Moar Art Shows and Photo Gigs
I had another art show last week with Cannibal Flower. I'm on their list, so if I can keep up I'll continue to be in their shows. I knew which photo I wanted to hang (this one from Seattle), but I was planning on looking for an ornate frame to juxtapose the photo itself when Ish gave me the idea of designing the frame myself with pipes and such.
It was a really fun project to work on. Dad helped with a lot. We started off distressing a block of wood by burning it, chopping and banging the sides, and rolling the face over nails and screws. We had purchased some pipes, a hose bib and a flush handle, all of which we aged. The hose bib turned out to have a layer of protective lacquer over it which explains why it was such a pain in the ass to age. Seriously we tried everything, until I read online about letting it soak over night in lacquer thinner. After that, we were able to age it with an ammonia fume treatment in minutes. Once all the pieces were secured to the wood, I wheat-pasted the photo and voila it was complete.
Then I needed a name.
Considering how little of the project was original, I decided to ask for help in naming it. That and I just suck at naming things. Also I kind of just wanted to have fun with it and mock how seriously people take art at these shows. I wanted the most pretentious name possible. Thanks to the help of some friends on Twitter, we came up with this: "In Repose: Portrait of a Neolithic Interior Fixture of Modern Disposable Culture".
It was beautiful.
Now that that's over I've got another art show with Tannis down at Pilates and Arts coming up in April. The theme is Nature and Nurture, although she's always flexible about that so I'm still deciding what to show.
Starting tomorrow I'm going to be working a long project for my friend Alethea. Yarn Crawl LA is coming up and she's asked if I would go around to certain knit shops and photograph them for the Yarn Crawl website. We've already got 4 lined up for the next two days. It's nothing I haven't done before, so it'll be pretty simple. She also asked if, during the actual four day event, I'd go to ask many shops as I can and photograph. I'm off for two of the four days, so I'm sure I'll be able to get in a good amount. She's also paying me for the photos, which I think means this is my first officially paying gig. It also means more publicity for me since more of my photos will be online outside of Bridge to Books and my library. I really need to get cranking on my website.
Speaking of, both Eric and I have been crazy busy lately: I've been preparing the above piece for the art show, while Eric's working with Shredder's Lair skate company on their video to premiere in April. That said, we haven't had time to work on anything related to getting my site or Etsy up. So hopefully around summer time. Needless to say, I haven't made any earrings either.