Illustrated Tuesdays #3

Every year, my family and I take a trip to the Paradise City Arts Festival in Northampton, MA. We almost always walk away with two or three really beautiful works of art, and after seeing the incredible work showcased by local artists and crafts-people, it's hard not to walk away with some inspiration as well. Last year I was lucky enough to meet Will at this festival, and make the life-changing decision to take his workshop in Italy. This year, I met Carrie Jacobson. 

As soon as I walked into Carrie's stall, I audibly gasped. Her paintings have this amazing impasto quality to them, which she achieves by painting entirely with a palette knife. The palette knife also allows her to bring little spots of color, little "happy accidents" into parts of the painting that you wouldn't necessarily think to put them. My parents bought me this piece as a gift, and it looks absolutely gorgeous in our apartment. I'm absolutely obsessed with it. I just love how thick and juicy the paint looks on the canvas, and how beautifully these colors work together. 

Carrie Jacobson also creates some really fun pet portraits--some of which are charitable donations to various adoption centers, and some of which are commissioned by pet owners. I decided to try my own animal portrait in the same style, using only a palette knife. Controling the thick globs of paint with such a bulky instrument is much harder than it looks, but it's a lot of fun. It kind of brings me back to those satisfying finger-painting days of kindergarten. I'm still not sure that I succeeded, since I cheated and used a small brush for parts of the eyes, ears, and nose. I'm amazed at Carrie's skill with these portraits. I guess I'll just have to keep trying. Maybe next time I'll try a landscape instead! 

Oil on canvas. Joa Stenning, 2011.

P.S. - Please check out more of Carrie's work over at her blog, "The Accidental Artist"!
http://carriejacobson.blogspot.com/

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"Things That Are Awesome" Thursday: Thanksgiving Edition

I have quite a lot to be thankful for this year. I'm thankful to be going home to see my family, thankful to spend the holiday with them and with my stellar boyfriend, and thankful to snuggle this creature for the next 48 hours:

"Frody," ink and watercolor. Joa Stenning 2010. 

I'm thankful to have such wonderful friends and family surrounding me, today and every day. I'm thankful to have a steady job, a happy home, a craft-room of my very own, delicious food in my belly, and fulfilling projects to work on all season long (outside of the office, of course). I am glad that we have this day set aside to remind us of how lucky we are, and how grateful we should be. There are plenty of others in this world who are not fortunate enough to have any of these things, and I almost never remember to be grateful for the wonderful life I have.

Sorry for the overwhelming sap of this post. Let's take all this seriousness down a notch. Here is a sketch of my niece, Cori, standing in front of a giant macaroni at Faneuil Hall last fall. 

Pen and ink. Joa Stenning 2010. 

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DIY Matting & Framing: An Adventure of Sorts

Very recently I made the decision to mat and frame my own work. And by that, I mean that I decided to mat my own work so that my pieces will fit into standard-sized, cheap-but-hopefully-not-cheap-looking frames. One look at the framing tools on the Utrecht website makes my wallet tremble with fear. Plus, that glass cutting tool doesn't look too friendly for the accident-prone crafter. Regardless, I was determined to save myself some money on custom matting and framing, and with the birthday money I'd received from friends and family I bought myself a Logan Compact mat cutter for my craft room.

Looks easy enough, right?

After breezing through the manual and watching a couple of demos on Youtube, I thought "Ok, this is pretty straight forward. How hard could this possibly be?" Well, let me tell you...it's stressful at first. And that's putting it lightly, as I'm sure my boyfriend will tell you after witnessing the stompy, hair-pulling tantrums I threw. I ruined probably two full sheets of mat board until I realized that all of my initial measurements were incorrect. The mat cutter is only accurate if you're not too busy being a total idiot and making all of your measurements incorrectly. To my credit, I did find out through this process that my piece-of-shit IKEA table is not, in fact, a real rectangle. It has to be some kind of trapezoid, because any time I used any corner to line up my T-square, I came out with a piece of mat board that was at least a full eighth of an inch off on one side. 

A finished piece! My 11" x 15" oil painting, matted for a 16" x 20" frame.

Once I'd figured out that my table was crap, and started measuring off of the paper itself with my drafting triangles, the process was incredibly easy. I started whipping out fully cut mats, with beautifully beveled openings in 15 minutes or less. Maybe it would have been easier for me had I been the kind of person that actually reads directions (what!). Or, maybe it would've been easier if I'd had a table to measure off of that was ACTUALLY SQUARE (a novel idea). Truthfully, the biggest help was an excel spreadsheet that my lovely, smart, logically-minded boyfriend suggested making (see below). I can just plug in the length and width of my piece, the length and width of a standard-sized frame, and the formulas at the end will tell me how large my margins will be. This is definitely helpful, and takes away a lot of time that may otherwise be spent measuring and trying to visualize the finished product. 

That formula is basically the same for the Side Margins, replacing C2 with D2 and A2 with B2.

