Whoa, check out the size of those needles! What a nice soft, cooshy rug that looks like it would make, though. See Flocks for larger pictures - click on the group of many sheep (18 to make this big rug). Wow!
You know what's frustrating? When you're doing beadwork and those pesky little beads jump out of your tweezers and fall onto the floor, never to be found again.
Bead-artist extraordinaire Liza Lou doesn't have that problem. Why? Because the floor is also made of beads. Oh, and so are the walls, counters, and everything on them.
Liza Lou is an Los Angeles-based artist who's first UK show is now on at the White Cube gallery, evoking mixed reactions from gallery-goers.
In the past, Liza Lou has created life-size kitchen and backyard made entirely out of beads - all surfaces covered with tiny glass beads that are painstakingly applied, one at a time, with tweezers. Now she's focusing on symbols of confinement, recreated in monochromatic beads. From the show's invitation:
Security Fence (2005) is a large scale cage made up of four steel, chain link walls, topped by rings of barbed wire and Cell (2004-2006), as its name suggests, is a room based on the approximate dimensions of a death row prison cell, a kind of externalized map of the prisoner’s mind. [...] For the execution of Cell, Lou further slowed down the process by using beads of the smallest variety with their holes all facing up in an exacting hour-by-hour approach in order to ‘use time as an art material’.
You can see photos of her earlier work here and read a review of her new show here.
[via The Guardian's Culture Vulture blog]
There was a "spontaneous" pillowfight in downtown Vancouver yesterday. I didn't bring my pillow as I was still sick with the flu, but I did bring my camera.
It was great - a crowd full of screaming, cheering, smiling people wielding pillows. Go Vancouver!
There's a short movie clip of the flight here, and here's a great flickr set, as well as here. Paf!
My friend and superartist Sonny Assu has a solo show opening in Vancouver next month. He's pretty busy these days, so I went over to his place last week to help with his prep for the show, sewing some buttons onto a new blanket piece. Check out some of his previous blanket craftiness here.
Sonny's cat helped with the sewing. He looks cute and harmless here, but the fluffy orange fur only serves to distracts you from his very sharp claws and his very, very sharp teeth. In fact, the bear in Sonny's garage was far less worrying than his cat.
Ok, so the bear is made of fiberglass. It's a Spirit Bear - a project much like Vancouver's orcas and Toronto's moose, which places animals decorated by local artists around town (or, in this case, around province) to amuse the tourists and raise money for charity.
Sony's bear will soon grace (or terrorize!) the streets of Prince George, BC this summer. In the Fall, it'll be auctioned off to raise money for children's charity. You can see some photos of the bear-in-progress here.
Lindsay's already figured out how to modify t-shirts on her own. But for those of us over on the west coast, they're running a workshop to teach us how.
Reworked Clothing Demo
Local fashion designer Melissa Ferreira who will host a demonstration on how to recycle vintage sweaters into fabulous fashions, as she does for her boutique clothing line, Adhesif. For anyone that has ever seen a reworked piece and thought ‘I can do that,’ this is your chance to learn the process of turning old clothes into new designs.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
1:45 pm – 2:15 pm
UBC Robson Square, Room C400
This workshop is part of 30 Days of Sustainability's Sustainability and You Marketplace, taking place from Friday, March 17 to Sunday, March 19, 2006 at UBC Robson Square in downtown Vancouver.
I was given this terrific Sharpie shirt as a gift awhile ago. It was purchased online, though, so when it arrived it turned out that "small" meant Men's, not Women's. I've been using it as a pyjama shirt while longing to wear it in the daytime. Tonight, I took action.
Turning it inside out, I used a favourite shirt to trace an outline (with a Sharpie... thought it was appropriate given the shirt in question, but it bled through... note for next time...). Then I cut and sewed and fiddled with the sleeves and neckline, and before I knew it... it fit! Not a bad start to my make-your-own t-shirt plan!
The Art Gallery of Ontario wants your artwork. Yeah, your's.
The AGO is attempting to host the largest collection of portraits ever assembled. Plus, it'll be their first exhibition created entirely by the public. Pretty awesome on both counts, if you ask me.
Send it a portrait before June 1st 2006, to be a part of the In Your Face exhibit, slated to opening July 1st. Get the details and submission form here.
...Which leads me to ... a shamless plug!
While you're busy making portraits, why not submit to the eye:hand coordination project, too? The details on that are here.
This week, March 13-19, is Brain Awareness Week. According to a press release, Brain Awareness Week was established by the Society for Neuroscience to promote public awareness of neuroscience research and an understanding of the brain and its functions.
To celebrate, crafty-style, pay a visit to the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art. It boasts "the world's largest collection of anatomically correct fabric art inspired by research from neuroscience and dissection."
Quilted PET and fMRI scanning! An anatomically accurate knitted brain! Now that's a creative education.
Two firsts: I knit with Alpaca wool (so, so soft) and I made a baby hat. My coworker is expecting in April, and we're going to have a mini-shower as part of our potluck this Thursday. My favourite part is the little knob on top, and it was much easier to make than I thought it would be!
I posted some photos of the Quilt Show here. Good times. The show's on for another week, then I have to find a home for my quilt - I think it'll either go in the pantry or in the living room.
Last weekend, I reupholstered my couch. The word 'reupholstered' sounds much more grandiose and complicated than what I did, since it involved no springs or staples or fancy reupholstery techniques. But still.
I bought my couch at a secondhand shop last year with the intention of recovering it. I really love the wooden frame, but the material was old and kind of gross. It was bunchy and loose and contained mysterious fibers. Each of the pillows also had velcro on one side, presumably so they would remain in place in the event of a living room tornado.
