Milwaukee ARTibles Holiday Bazaar - extra hours!

Still looking for unique holiday gifts? The Milwaukee Artist Resource Network's ARTibles Holiday Bazaar will be open extra hours Dec. 19-24, 2011:
Mon-Wed 12 to 7
Thur-Fri 11 to 7
Sat. 10 to 5
(for those of you who like waiting to the last minute)
You can find all sorts of cool stuff made by local artists including clothing, jewelry, purses, ornaments, art magnets, bird houses, quilts, soaps, greeting cards, and more!

Free Vintage Holiday Printables!

Yes, it's time again for the Ten Two Studios Holiday Printables Countdown, now through Christmas. Check http://countdown.tentwostudios.com/ everyday for a new download from Lisa Vollrath. She just asks that you spread the word by sharing the link on your blog, Twitter, etc. And while you're there check out all the cool Christmas products and Ten Two Studios design team projects posted on the main page!

ARTibles Holiday Bazaar at MARN

Happy Thanksgiving! Tomorrow is traditionally "Black Friday" when we're supposed to all go out and do our Christmas shopping (even though many businesses have started holding their Black Friday sales early). If you're in the Milwaukee area, be sure to check out the ARTibles Holiday Bazaar at the Milwaukee Artists Resource Network (MARN), 5407 W. Vliet Street in Milwaukee (conveniently next door to Four Corners of the World). ARTibles features handmade artsy gifts, ornaments, and accessories by local artists (including me). A percentage of the sales also benefits MARN, a non-profit organization serving the Milwaukee arts community. After Thanksgiving, regular ARTibles hours will be Thursday & Friday from 11-7 and Saturday 10-5 through December 24, 2011. Go shop!

Warped Milwaukee Fiber Art Show

I'm in a fiber arts show! If you're in the Milwaukee area, check out the Warped Milwaukee show at the Jazz Gallery, 926 E. Center Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, presented by the ABK Weaving Center and Riverwest Artists Association. The other participants are Harmonie Baker, Ellie Brooks-Derzay, Pame Bueno, Susan Buss, Taylor Easton, Jan Falk, Kari Garon, Betsy Hoover, Kathleen Hughes, Mel Kolstad, Shannon Molter, Jane Moore, and Stephanie Ponto. The show is up through December 4, 2011, and the gallery is open Saturdays 12-5 p.m. with other dates to be announced.

There are some stunning pieces on display, including this giant wing by Stephanie Ponto:

and these printed pouches by Susan Buss, entitled "Not Just a Bunch of Old Bags."

My friend Mel has a cool mixed media piece combining embroidery with vintage anatomy illustrations:

I have one of my mini Dia de los Muertos art quilts "Amigos" on display:
.
You can see some more photos on Flickr.

September & October workshops & artsy stuff

Life has been busy this fall so it's time to catch up on the bloggin'! Since my last post in mid-September, I took two workshops organized for the Milwaukee Artist Trading Card group by group member Gary). MKE ATC member Lynne taught an ATC background workshop before our September meeting. We had a lot of fun making colorful serendipity collage backgrounds, and as a result I got a lot of ATCs made for our future trades!

These use images from the Ten Two Studios "Tinted Twenties Cuties" image CD. You can see pix from the workshop and complete set of ATCs in my Flickr photostream

In October we met at RedLine Milwaukee, a wonderful non-profit community art studio that includes a print shop and paper making space. Artist Dara Larson showed us how to make ATC-sized papers and carve printing blocks to decorate them. Here's Mel pulling her first set of handmade paper ATCs:

And my paper "wet off the press"!

(I still haven't decided what I'm going to do with them.)
Since Halloween was fast approaching I made a Day of the Dead stamp design, of course, inspired by the figure they had on display in the print shop.

More photos are here. If you live in the Milwaukee area be sure to check out RedLine's upcoming workshops.

Wisconsin Regional Art Program

Thanks to my friend Gary's encouragement, I submitted two pieces to one of the Wisconsin Regional Art Program's regional exhibits in Greendale, Wisconsin, this summer.  WRAP was started in 1940 to "encourage the creative growth of Wisconsin non-professional artists from rural areas." ("Non-professional" in this case defined as not making the majority of my income from art, which is definitely the case.) Last weekend was our workshop day, featuring a lecture and demo by jewelry artist Brenda Schweder and a critique of our art by Chad Lindemann.

I was very happy to learn that my collage "Once Upon a Time" (above) was one of seven pieces chosen for the State Exhibit Award, which allows me to participate in the statewide show in 2012! If you are a Wisconsin artist, check out the information about upcoming exhibits/workshops to see if they have a program in your area.

Art Trader, Pinterest & other Distractions

I realized that I never posted back in July that I was interviewed for the Summer 2011 issue of Art Trader Magazine, the FREE on-line 'zine for all things mail art. You can download the PDF file here. Be sure to check out their site because they also have contests and offer on-line workshops. (I took the Fantastic Faces workshop in the spring.)

Also this summer, I am attempting to reorganize my office/work area, though no one can tell when looking at the space, because it looks as messy as ever. I keep getting distracted by looking at other people's beautiful work spaces on-line and browsing for storage ideas. My friend Mel got me hooked on Pinterest, a site which allows you to "pin" links and images to your own themed boards. So perhaps I spent more time pinning inspiration to my Art Studio Ideas board than I should have....

