Columbus Arts Festival

This big festival happens once a year but this is the firs time in a very long time that is has come back to it home on the river front. The hubby and I rode our bike's as it is a very well attended event and we didn't want to deal with the parking lots in the area. On the way there we spied some amazing temporary artwork pillared on the posts of bridge.

Laser cut plywood that reminded me of the grand Cathedrals that we saw while in our honeymoon in Europe.

As we rode our bikes up I could see all the vendors tents lining the bridges

It was a gorgeous day with some overcast and the people were out in full throng!

This was some local art I spied in the "BIG LOCAL TENT" that was set up with groups such as:

Mother Artists at Work

OAL- Ohio Art League

Columbus Crafty Cotillion

Cloud Haus

Cap City Creatives

Etsy Team Columbus

CAW

Idea Foundry

(I'm sorry if I missed anyone)

I'm really Interested in this women's artwork so I had to take some photos to remember it and remember to look her up when I have some more disposable funds. 

Mary Ann Crago

Of course there is the food, which I really hate to put on my blog but the little potatoes above were just too pretty in their colors to not get snapshot. The lobster roll below with it's green cucumbers and bright red lobster flesh complimented each other so well. Both of these were from one of my favorite dining restaurants in town Deep Wood.

No street fair is complete without a crazy musician and Cheese sticks.

I look forward to this summer's Comfest and the Columbus Food Truck and Cart Fest!

Back in the Day

Once upon a time I was a sculpture student.  This was my passion before fashion.  I actually tricked myself into thinking of fashion as sculpture to make it less painful when I switched majors.  Funny that I went into fashion thinking it a better future career choice when I didn't want to go into the full industry but ended up wanting to work for or as an independent.  I could of just stuck to sculpture.  I used to have these huge marvelous dreams about creating marble fountains for parks.  Probably didn't help that I was at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago at the time they were building Millennium Park.

The above picture is from my first 3-D class.  I think it was maybe the second or third project into the class.  We had to make these miniature forms from wood scraps and then double them.  I got excited and went a bit bigger I think I went 400% bigger.  The finished sculpture from wood, chicken wire, burlap bags and plaster was 8x6x5'.  It made it into the freshman gallery presentation but there was no way to move it.

These are polaroids from when I was doing visuals with Anthropologie in NYC after college.  That was one of my favorite jobs ever.  This was a project where my boss said "the theme is Alice in Wonderland, here are books, make me a jacket".  What could of been better then combining the two things I was passionate about sculpture and fashion. 

These were just some old photos I found while going through stuff for another competition/audition what have you for yet another reality TV show type thing.  I've already been through the Project Runway loop, this is for something different.  I made it to round two the video submissions so we shall see if anything pans out.  I'm not holding my breath too much though.  I'm still intent on Grad school and getting two more applications out.  Cheers!

Art21

Recently I started to watch this PBS series called Art21 that my friend Jessimi told me about.  It is FANTASTIC!  If you are into art and want to know more about 21st century artists and what makes them tick these mini documentaries are the ticket.  I was especially moved by Ann Hamilton, she is a bit of local legend in art but I was never really motivated to learn more about her until I saw this.  In the first five minutes of her presentation I was floored with how similar our artistic views on fabric and fibers were connected as well as our influences by word and thread.  She basically put into words all my feelings for my artwork.  I am the kind of person that avoids mass popularity and opinion in all things, I believe in experiencing it for myself and making my own judgement.  This has been in all things from music, food, art and movies.  That is the reason why I never explored the genius of Ann Hamilton previously.  Now even if I don't get into grad school I still want to make it a goal of mine to meet with her and perhaps participate in one of her projects.

Her video work reminds me a lot of one of the directions I want to follow with my own work.  Recently while doing my new portfolio I made this raw video of the creation of my Neuron time based piece.  This was after all the stitches were sewn, where I am slowly pulling out the supporting threads and had no idea of the end result and if it would even stay together.


I am very excited for the possibilities in my future artwork.

Tiny Works

 I don't know if it's because I am tiny that I have been working in super tiny and smaller in format pieces.  It's very opposite from college when I was the smallest person working on the most gargantuan of sculptures.  My first 3D piece as a freshman at SAIC was 8x4x6' it would of been entered into the freshman gallery show except that there was no way to transport it out of the room into the transport truck.

Currently I am working on a visual interpretation of neurons over periods of time.  The longer more spread out ones are when I am more at rest while the clusters involve a lot more thoughtfulness and productivity.  I'm about halfway done with it and it has been about 15 hours into it.  I can't wait to finish this and then pull out the colored holding stitches.  I plan to do this again depending how it turns out with a better log of the times and activities that were going on around me as I worked on this. 

