speak kindly to myself, noticing how much of my inner dialogue is negative: you’re not good enough, you’re too old, if you were going to “make it” you would have done it by now, everyone else is more together than you, what are you doing still mucking about like a teenager get a goddamn career path already, why can’t you get up early, why can’t you keep a schedule, your work is a joke hahahahaahaaaaaaaa…

Yeah so that’s there. I know this is a common human condition and I am not alone in this vat of bullshit, but GODDAMN it’s annoying. How much could I have achieved if I just blithely thought I was awesome? Why does it seem so hard to be nice to ourselves? What the fuck is that all about?

Did I mention it’s raining forever?

ANYWAY.

Entrepreneurial, history, and the other “classes” we take come in an out of focus. It’s an odd setup because you are basically doing YOUR WORK, whatever that is, and most things are in service of that in one way or another. Very different from undergrad, where you have a range of classes giving you a set of skills and you are applying yourself to all of them and seeing what comes of that. Now we have a PRACTICE. My history professor related it as undergrad being about starting broad and narrowing to a point, and grad school being about starting at a point and opening out again. This is such an exciting prospect, but also a massive undertaking, and this week I feel like it has dragged me under a little. Being as my husband, family, best friends and dogs are all far away, it’s so easy to get lost in all this philosophy and questioning and there’s no one to make me come out. It can get very surreal and eventually pretty unpleasant; I’m pretty lousy at making myself stop working, and I forget where the line is between work and everything else. Maybe there is no line.

I’m sorry, I’m only supposed to blog about happy things like how meaningful life is, and, like, cookies and craft fairs. I am remiss 🙂

I did a fair amount of work this week. Still exploring the concepts of object, symbol, language. I’m continuing work on the ponies. I’m planning to finish at least the 5 large ones and possibly the other 2 small ones I have primed before I let myself move on from this exploration, however long that takes. We are meant to be doing more iterations and experimentation than finished work, but I am partial to the big ponies and I at least want to do right by them.

I found this one at goodwill this week. Serious pony bath time!

Primed Ponies

Process:

Spring Pony Process. Same model unicorn, different colors.

Pony workstation

Pony progress lineupIt’s amazing how long these suckers are taking me. I have a crit next week– I will admit I am nervous.

I also worked more on the letterform stuff. Originally I was looking at symbols and thinking I would make my own syllabary, but then I sat down to consider what concepts or words would need to be represented, and it got real big real fast. Seriously, guys, it’s like ooh ok, “love” “hope” “dream” and then you realize you’re just listing off those inspirational etched rocks. And that there are A LOT of important concepts, and nuances to those, and then it got too big and my brain exploded, so I scaled it back for now, and thought I’d try making an alternate alphabet. Nothing groundbreaking, I’m not going all Tolkien and making a new language, I just want to make my own version of the alphabet and try to learn it. Which is harder than you think! I have pretty much all the letterforms and their correspondences memorized, but it’s the input that gets you: I can write a word in it fairly fast now but I can’t look at a word and instantly see/translate it. So more practice.

Here’s the alphabet. It took me quite a while to decide on the letterforms, and I still have some I feel like perhaps I should change, but I’ve already started memorizing it so I think they will just stay. It’s visually influenced by Sanskrit, Arabic and Elvish (of course).

Practice pages:

I began making large, ornate versions of some of the letters, just because I wanted to. They are so beautiful and it’s like getting to know them better. These are 18″x24″

Sooooo that’s the week. Now it’s off to make mac and cheese for a class project. That’s right, I have to. Hah.

The story so far…

Right, so… I moved here:

Where they have doughnuts that watch you…

And I finally decided to learn to be a sort-of bike commuter. Behold: Shadowfax the Magnificent!

…And now my legs look like this:

My program takes a mentor-based approach, and my mentor has told me to stop working the way I’ve been working for a while– to open up, explore, and nurture the creative practice. Part of this practice has included creating a collection of inspiration and resonant items– lots of pictures, etc. It’s sort of like making a visual representation of my head.  A psychological mood board.