And two of my Pinterest boards on cats and Edgar Allan Poe translated into my first Etsy treasuries. (And I was not in anyway procrastinating the cleaning and organizing when I made these.) And one of my minor accomplishments this summer was getting a few more of my quilted ornaments listed on Etsy. Now back to work...

Art Journal: What I Did This Summer

Somehow the summer has flown by and next weekend is already Labor Day!! I have been a negligent blogger and will try to catch everything up in one post via my art journal entries:

At the end of July I worked on a spread incorporating all the 12 plants/flowers associated with the months/suits in the Japanese card game Hanafuda. (If you've ever wondered how Nintendo got its start, the company originally manufactured hanafuda cards.) I drew these while attending the Inspire Your Life art retreat organized by Kim Geiser.
I took workshops in Interactive Art Journal techniques taught by Kim Rae Nugent (see sample at left) and Renewing/Redoing Your Wardrobe taught by Geri Justinger, and I taught a class on making Faux Tintype ATCs. We were in Kim Geiser's store/studio in downtown Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and you can see photos from the weekend on Flickr.

The August Sketchbook Challenge theme is "Every Day Objects" so I started this next spread with a staple gun, chicken wire, popcorn and Kleenex:

But summer is the fair & festival season in Milwaukee, and we hit the Wisconsin State Fair in early August, and the farm animals took over!

I'd been meaning to make sketches from all the photos I take of my sister's horses and chickens, and I finally did! In addition to State Fair, we also hit Summerfest and Irish Fest to see Gaelic Storm, which is probably the most festivating we've done in one year. (Sure, that's a real word.) So I leave you with my favorite Gaelic Storm song:

I'm Guest Blogging at Art Journal Every Day

I'm the guest blogger today at Art Journal Every Day! I'm blogging about using tangles in my art journal. Thank you to Julie Balzer for the opportunity! Also, if you remember my sunprinting post last year, where I used Crafters Workshop stencils to sunprint designs on painted fabric, I was very excited to learn that Julie has designed new stencils for them. Go check them out!

Art Journal: Totally (Zen)Tangled

I spent a good chunk of May and June drawing and then coloring Zentangle patterns from Sandy Bartholomew's great book Totally Tangled.
 
I had a very busy spring so it was great to just work on a couple of tangles each day in May, and then I went back and colored them a little at a time in June, using a combination of Letraset markers, Twinkling H20s and Prismacolor pencils.

I also did a Spring Tangle spread that was a bit more organic:

Little by little, I'm filling the pages! You can see other tangles & resources in my previous blog posts here and here and in my Flickr photostream.

Dr. Evermor's Forevertron & HH Bennett's Studio

I had a very busy spring, and now that it's summer (how'd that happen?), I'll try to take advantage of the holiday weekend to catch up on some blogging.  In June we had a family gathering in the Wisconsin Dells with the obligatory boat rides on the Upper and Lower Dells and a lumberjack breakfast at Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty.

But the two things I had always wanted to see in the Dells? Dr. Evermor's Forevertron and H.H. Bennett's Photographic Studio!

The Forevertron is an amazing outdoor sculptural environment created by Tom Every a.k.a. Dr. Evermor from salvaged items.


He was doing steampunk before steampunk was cool. I won't even try to describe this in words. You can see my full Flickr set here. We were fortunate to meet him on the day, and the official Dr. Evermor website is up, but still under construction. Besides the Wikipedia article linked above, you can read more at Roadside America and PBS.org.

On a slightly different tack, the H.H. Bennett Studio is small museum run by the Wisconsin Historical Society, which preserves a 19th-century photographic studio. (If you've ever wondered, my on-line name is "vintagepix" because I have a collection of vintage photos.)

So this site might not be for everyone's tastes but I am entertained by giant cameras and stereocard viewers (modeled here by my big brother)

and taking a family photo through the lens of an antique camera.

(For those of you who know your optics, we are upside down in the original photo.) So if you're in central Wisconsin this summer, consider a road trip!

Art Journal: What I did in April (and May)

Spring has been busy with work and catching up on long overdue art projects. I have been working in my art journal every day but tend to do a little bit at a time so it takes me a week or more to finish a spread. I've been playing with Carla Sonheim's book Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists, which has fun exercises.

This spread started with splotches of watercolor in which you try to find animal shapes:


One of her exercises involved doodling cats, and since the April Sketchbook Challenge theme was "Branching Out/Out On A Limb," this evolved:


"One Liners" required drawing with one single line (which I had to color, of course):


In between doodling faces, I did a bit of scribble drawing (on the upper right page):


I started May off with some "Cheater Blind Countour" drawing. (You get to peek while doing blind contour drawing from photographs, so you can make sure the lines meet up!)


Hope you're having a creative spring!
UPDATE: Here are the blind cheater contours painted with Twinkling H20 watercolors.

"Inspire My Life" Art Retreat - July 2011!

Looking for some mixed media fun this summer? Kim Geiser is organizing Inspire My Life, an art retreat in Manitowoc, Wisconsin from July 28-30, 2011. She hopes to have the full schedule up by early April, but instructors include Kim Rae Nugent, author of Interactive Art Workshop, and my fellow Milwaukee ATC buddies, Mel Kolstad and Kathi Pecor, among others.
UPDATE: Workshop Schedule is now up! (Scroll down that page for registration info.)

I'll be teaching "Colorful Faux Tintype Artist Trading Cards" on Saturday, July 30, 2011.  Hope you can make it!