I have come to a little bit of a sense of peace as the Grad application for OSU quickly approaches.  If I don't get in this year I'll try again next year and I will just continue to work on things as much as I can.  I'm also opening myself up to applying to SCAD in Savannah and seeing what will happen there.  Our lives are boundless so we shouldn't let ourselves be restricted by thoughts of can't but allow ourselves the possibilities and instead look for solutions to the things that we feel are holding us back.

I put a penny up against it for a perspective of how small this work really is.  I need to think about that in terms of photographing it for my portfolio.

You can see I have nearly made the halfway mark in the fabric.

TiLT

Happy Thursday!  This has been a week of little annoyances mostly due to this never ending cough.  The cold is gone but the cough persists and it is hot here in Columbus.  Sadly it seems like we missed another spring entirely and were dropped off right into summer.  Aside from the cough and the headaches it is giving me life is pretty good.  We are hitting the wedding things full steam once again and I am seriously working on my wedding dress after the hiatus.  My classes for Draping & Pattern Drafting started again this week at CCAD for the summer so that will keep me busy two nights of my week until August.

 

1. Winged Sandals. I saw these sandals for sale in Chicago at Belmont Army Surplus and now I am obsessed.  Unfortunately they will never come in my size (5) and they are sold out everywhere online.  They are from Irregular Choice and I think they are actual sandals from last summer.  Still super cute and I hope someone out there see's this and remakes these beauties

 2. Swatch.  I am a big fan of Swatch watches.  I try to get a new one every year.  They are relatively cheap, classic analog style watches with fun and sometimes funky designs.  This new one I picked up is a baby blue with extra long watch band that wraps around the wrist. They come in an assortment of other candy colors!

3. Delicate Knitted Sculptures.  This knitted bridge is amazing!  I have been holding onto the images waiting for the right time to post them.  I can get so much inspiration from just this one piece.  I love how tiny it is yet the shadow it casts with the lighting is so much larger and it still holds all the details of each strand of yarn.  It reminds me a lot of my friend Alissa Sorenson's work.

4. Needle felted Creatures.  I love how there is a influx of needle felted creatures that are not necessarily cute but they are fun to look at.  I can't figure if the person intended the one above to look like a hopeful sperm in a tube or just a specimen.  The attack of the lambs on the wolf below is one of my favorites.

5. Artistic Homages to Animations.  This is a ceramic Raku fired Howl's Moving Castle. Howl's Moving Castle is one of my favorite all time Anime movies.  The detail in this piece is amazing and you can see her whole progress right here.

Hats of Fancy

I feel a bit like a thief!  Majority of these photos are from Style Rookie, whom today has an incredibly delightful and open post about what it was like to sit next to Anna Wintour in a fashion show and being introspective on herself.  

Anyways that is not what my post is about.  Mine is actually pretty asinine in comparison but these are hats that I fell in love with from her blog.  I wish I had more reasons to wear cooky hats.  I have one little bow hat that I bring out once in a while to wear mismatched with a t-shirt and converse. Here is me and the hat on New Year's Eve on my crappy camera phone.

Now onto the gorgeous hats!

I think this one is layers of silk organza.  It is such a quietly dramatic piece, you really need to visualize the size of the hat when it is on a person crown to get the full effect.  It reminds me so much of this dress I spied while looking at wedding dress alternatives and bridesmaid options at Modcloth.

This hat reminds me of a the fish bones I find on the beach when we go to our friend's lake  house in Virginia.  Not at all disgusting but fascinating.  It looks like woven wood makes up this piece.  I wish I had another angle so I could see how it fastens to the head.

To me it looks like basket woven feathers.  So light and airy but at the same time it holds an uncanny feeling of density especially with the lopsided positioning on the head.

These two above and below are some of my favorites.  Back in college I would have dreams when I was double focusing in fashion and sculpture of making hats just like these for my future fashion shows.  I still dream about trying to create the bottom version in a mask form for some Halloween.

This was another hat that you just needed to see the entire ensemble to understand it's scale to the body which makes it that much more fantastic.  Not to mention that is one breathtaking dress!  If offered that dress i would wear it in an instant for my wedding.  But I'll just keep dreaming (ha).

More woven wooden wonders

All of Style Rookie's Photo's were from the "Accent on Fashion" exhibit in Antwerp.  

You can see her post here.

This is hat that is actually attainable through the BHLDN site.