This Week's Creative Endeavors

 Busy creating stripes

This week's creativity has not been spent on my projects, instead they have been community focussed efforts. Painting in community and for community. Our Christmas set went up mid week and the rest of the week was spent madly painting it. It's always fun to be involved painting the Singing Christmas Tree sets, you get to go big, well, huge actually, and try your hand at something new, plus there is the awesome bonus of meeting and getting to know other artists. (Another perk is that your work is on dispaly for lots of people to see. Who cares if the majority of viewers have no idea who painted it)

Some finished stripes and stencilling

Eastside Culture Crawl

This weekend, Nov 15-17th 2013, is our very own, very awesome Eastside Culture Crawl. I highly recommend everybody to check it out. There are so many studios to go visit! Some are all in one building, such as the 1000 Parker St Studios and the Mergatroid building. Others are scattered throughout the neighborhood and you meander through a backyard or into a living room to see work.

There are so many treasures and surprises tucked away in small warehouse studios, backyard studios and inconspicious homes. In the Parker Street Building there are a number of woodworking shops, ranging from the incredible work of Straight Lines Designs to simple turned bowls and cutting boards. There are fashion, painting, textile artists, ceramics and just about any other studio you could imagine.


This is a functional dresser named 'Brian' by Straight Line Designs.

Some of my favourite pieces this year were from Christina Norberg. She works on shaped supports and combines painting with collage. Many of the collage elements are felted fibre shapes that create fascinating textural contrasts and interest.

There is something close to 445 artist that participate in showing their work during 'the Crawl'. It is virtually impossible to see them all in one year (maybe if you went all three days). We only saw a fraction of them and are thoroughly overwhelmed and inspired. 

I must add, food trucks are a wonderful thing! There were a few in front of one building and other scattered in different locations. Brilliant idea, my tummy was happy as a result. (Did you know we have a mini donut truck?)

Quasi Art project

I'm still playing with wedding stuff. We got our photos, sorted them and have finally printed a few. The next step is to frame them and hang them. That is currently in progress, but in the meantime I was inspired to actually put together our sign-bearer signs to admire on the wall.

 Also, we put up (one of the first pieces of art we hung) our guest board. This is a quick (and blurry) photo of what the finished result looks like. (it's dark by the time I get off work-not a good photo environment)

So, for awhile our living room will be decorated with wedding memorabilia. Ironically, maybe conveniently, we chose to decorate our living room with the same turquoise as our wedding colours!
By the way, the living room colours were chosen before the wedding ones!

Musings on Inspirations

I already know that all sorts of repetitions capture my attention. I tend to like to photograph them, preferably fairly close up, so that the actual objects are abstracted and it is simply the pattern. I have been discovering that often the repetitions I find are very linear as well. Which means that when I do try and photograph them I get too much peripheral info and end up disatisfied with the photo. I was thinking and dreaming about art and what I could do with it and decided that these types of repetitions might be the perfect time to turn them into paintings. With a painting I am not at all constricted by a standard format, I can use whatever shape captures my fancy, especially as I prefer to work on wooden panels, not canvas. So, I could use a long narrow support and I would have the freedom to crop and skew perpective as much as I wish! The possibility is intriguing me.