Another part has involved poking around in vinvtage stores, where I found PONIES!

Ponies of all sizes!

I can’t exactly explain the allure– it’s surely at least partially nostalgia-based, as I had a LOT of ponies as a kid, but there’s also something just aesthetically pleasing to me about some of them. They are a nicely-shaped object, and certainly cute. We are doing a lot of reading and discussion about objects and our relation to them, what gives an object value, the nature of craft vs. art or design, the psychological resonance of everyday objects, etc. and all this was rattling about in my head. When I saw the pony on the left, something just struck me about it. I felt the need to rescue and resuscitate it; I also felt as if it was a totem object– something of potentially profound significance or spirituality waiting to be found. This is what art school will do to you…

So I took it home and took it’s face off.

Our process here is big on iterations– you don’t do just one of something– so I got myself a mini-herd to play with. Originally I thought I’d plan each one out– have a concept and design plan, but then I remembered I’m supposed to be playing and experimenting, and definitely not overthinking, so I just went for it.

Primed Ponies.

Pony workstation.

In-progress ponies

Ponies set up for first critique session

Part of my visual mind-mapping. This took up a whole wall. I had more pictures but my phone has eaten them in a dramatic fit of pique. Have I mentioned that electronics seem to commit suicide around me?

Crit went pretty well. I really need to practice speaking about my work; I tend to get so nervous that I am not able to pay as much attention as I would like because I am busy calming the fight-or-flight stuff that is happening. It is also so hard to allow yourself to be vulnerable and open to questioning, as opposed to coming at it from a defensive position. This experience of changing my working patterns has been both hard and freeing, but it did put me slightly in a place of feeling like I needed to defend what I’d been spending my time on, that I’d been doing enough. I think a lot of us felt that way… Anyway I survived and the exploration continues.

I’m adding in new things this week but I’m still working on the ponies. I am still enjoying them and they also seem to serve as a tool to think with my hands. None of them are exactly done but this one is close. I discovered there was a run of large, 9″ tall ponies in 2006 and I have managed to snag a few of them. The large size is so nice to work on and feels very compelling; my theory is because it’s the proper pony-to-person ratio for an adult.

Through the mind-mapping, I began to recognize (or remember) how much language and visual communication and codes are resonant with me. This has me starting to play with letter forms… 

So that’s that. More to come.

wow… shit got real.

Awright, so it’s been an age and things keep piling up to blog about. I have several art hunt-related things to, um, relate, and i made a bunch of stuff, and there’s all sorts of things I need to report on, and it’s gotten to that point where it’s gotten to big to tackle so screw it I’m starting here.

Short version: I went to Portland to check out a potential school to apply to for fall 2015 (remember all the coat stuff for portfolio work? That’s why). And I really liked it. Then I went to LA with the lovely Emma and did and art hunt down there (someday I will properly post about it but LA you were VERY CRAP in terms of responding to the art hunt so you are in my doghouse) and while I was there I got an email from the head of the program I was interested in inviting me to apply for THIS year, as in rightthefucknow. I said no no I couldn’t possibly no and then my darling husband said YOU HAVE TO DO THIS (did I marry a catch or what?) so I pulled together an application, transcripts and 3 letters of recommendation in ONE DAY (eternal gratitude to my former professors and good friends who came through there). I got accepted the very NEXT day, which was about August 1. Christ on a biscuit.

So I had to move to Portland. OH! and my school (MFA of Applied Craft and Design, a joint program offered through PNCA and OCAC, for those of you curious or just particularly fond of acronyms) has a design-build project they do with the first years every year. No way I was going to miss that and be the weird kid coming in late, so I flew to Portland on the 10th, built the most badass chicken coop ever for 10 days, flew back to CA, and had one week to pack, say goodbye, and, well, leave.

