You Left Some Stars In My Belly.

Hey all you crazy Star-crossed lovers!

Here are some artistic experiments I have created recently:

Plaster-Filled Black Velvet Dress. I am currently painting black house paint over the plaster spilled spots in the center. I think I might use this one for my Senior Show next semester...

I am going to lay it just like this in the show. It will just be more polished. I love that it looks like a dead mound of flesh in a fancy dress [click to enlarge].


Paper Dresses Galore!!


....office supply paper too.
Waitress checks, "Admit One" tickets, and carbon receipt paper....

I want to give the waitress check dress a large victorian bustle in the back - playing a little bit with the idea of "women in servitude." I've left it alone the last week thought because I was getting frustrated sewing the paper. Frustration while sewing delicate things is no good, it usually leads to tearing, slicing, and dicing. So I put it away for awhile so it'd be safe from The Monster (Me!).

From Dresses to Organic Paper Shapes:

Using ironed wax paper, old book pages, and sketchbook paper....

My printmaking professor just gave me a Bill O'Reilly book to use in these experiments. I must admit it will feel nice to tear the "bold fresh guy" a new one.

I'm really liking the concept of repetition right now. And cutting/sewing. Well, we all know how I feel about sewing already. It's my first love - after being silly of course!

My next piece/experiment involves a fancy dress bottom with a garbage bag stretched across for a top and then vice versa. I want to try to be subtly creepy (as with most of my work) with it.
Here's the sketchbook version [Right Side]:





Here's some tones for your lobes:


I am currently in love with Antony Hegarty from Antony & The Johnsons. As a transgendered person, he is completely androgynous in both voice and appearance. You can't be sure whether you are witnessing a person singing or some angelic event taking place.
Of course, that's not him in the above video, but here he is in a dress rehearsal for Marina Abramovic's newest performance "The Life & Death Of Marina Abramovic" at a festival in Manchester. [I do not own nor did I make this video, You can view that person's youtube channel here. I appreciate them putting the performance online though. I wish I could have been there to see it!]


I am off to make more organic paper objects and dresses. This is why it takes me forever to post things, but at least you will know that I deliver the goods when I do!

Oh and did I mention that my hair is blue right now? Because it is. It's blue. Yes. Yay. Hooray.
XO.

I Am My Mother's Only One/It's Enough...

Ok I know, I know it's been ages. But if you only knew the adventures/busy bee times I have been having! New Semester! Yay. Second-to-last, if I might nervously add.

I hope everyone's holidays were great! Mine were so lazy. I needed it. A little R&R craft-makin and movie watching with the mamabird.

So here's a summary of my work last semester [at least the work I consider finished and viewable]:

the 150 lb plaster sculpture. I loaded that bastard home all by my lonesome. I am a beast!! And just to help you imagine the size of the large sculpture, the smaller plaster piece underneath it is about a basketball and a half.





This is only the work from 2 of my classes last semester. We could compile every single piece I did, but let's face it - these are the best pieces; the ones I like the most and some of them will be in my show next semester. Mostly the last three.

This semester I am taking Sculpture II (Again! Yay!), Painting III (Again! Yay! And I'm actually painting again....bwhhattt!?), 399 Individual Instruction, and Printmaking II. I am totally learning how to screenprint and I'm really excited about it.

My newest challenge will be making new "clothes" pieces out of materials other than fabric. So far, I have the idea of using dried house paint (peeled and sewn together), polyurethane, latex, glaze, ticket stubs, waitress paper pads, etc. If I wanted to be cliche, I would make a dress out of tampons, but I just don't know if I feel cliche right now. Maybe old bike tire rubber? So many options. Basically, the challenge is to start developing an idea of why I'm using the materials I'm using. Before I was using fabric because I liked it, it was around, and it was free. Now I need to make the sculptures/forms go past just what they look like and also make sense to the entire piece by what they are made from. If you're feeling baffled by the explanation, don't worry Me Too. Bottom line: it's time to start experimenting again. Last time I experimented it was with flour and water, pantyhose, newspaper, cardboard, zippers, and anything with lots of fibers I could get my hands on.

