New Work from Me & My Allies

As a proud alum of Public Allies Pittsburgh, an AmeriCorps program that identifies diverse young adults and prepares them for leadership in the non profit sector, I was thrilled to participate in a show featuring work and performances by Allies of the past and present. The show, Which ran at The Mr. Roboto Project during the month of March, allowed me to exhibit some new mixed media work in screen print, water-color and marker.

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Interested in seeing the show? You have one more week to visit Roboto and see work by 6 awesomely talented Allies, who are now shaking things up in this beautiful city of ours in various, non profit professions. All of the work pictured available for purchase.

Thanks to Kristi Jan Hoover  for snapping these shots during the March 2nd Gallery crawl.

a little help from my ‘Love of Friends’

Valentines Day has not been stupid for the past three years. This is for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons is Love of Friends. I’m one of the lucky people who gets to hang out once a month- plan a party- support a great cause and ultimately contribute to the “taking back of Valentines Day” This year I got provide a design and my L.O.V.E. for printing for the annual Valentines Day goody.  Here is a  peak of the print that will be given out at the party on Feb. 14th. See you there, please.

‘Light it up’ print, Varied Edition, blue.

‘Light it up’ print, Varied Edition, grey/gold.

‘Light it up’ print, Varied Edition, red.

seeing patterns.

The last couple weeks have been admittedly crazy. Its a really good thing that I can always find space to just sketch or make simple patterns. Just a little something to keep my brain alive.

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little bit of growth

sprig

HOOT

Last month I was honored to be asked to decorate and create custom screen prints for WYEP Pittsburgh Public Radio‘s annual Holiday Hootenanny. The Hootenanny is an annual holiday concert Benefitting Youth Education at WYEP. I was Happy find out that the Hoot would be held at the beautiful beautiful beautiful New Hazlett theater and decided to create four HUGE recycled fabric chandelier-y things. I also created a couple large banners, and a whole bunch of wintery screen prints ( complete with some hand drawn patterning).

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I had a whole lot of fun, filling my apartment with cut and dyed fabric and the room ended up looking really wintery and festive for the event (see pictures of the event here) . I even got to share the stage with the wonderful Ben Hardt of New Victorians to sing an awesome new years tune.  Please feel free to watch me giggle nervously next to Ben Hardt’s suave moves OR just click to the end to see a larger view of  my work >>>

Sketchbook

I’ve been sketching my brains out lately. From greeting cards, to scarves, to prints and patterns: I have no shortage on ideas on projects I could begin.

Here is a peak at a couple  drawings that I hope will some day exist in the world outside my sketchbook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Iron city

After finding rolls of fuzzy fabric of the unknown variety, I  grabbed some scraps and started experimenting. My next discovery was that the scraps were iron on! I KNOW!

SO here is a work in progress from what I anticipate is going to be my next series of iron-on textiles.

Big Kid Tye Dye

I decided to try my hand at a shibori dye process.  This Japanese dye technique is the process of binding, stitching, folding, and twisting fabric before dipping in a dye bath, or… big kid tie dye.

Kumo shibori is a twist and bind resist technique. This technique involves wrapping sections of the cloth over a found object, usually small stones or pebbles. I chose a handful of gravel from the Union Project parking lot.

Wrap tie and repeat

The result: A bolt of a more sculptural fabric with rings of light blue color variation.

finished shibori fabric

Much more dying and bluer hands to come.

Brambling Braid

Brambling Braid, screen print with water color on paper

Everything we keep quiet and close…

 Although the abstract forms in my piece have little resemblance to anatomical parts such as the amygdala, the imagery describes a sort of cause and effect of inefficient communication and advocates for the power of healthy argument.

 

“A look into the brains of normal subjects revealed that anger increases blood flow to a reasoning part of their brains, an area over the left eye just behind the forehead, technically called the orbitofrontal cortex. This flow inhibits thoughts of rage. At the same time, blood flow increased activity in the amygdala, an almond-shaped knot of tissue deep in the brain that deals with emotion and vigilance. Angry feelings arising in the amygdala are normally cooled by activity in the frontal cortex, part of the thinking region of the brain. However, in some severely depressed people a lack of both recognition and control of anger, can lead to violent rage. Source

Everything we keep quiet and close...

eventually explodes

eventually explodes (detail)

Growing Roots

Shown as a part of ‘Private, Public, Personal’.  This series of screen printed and embroidered fabric over photography, juxtaposes the image of arms, hands and fingers over several types of root systems.

Tubular Root (arm), 2010

Tubular Root (hand), 2010

Strand Root (hand), 2010