I spend a lot of time in this building now.

I lucked out majorly with housing in Portland, as an old roomie and friend from SF just HAPPENED to have a housemate moving out on September 1st. And the house just HAPPENS to be awesome. And in a sweet neighborhood and only 2 miles from school. So that’s that. Jason’s holding down the Crockett fort and the dogs and the site/store is down for now because I have not EVEN been able to think in a retail-minded way. I need to open it up again soon… I planned to do it before now but grad school has taken over my whole brain like some well-educated parasite that uses words like “process” and “intimacy of the object.”

So that’s that. Prepare for this to become a log of grad school stuff for a while. I’m sorry. So far, my mentor (my school id very mentor-based) has told me to let go of my product-driven, a-to-be process for a while, to nurture my creative practice, to let things in and gather influences and see what comes up. Sound wonderful? It is but goddamn somehow it is still so hard! I am very stuck in the concerns of making a dollar RIGHT NOW and thinking of audience, market value, salability. I’m sure all that will come back, but I’ve been given this time to stretch and grow and hopefully become a more realized (and balanced) creator, but it is hard to shift that way. Grad school is immensely open-ended and almost entirely self-driven, so deciding if you are doing the right thing or not is tricky. I have been getting very elemental and a bit new-agey in simply trying to trust my impulses. Currently my impulses have me painting on My Little Ponies, but more about that later. I promise to have some pretty pictures soon; this post is quite wordy. Should you want to be inundated with pictures, go follow my instagram. I have taken to posting pictures of strange things I find in vintage shops here, so be warned.

xo

Space Koyote Art Hunt, Endless Series: Despair

Despair gets a pretty raw deal in the Sandman, as you might imagine. It’s hard to be the anthropomorphic personification of the loss of all hope.

I felt a strange, Winnie-the-Pooh-esque desire to cheer her up, ironic as that may be. And while we’re being ironic, I thought it might also be fun to make her a pinup girl. Because why not?

 

In keeping with the theme, I put her sigil in the word balloon, and of course had to put in her rats.

 

I left the first one at Therapy in Berkeley. The setting was too rife with irony to pass up– I mean come ON!

…and it was quickly snapped up by @ass666beater, who definitely wins the instagram handle award for the day.

The second one I left at Dr. Comics and Mr. Games in Oakland. Comic books stores just seem like the right venue for these guys.

This one was nabbed by Jazz Tigan, who has the perfect home for her all set up. 

The last one I was going to hide a bit better… but I didn’t. It’s a tricky balance between hiding and plain sight. Eventually I’d like to hide them more, make this harder/more fun, but I’m concerned that I don’t have enough followers yet and I don’t want them to be hidden and never found. So they’ve been more on the plain-sight side, but I promise I will start hiding some more sneakily, for you intrepid followers out there.

My friend Ryan came along with me on this drop and we drank tea while scoping the area like polite British spies. I think I may have gotten him hooked on the art-hunt– you feel so clandestine, despite not actually doing anything illegal.

Matt snagged the last one, and we were 3 for 3 this time with none disappearing into the ether… which makes me SO happy.

Thanks for playing, everyone. Next up, DESTRUCTION (dun dun dunnnnnn)!

Stardust Coat: Part One

On to the next coat!

I am also working away on the personal statement to accompany these in my grad school applications, which is like moving mountains with my brain. I haven’t had to write an artist’s statement, or any sort of solid explication of my work and motivations, well, since graduating last time I guess. It was always my least favorite part, prone to causing tantrums and rage, but I’m all grown up now or something, so no stomping feet and crying. Ok maybe just a SMALL tantrum.

The next coat has been dubbed the Stardust Coat. It has occurred to me that all the ideas I have lined up so far are all inspired by books or characters in books, which, given how much the aforementioned personal statement talks about the importance of STORY in my work, seems appropriate.