So, will this mat cutter save me time in the long-run? Yes, most definitely. Will it save me money in the long-run? Supposedly. Am I happy with my $80 birthday present to myself? I think so. I think that this purchase is totally worth it for anyone who has a lot of irregularly-sized work that they do not want to spend extra money to have matted and framed--especially if they're looking to sell their work, and they have to factor in that cost to the product's price. If you're just starting out as an artist (like me) and most of your work is a standard size, you may be better off buying pre-cut mats for $1.99 a piece. You may spend marginally more than I did to cut mine, but not much. 

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Fine Art Fridays #3: Assemblages

During my first year at Emerson College (back when I thought I’d make my fame and fortune as an actor), I had to take a painting class with Boston-area scenic artist & designer Tim Jozwick to fulfill my stage-craft requirements. I’d never had any particularly strong interest in art or design up until that point, but that scenic painting class with Tim completely changed the course of my college career and ultimately changed my life. It was because of that class that I decided to take every Tim Jozwick course I could possibly fit into my schedule before graduating—and thus, my concentration as a Scenic and Props Designer came to be. It all just fell into place, and I couldn’t be happier about it. It’s because of my lessons with Tim and with my Props mentor Ron DeMarco that I am both able and inspired to make the art that I make.

 I came across this picture the other day somewhere on my hard drive, and was reminded of a lesson Tim gave us in taking a simple string of words and turning it into a fully realized work of art. Tim had just introduced the class to some animations by the Brothers Quay, who do these incredibly intricate, dark, eerie animations involving the use of many small household items for their characters and set-pieces. In this assignment, Tim asked us to create an assemblage (similar in style to the work of the Brothers Quay) that personifies a given sentence. The sentence he gave me was “I look damn good in a hat,” and I decided to create a self-portrait of sorts (below). I was really happy with it, though I couldn’t really find a container that I liked. I ended up carrying her around for a day in a big pink suitcase, and then when I took her home she sat on my bookshelf like a traditional bust.

"Little Joa," as I like to call her, is made out of an assortment of items. I chose to use an antique clock as the base because the ticking would be similar to a beating heart. I attached a hanger so that she'd have shoulders to wrap in a big, cozy Cosby sweater--which is decorated with a button of the 'Cos himself, as well as a Glinda the Good Witch button that says, "It's nice to see me, isn't it?". On the opposite shoulder is a little bird figurine, which reminds me a bit of Disney princesses and their animal helpers. Little Joa's head is made of roses and computer chips--I think that my intention there (this was a couple years ago so I'm rusty) was that my brain is constant conflict with itself, torn between following my emotions or my logic/reason. She has a little Hawaiian umbrella for a mouth, because I'm a social creature who's extroverted and likes a good party. Her hair is made out of an old audio tape of "The Police," which I think I was really into at the time? She also has little glasses, plastic rimmed like mine. And of course, the bowler hat. It seems a little out of place because it is--the truth of the matter is, I do NOT look damn good in a hat. I look pretty ridiculous, so I wanted to pick a hat that was a little ridiculous.

 Ron does a similar assignment for his classes, asking students to create an every-day object by using more, smaller, un-related ever-day items—though the creations in Ron’s class are much less terrifying than anything made by the Brothers Quay. They’re a bit more like the assemblage above. I would love to continue to work in this medium, however time-consuming it may be. I think this work speaks to both the painter and the props master in me, because it allows me to create something brand new out of something old, something that tells a story in three dimensions--and, it gives me an excuse to keep all of the old weird crap I've collected over the years. So long as I don't end up on Hoarders, I think it'd be great.

Thinking Warm Thoughts

Western Mass was hit with an epic snowstorm this past week, leaving almost every home in the area without power and, more importantly, without heat. In the past few months, my family has had to endure more bizarre natural disasters than any land-locked New England family should ever expect to endure. We didn’t choose this climate for its tornadoes or its debilitating storms. If we’d wanted that kind of weather, we’d live in tornado country. My mother, who is usually the strongest and most impenetrable force known to man, finally lost it with this one. “Can we go back to Rome now?” she pleaded. While I can’t bring her back to Rome, I figured I could at least post some more Italy paintings to remind her of how beautiful, sunny, and warm it was at the villa. Hopefully that will make her feel better and not worse! 

Oil on canvas paper. Joa Stenning, Sept. 2011.

Oil on gesso-ed mat board. Joa Stenning, Sept. 2011.

I made the picture above by mushing layer upon layer of thick paint onto gesso-ed mat board, and then wiping away the excess with a cloth. The trees and roughage were also added by dipping a corner of the cloth into some paint/liquin mixture and, for lack of a better term, "smushing it in." I like the foggy, soft effects created by that process, and I'd love to try it again. Maybe for an ocean scene? 

Oil on gesso-ed mat board. Joa Stenning, Sept. 2011.

This last painting was one of the very first that I made on a bright red canvas. That's another one of Will McCarthy's secrets (see "chippies" in this post), painting on a red canvas or canvas board. It's extremely frustrating at first because the paint doesn't soak in quite as well, but it punches the colors up a bit and can create some really great texture. 

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