pixels, light and hot wax

Next weekend, I am taking a workshop on Encaustic and Photography from Nichole DeMent at my alma mater. Yes, I have done multiple workshops on this topic (Encausticamp and other), but practice-with-expert-guidance is a way I learn well and also I like her work and can’t figure out how she made it.

But we have to bring to class several prints to use, made on washi or with laser. Which I already have all the materials to do for once , yay …. but now I have to plow through my archives (because I have been shooting less and less over the past few years) and try to find photos that are:

• interesting to me to work with in a mixed-media context
• that I don’t think suck

This turns out to be really difficult, and the longer it takes to find something the more I get to the familiar-imposter-syndrome place of “Ohmigod I suck I have no business calling myself an artist blah blah blah.”

Maybe I should just start with 2003, I always end up back there anyway — which is to say, the photos that were the foundation of my thesis show when I graduated. But going back to PCNW to work with the photos I made there ten years ago? Ow.

Since last year the discussions got technical, I’ve made a handout covering some of the vocabulary and issues, with links to various tutorials and resources.

Notes on making art prints/reproductions for sale

I’ve now filled out the bid tags for Norwescon next week. 13 pieces, and for the first time since my very first Norwescon art show, every single one is brand new. And only one (!) is a limited edition print, all the rest are mixed-media and jewelry of the OOAK variety.

This is entirely new territory for me; I haven’t faintest idea how much of this will be received, though I had a lot of fun making it, which is the most important part. It has been a great relief to move my fine art efforts to the “neat if it sells, but not something I must make work right now” category. Even if my album design work has sapped much of my art making time and energy, once I do get to go there, the lack of pressure is very freeing. Certainly, if I was worried about having to make a profit, doing experimental reverse painting on glass would not have been something I spent a lot of time on.  And frankly, knowing that my next forays into studio time will lack even the restriction of being genre appropriate is something I am looking forward to.

There is still framing to do, and two pieces need another hour or so to be completely finished, including the photoillustration, which has been sitting waiting in the “this needs something” state for almost two years; three days ago I realized that what it needed were birds and belugas, and I’m not quite done with making those photographs play well with a scene done entirely in Vue3d. And with the other I am still debating placement of the Buddha head. (I love that sentence for no good reason.)

There is a great deal “Why the hell not?” in this collection. And a certain amount of “I have no clue what to charge for this”, though her Javagoth-ness has been helpful on that front (and on many fronts, actually, I don’t think the jewelry thing would have really happened without her advice and pointers to good component sources.)

It is all going to be ridiculously hard to photograph, especially since I still haven’t picked up my studio lights. Or made a place to set them up.

I will be once again showing in the art show and talking on panels at this year’s Norwescon, March 28-31.

The programming goddess, long may she be praised, has sent my schedule; changes are of course always possible, that being the nature of events:

• A Print By Any Other Name…   Friday 9:00pm-10:00pm
• Poly Parenting   Saturday 10:00am-11:00am
• Art Show Tour with Jeliza Saturday 5:00pm-6:00pm
  (As usual I will be talking more about other people’s work than my own, despite the standard description in the program; I tend to do these with my Art History/Art Criticism grad student hat on.)
• Copyright and You   Sunday 10:00am-11:00am Cascade 13
• The Business of Art   Sunday 11:00am-Noon Cascade 13
• Intro to Health At Every Size   Sunday 1:00pm-2:00pm

And now I need to go turn a big stack of little cradled boards into a big stack of little space paintings.

I am a little bit terrified of this idea, considering my (lack of) success in doing similar things before, but I’m going to try it again.

To keep it a little less terrifying, I’m not going to try for a sharply-defined project. I’m just going to make 300 pieces of visual art. Drawing, painting, photography, digital, whatever. But almost every day.

I might post some of them; I’m certainly not going to post all of them. But it seems worth a try.

I am in a take-a-breath moment in the holiday album design onslaught at the moment, and when I was putting some client albums up on blurb, I saw (clever them) a little popup about how they were doing notebooks now.  I tend to have 2-3 notebook/sketchbooks going at any one time, and it bums me out that the only ones I can usually find with gridded pages are moleskine, which aren’t the right size and aren’t pretty.