Since the last one was all blacks, it seemed right to make this one of light tones. I was originally going to work in straight WHITE, but I found this pretty pearl-color upholstery velvet and had to get it. Guess all-white will have to wait.

The Dream coat was worked in individual pieces, all the applique running vertical. I thought this time I’d try running some applique across the body. This is somewhat tricky, running cross-ways across curved seams, but I’m giving it a go. Here’s some layout experiments. I did this for about an hour in different combinations, then scrapped the whole thing.

Eventually I settled on a few pieces of applique, with more focus on the stitching, trying some new things from the last one.

Added in some hand-drawn elements on this one, too. These are the back pieces…

…and a similar treatment to the front.

Here’s the body so far. Back and sides are sewn together, with iridescent contrast panels in the back vent and box pleat. Pocket are installed, with contoured welts. The body stitching is done in either plain white or silver iridescent thread, and all the seams are top-stitched.

Next up, the sleeves and hood attack!

xo

Space Koyote Art Hunt Endless Series: Dream

For the newest addition to my art hunt project, I thought it might be good to do a series. My dear friend and inspiration for this project, PonderMonster is doing a rainbow one, and how cool is THAT?

If you have read any of my recent posts, you know one of my biggest artistic/life inspirations has been Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. Now I am a rabidly loyal Neil supporter and will love, or at least read, everything he does as a matter of principle, but this particular work stands out as massively, pinpointedly life-changing.

I wonder if Neil gets tired of people ranting about Sandman.

I hope not.

The series is a perfect storm of myth-blending, world-creating, vibrant characters and just a really compelling story. I discovered it through the first boy who ever really broke my heart. I wouldn’t even say he was my first boyfriend, because we only “dated” for a month or two, over the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school, but he was for sure my first heartbreak. He was an older man (a sophomore!); tall, dark and handsome, with flowing locks and long purple fingernails. Did I mention I was a bit of a gothy teenager?

And this is AFTER I grew out the black hair. Pity.

 

We had a short and fairly awkward teenage love affair, followed by several years of flirtatious friendship, heartache, general teen angst, and, strangely, actual love and loyalty. I still consider him a dear friend. He swept me off my combat boots and broke my black, tender little heart, but we did have some grand fun.

I know. Total dreamboat. What was a girl to do?

He introduced me to Twin Peaks, Ben and Jerry’s Cool Brittania (eaten by the pint, always keeping the top smooth and flat), Sisters of Mercy, and, of course, Sandman. I would spend hours reading them voraciously in his cave-like basement room, hiding from the sunlight (hissssss!) while he made mixtapes– it was a short but golden era.I was a mope-tastic gothy teen, awash in synthy bass-beats and my own gloomy importance, lost in the twilight netherworld of my  adolescence, and this, THIS was my goddamn bible.

All of this is to say that Sandman has deep personal resonance for me, that goes far beyond the actual work itself and plugs into a very specific time and place in my evolutionary continuum, and as such continues to form the base for a lot of inspiration and creative drive.

Clearly I must do a Sandman series of little art pieces. It is only right. You like how it took me this long to get to the point? You’ve been very patient; here’s some pictures.

Sketchy-pencil times. I decided to stick with the theme of the speech bubbles, so it seemed right to have my Endless with their sigils. Dream would like his hat back, please.

I think there’s a hint of Le Petit Prince about him.

Et finis.

It seemed only appropriate to leave these around comic book stores, plus I was hoping that would up the chances of them being found by people who would get it/know the character/appreciate it. I guess I can’t expect EVERYONE to know the reference of a comic series from the early 90’s.

I dropped the first one in Berkeley at Fantastic Comics, hiding in the window ledge.

This one was the fastest turnaround yet– Suzageddon nabbed it in about 5 minutes. Awesome.

The next two I took on an outing to the city. I went on a Wednesday, which seemed appropriate as it’s new comic day. It’s also when I had time. Art vigilantes lead strangely-scheduled lives. 