I've been keeping an eye out for material to recover my couch with for quite a while. Suffice it to say that the quantity of busy, floral and generally nasty patterns that people are expected to use on their couches is overwhelming. Why do fabric designers want people to have ugly couches? I eventually found a simple olive green fabric at Textile Clearance House - and true to the store's name, it was supercheap, only $3.50/metre! For the throw pillows, I used some fabric I had left over along with a patterned print that I love and bought on impulse while on holiday last September.
Here are the results... I'm happy with how it turned out. It feels much more inviting and fun. Plus my friends won't be allergic to the couch anymore!
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
After eight years of showing off drills, hammers and screwdrivers to their keen neighbours (and less-than-keen television viewers), the Canadian Tire couple is no more. The company switched advertising companies and dropped the handy duo from their ad campaigns.
Our national newspapers dutifully reported on the disappearance of the cultural icons. The Globe and Mail commented that, "loved by some and hated by many, the couple had transcended advertising into the realm of pop culture, where they were parodied by the likes of Royal Canadian Air Farce and This Hour has 22 Minutes." The National Post ran a fake obituary for the couple, which ends with the announcement that "there will be no memorial service for the couple, although there will be a giant yard sale."
The talented Leslie at Rubber Sol crocheted a pair of converse all stars booties. Cute! [Link via whipup.]
This reminds me of a rad onesie I saw when I was in Santa Barbara over the xmas holidays. Half-pint hipster!
Neko Case has a new album out today. She has a great voice and I've heard so many good reviews of her music, but I have yet to buy one of her albums. Until now.
Why? Well, I'd like to say it's because of artistic synergy, but it's more likely due to clever target marketing. Or both.
The thing is, Neko Case's new album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (love the title!), features artwork by the brilliant Julie Morstad. I went to her show at Atelier Gallery in Vancouver not too long ago, and loved it. Her art is delicate, enchanted and eerie. Little girls with hooved feet play with piles decapitated heads. A girl with overgrown, hairy, spidery arms sulks under a quilt in bed. A rabbit hands a girl with straw feet her arms, which have fallen off. Julie Morstad lulls you to sleep with gorgeous bedtime stories about the monsters hiding under your bed.
Now her art's on the cover of Neko Case's album - so I want to buy it. This has happened to me before - when Marcel Dzama did the cover for The Weakerthans' Reconstruction Site just before he got so popular and started making action figures. (Ok, I think that's pretty rad, too.) I love The Weakerthans and I love Marcel Dzama - how perfect could it be?
See more of Julie Morstad's art here.
Here's the press release about The Quilt Show - it opens tomorrow night. I'm curious and excited to see what others have created - and to see my quilt up on a wall...
If you're in Vancouver, check it out!
Have you ever painted yourself into a corner? How about crocheted yourself into a bag? Well, here's a movie of someone who has.
And now, moving from passive craft to the active (and activist), check out this video interview with Cat Mazza about her project, microRevolt, a series of art projects that combine knitting, machines, and digital social networks to educate about the sweatshop crisis.
As part of the project, the site offers a free program, knitPro, that you can use to transfer designs or logos into patterns that you can then knit, crochet, cross-stitch or latch-hook.*
While you're on the site, also sign the petition blanket that they are creating for Nike.
[Link via Rhizome via DV Blog]
(* On a completely selfish / obviously-not-as-important-as-fighting-against-sweatshops tangent, knitPro is awesome because ties into a thought that's been in the back of my mind for a few weeks now - about (A) how expensive and (B) how very ugly most rugs are, and (C) how I could possibly make my own. And if you're wondering why I am even considering making a rug - and I mean a large, several-feet-wide rug - read my post about lists below. See, I told you: there are always new projects!)
This is an interesting article on Land+Living about how artists are reacting to Detroit's urban decay.
A couple of weeks ago, I signed up at 43Things.com. I'm always keeping track of things I want to do - from Buying Groceries to Deciding What To Do With My Life. There's always something new to add to the list. So I figured 43 Things would be a good way to keep track of a segment of the things I want to learn and accomplish.
Then I watched Love That Boy. This movie should be required watching for anyone who's ever said "I'll put that on the list". It's a beautiful film, both in terms of the story (quirky and cute: my fave) and visually - I love the colours and aesthetics of the film. (There are so many Canadian movies that treat colour amazingly. Hmm, I should start of list of them...)
It's all about Phoebe, a girl who wants to accomplish so much before she graduates from university. Her To Do List covers everything from reading the Old Testament to sewing a grad dress; from finding a boyfriend to spinning wool and knitting a sweater. There's an awful lot of craft on the list, which is probably a reason why I liked the movie so much. I know I'm not quite as obsessive and accomplishment-hungry as Phoebe, but I certainly relate to her desire to do, learn and try it all.
After watching Love That Boy, I'm still planning to persist with my 43 Things list - as well as the many other lists that I maintain.
What about you? Are you already 43-Things-ing? Share your list.
Last October, Canongate Books launched an international competition to find an illustrator for a new edition of Yann Martel’s Man Booker-prizewinning novel Life of Pi.
Starting with about 600 entries, they've narrowed it down to a shortlist of 15. The winner will be announced in April.
Check out the shortlisted entries here (click on the link called "Life of Pi competition shortlist").
I haven't read the book yet, but it's on my List, mostly just cause it's so famous. Have you read it? Which illustrator do you think should win?
Posts
All Comments
© Blogger template Shush by Ourblogtemplates.com 2009
Back to TOP