So I made one. It took maybe 10 minutes, and that’s NOT my book design expertise talking. I am pleased.  It’s mostly photos from the Oregon coast landscape photography workshop from 2009 because well, my camera and I don’t talk too much lately with all the busy.

The default layout has a picture every 7ish pages, and all the rest grid. On uncoated paper that can be written on. Yay!

(Yeah, that is an affiliate link, because I don’t mark up the blurb books I make, but I send them lots of business, so one of my colleagues pointed out that a bonus for me that doesn’t cost my customers anything is a good thing. And while I’ve got the business hat on, if you wanna go gonzo and make your own, HOLIDAYTHANKS gets you 25% off through ”cyber monday” on books you make, and MERRY will work on other people’s books.)

And that is just a little something on top of this big gorgeous thing:

I started carrying a new kind of flush album; it’s really stripped down as flush albums go, with superthin pages, limited cover design choices, mostly things you only notice if you make a lot of albums, really, and all streamlining rather than quality reduction. And the pricing is amazing as such things go, right in the range a lot of my more “budget” clients are aiming for. (Budget being a relative term when you are talking about custom designed, handmade photo-page books.) So I needed samples, stat, but I was in love with the 12×12, and I didn’t have any 20 page 12×12 designs hanging out that I could use.  But, well, I did have a set of really awesome photos that are intended to be seen only REALLY LARGE and this thing is 2 feet wide when open, so …. I made myself a super luxe artist portfolio. That I totally got the studio sample discount on because I really am going to use it to show wedding album clients.

(Pictures are craptastic because it is raining and I haven’t fetched my lights back from the person I lent them to yet.)

for scale, that’s my cell phone:

Isn’t it pretty? I want to pet it. (You can see the whole design here if you like). The photos are smaller than they are when I show them as framed prints, but still big enough to get the right SO MUCH BIGGER THAN LIFESIZE effect.

(Sorry if this sounds super-promotey, but you have to understand, BOOKS! that I get to KEEP and USE instead of mailing away! It’s like working in a chocolate shop and never getting to eat any to do what I do normally. )

(that wasn’t actually supposed to be radio silence, I have a big collection of drafted posts that didn’t get published, apparently, which I will fix over the coming weeks, because it is crazy-busy in Jeliza-land, and probably will stay that way for a few months)

Several really wonderful artists I am acquainted with are having special print sales right now that are really worth checking out:

1. Caryn Drexl is having a half-off sale this week only; there is a coupon code at her Etsy shop or you can order prints directly from her (including things not listed in Etsy)  You may well have seen her work on a book cover or two.

2. Laura Pelick is having a 25% off sale on all her prints through the end of August, which are giclee reproductions of her watercolor/tea paintings.

Go get some wonderful things for your walls. Or just go look at the lovely. But at least look, okay?

I’ve had work featured in 3 different Artfire collections this week, which is nice ego-boost:

A few new pieces, with more to come as I get them posted to the portfolio site. The first two actually came out of experiments with two new techniques: incising text with metal stamps, and trying to make a smooth surface via pouring.

Steady as she goes, mixed-media, 2012

Let Go, encaustic, 2012

This one has been in progress, on and off, for at least 6 months. The changes since I last posted it are not huge, but finally made it feel complete for me. (And then I got some more feedback, so it’s going back to the painting table for at least one more round)

Party Girl, encaustic, 2012

This Easter weekend, I will be a talking head at the following panels at Norwescon:

Thursday

5 pm, Branching out with your art

Friday

10 am, Business of art

11 am, Art Show tour

(this is listed in the program as talking about my art; I actually intend it to be an art show tour using my mad art criticism/art historical/art theory skills to discuss pieces the attendees are particularly interested in anywhere in the show)

2 pm, Poly Parenting

6 pm, Queer Voices in SF/F

At which I am the only non-writer and the only chick. No pressure.

Sunday

11 am, Finding time to make art

1 pm, A print by any other name

I will also be showing digital and mixed-media work in the art show.