I ventured to one of my favorite SF shops, Isotope Comic Book Lounge, and enlisted the help of this dapper gentleman:

If you haven’t met James Sime yet, you should. He agreed to help me in my schemes and I left the painting inside the front window with James as Gatekeeper.

It was found later that evening by Gamoid–well done, sir.

The last one has apparently disappeared into the ethers, as little left paintings are apparently wont to do. This round was 2 for 3 though, so that’s a step in the right direction. I may have made a bad decision in my hiding spot, but I couldn’t resist.

City Lights Books is just so wonderful and I get swept up into a creative-romantic flurry every time I go in. I also was experimenting with leaving them inside, thinking that might make it easier for them to be found by the right people (book-loving beatniks vs. meth-head street-wanderers). It occurred to me later though that perhaps this was not wise, as people might think it was merchandise, or even if they didn’t, who’s going to want to slip something into their bag in a store? On the other hand, it’s a store that sells radical zines and Steal This Book, so come on now. Perhaps I should have asked permission of the shopkeepers, but that hardly seems very art-vigilante, plus I get nervous making a damn phone call, so can you imagine the anxiety of that conversation?

“Hi, can I leave a painting here”

“We don’t buy art”

“No I just want to leave it to give away”

“We’re not a gallery, dude.”

“No no I don’t want to SELL, it, I just want to hide it for someone to find.”

“What? Go away.”

Yeahhhh… that seemed too risky to my poor anxious soul, so I just left the thing. It seemed so cozy, hanging out by Patti Smith and Allie Brosh. Plus, I left it right by Neil’s Make Good Art. How’s that for an easter egg, people?

Apparently not very good, since I never heard from it again, but I like to think it found a good home. Or maybe Jack Kerouac’s ghost took it.

That’s it for this installment of art-hiding theater. Good night, and good luck. 
http://instagram.com/spacekoyote

 

 

 

 

 

The Dream Coat: Part Four– Finished!

The beast has been vanquished, and the Dream coat is finally done! Overall I’m quite pleased with it. I learned a lot: messed some things up, asked and answered a lot of questions, and then made more questions. It’s very comfortable to wear and feels solid like armor with all that quilting. Dream armor. I hope it lives up to its inspiration. I wanted it to feel like a story; like every time you look at it you notice some new detail, some new secret.

Here’s a shot when it was still missing collar and sleeves. You can see some of the quilting of insanity.

Detail shot. Note the pocket flaps– I think they turned out pretty nicely.

I also inherited some wonderful brass buttons that seemed to have arrived just for this project.

Here it is in all it’s glory:

Sleeve detail. The two stripes are a bit of an artist’s mark– I thought I might make them a common thread (haha) on all the coats. They represent the old magpie rhyme:

One for sorrow,

Two for joy,

Three for a girl,

Four for a boy,

Five for silver,

Six for gold,

Seven for a secret,

Never to be told.

Truth be told, I rather liked the secret-never-to-be-told, but seven was a bit more than I could deal with. So joy it is.

Back detail. I vented it in the shoulders and gave it a box pleat at the tail. I drafted both of these into the pattern and they were one of the toughest parts, having never done them before and adding them in– there was a lot of “what the hell am I doing… please please please don’t let me mess it up”  Hopefully the next ones will be a bit more graceful. Many thanks to all the wonderful bloggers out there whose tutorials, tips and tricks helped save my sanity on this.

Some lining detail. You can see the top on my hem facing there because I fucked up. Pleat fail. Everything is ruined.

The front facings are more simple and have silver flames and stars embroidered on. There’s a bit of ribbon piping between lining and facing as well.

And here you can see the hidden inner pocket. Because pockets!

Detail of the inner collar. The collar stands up, so this is rarely visible. It’s meant as a secret moment just for the wearer; something just for you. It’s a quote from Sandman and reads:

“Sometimes you wake up.

Sometimes the fall kills you.

And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”

So it’s done. Sweet dreams.

xo