food chain

so it's time to start posting art stuff...images of my current projects. i've got one that's been in the works for about 6 or years - seriously. of course i forgot all about them for about 4 of those years - but no matter. after grad school i moved to dc for about a year and then cj and i moved to denver for year following that. we were exploring new territory to settle down. neither of those places were quite right for us, however during that time i was more prolific than any other time in my life. for the first time i really started to focus on drawing and encaustic work. i drew on every scrap of decent paper i could scrounge up and filled sketchbooks that had lived contented half full lives. i have bins of drawings and the walls in house are covered with some of the finished remnants.
anyway, a few months ago i came some of those sketchbooks and rediscovered a serious of about 10 drawings that to me, with fresh eyes, seemed to connect despite their separation by pages. i removed the pages from their bound home and laid them out on the floor and connected them together creating a creature made of beaks and claws, nibbling on web and sticks. here are a couple of glimpses of what's been started. i want to re-work parts of the drawing and really connect it and finish the lines that need it. eventually i'll colorize, print and laminate it. so far, i've just been looking at it from afar while it rests on the dining room table. soon....

and for the layout...at least the first version:

total chaos

i may be exaggerating but i feel like my little world of making art and being a mom is spinning a million miles an hour - and i'm just barely getting started. so many things are happening right now, i'm beginning to think that the past 4 years of not focusing on art-making are catching up with me like wild fire. developing and maintaining my etsy store been a wonderful and unpredictable ride. every day it seems, i receive emails and random inquiries that have led me to all sorts of opportunities that i never expected.

amidst, the etsy stuff, i've been working on my drawings - the digital elements and opening up my mind to promoting myself. blogging has become a part-time addiction - and by blogging, i mean reading other bloggers posts and clicking through the links and ads. what a great way to lose track of time. i'm officially trying to keep up to date with my own blog and during the lapse between the previous post and now, i've decided that this will be my process journal. i've experimented with so many processes and i like to try to remember how i got to where i am now from where i was before - of course i lose track of about 2/3 of the events that occurred during each creative experiment. accidents rule my world it seems...so far all have been good, so much so that i can't even begin to consider implementing more control.

the NEWS so i can look back on this time and know what it was i was doing with all my time. for starters, i've been invited to a fellow etsian's new brick and mortar gallery venture Pivot Gallery. Wendy - owner/artist is located in Covington, KY and is opening her new space august 1st. i can't wait to see the space once she opens. i'm sure she'll get some good publicity on one of the many blogs who love this kind of thing - at least i hope she does :) anyway, i'm sending her 6 panels, which has opened up room for new work in my studio.
so there's that, very exciting.

also, i decided to take out an ad on modish. it's a pretty big ad and it took a couple of weeks to create, but wow what a lot of fun it was to make. i was going to have cj do it, but being the determined do-it-yourselfer, i took it on. i learned a ton about imageready and have been applying it to the layout for my website. another huge project that i was going to attempt to do on my own, but the reality of the complexity of dreamweaver hit me pretty hard last week as i was cramming to get my website finished so my ad could link directly to it. by the end of day 3, and a substantial amount of depressing frustration, i gave up on trying to finish it in time. my new goal is to have the site up by aug 1st - much more realistic and i WILL be letting cj take over on that one. you can see the ad here: http://modish.typepad.com/

one morning last week i woke to a message from the Naughty Secretary Club who included me in her blog http://badassical.blogspot.com/ . i was shocked at the collection of imagery she put together. i was so excited to see other people sharing the same reticulated obsession including the author!

on another happy note, i have a table POPPYTALK from july 7th-aug 8th. the them is "home sweet home" and i'm really excited to see what come of that. jan and early the masterminds behind poppytalk have done a super job with their site and making it a snap to put the artist table together. here's a link to the market: http://poppytalkhandmade.com/ yay!

in august i'm planning to advertise on sfgirlbythebay - one of my favorite reads. so look for me there!

the purpose of it all

so i decided to start this blog to let those who are interested know a bit more about me and my artistic practice. it's almost a guarantee that non-artistic jibber-jabber will flow out of my hands into this work in progress, which can only enlighten my readers more as to what it is i'm all about.



right now, my practice is this...i draw every free second i get. it's a struggle for sure, but it's absolutely necessary for me to at least try. when i say draw, it's not what one might think of in a formal sense, it's really more like doodling - but that term is so degrading and it's really hard to take a person seriously when they describe something that is so personal to them as such. so, i draw and i take it seriously.



my father (in law) who is a gem of a guy, always gives me a hard time about most of the things i do - which is a reciprocal thing so there's no hard feelings. anyway, he always asks me (while i'm drawing) if i'm still "scribbling" or "scratching" away. hence the name of this blog, and the name of my etsy store ( http://www.scribblenscratch.etsy.com/ ), which i just launched and am OH so proud and excited about. it seems that blogging is the natural progression of artists (amongst other professions) who distribute their work or knowledge online, so here i am attempting to follow suit.



i hope to keep up with this as much as i can, or at least when i find something that's worth writing about. i'll definitely share my experiences and cool findings, so check back when you get a chance.

helloooo world