I want my work to feel like how this song makes me feel. I've been posting this video on everything (Ashley & Andy, you guys created a Los Campesinos! Monster), but it's just so great. Honest and Dark. That's how I want to kick it this semester.

I just bought a can of paint, color called "country white." It made me think of cotillions and debutantes and all that stupid shit fancy mothers think their fancy daughters should do. All the more reason to make something offensive out of it.

Alright current semester. Let's do this.



XO.

"And PS I love You Like The Song, I Love You Like In The Song."

Sick Day Today. And yesterday, actually. I haven't had a normal 98.6 temperature in about 2 days. I think the highest it has gotten today was 96.6. Yesterday it started out at 94.8. I am so not kidding either. I feel like an alien in my own body. I cannot function at all. Did I mention on of my tonsils is swollen? Yay.

So, I am taking it easy. Reading a little bit of the Hunger Games (#2 That I borrowed from the lovely Kathleen, Carl's wife - OMG Girl, we need to talk about the book and I need the 3rd one too please?!) and brushing up on the book Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and The Future. I'm also listening to the soundtrack from the film I Am Sam. Composed by John Powell, it's one of my very favorite pieces of music (If you want some crazy Katie trivia for your day: my favorite composer of all-time [so far] is Thomas Newman. He did films such as Finding Nemo and Revolutionary Road) and the movie is pretty good too :)

....listen to John Powell's love of the strings and how even the most delicate of melodies can influence a scene - with no words whatsoever. Beautyful.

My ultimate sick day film, however, is Corrina, Corrina. I used to watch it every chance I got when I was a kid, sometimes I'd even fake sick from school and just have movie day with myself (I never do that now....shifty eyes). It makes me feel better.

....in this scene, the protaginist (Ray Liotta)'s wife has just died and he has hired a new housekeeper to watch his little girl (yes, that's the girl from Napoleon Dynamite) who turns out to be a crazy (Joan Cusack). Enter Whoopi Goldberg for the win. And one of my favorite films of all time.

Here is some art in progress, which I will work more on tomorrow when I'm feeling myself again:

Dont' be alarmed, it is the same piece. The picture on the right is the most current. I made it (left), then after some hefty critique from my loverly teachers and myself at school, I started to notice some inconsistencies about it. So it is still in progress. The lighting will definitely stay as dramatic as the photo on the left, I'm just not finished yet!

It is a piece about my parent's marriage.

When I asked my mother how she felt being married to my dad (after the first couple happy years, when he started to be really terrible), the first phrase that came out of her mouth without hesitation was, "I felt chained" to which she added, "I felt tied down, censored, trapped."

So, I've assembled a chain around her neck made from the very nightgown she is wearing. They are both caught up in a subtle, but still violent series of chicken wire pieces, which is what his insides are also made of. There was a struggle/fight from my mom, but not until after they had been married for about 20 years. The wounds took time to create.

Stay tuned for the finished product.

Alright, well I am going to go watch another movie. Maybe try to eat? We'll see how that goes. Otherwise - sketching, moviewatching, reading, and poetry win out for the night. I love all of you out there reading this. Go create something. Keep your heads held high. XO.

Needle In The Camel's Eye.

Here is my plastercanvas sculpture's progress through photos:

[that looks like crystals, but really it's just excess water beading through the surface. It's nerdy, but I love to just sit there and watch it. Click to Enlarge.]











Hatch says one more pour and we can turn it upright again! Then the real work begins. Not to mention that he said after this is all said and done the finished work will be about 150 lbs. WOW. And drool.

Oh, and PS those spots are mold and I'm thinking about sealing them on the piece. I like the patterns that have been created at random. And pink mold!? Who knew.

Beyond plaster, here are some other sculptures in my world recently - I've come to adopt t-shirts to my newest work. And screens:
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[the one laying on the backpack is still in progress, but it's a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt I got in Washington D.C.]

For my next sewing with clothes endeavor, I was thinking of working on this bright pink prom dress I found in my closet. I thrifted it a few years back for some lame banquet that I don't even remember. But it's so bright pink and happy, I think I could really tear the shit out of it, add wire frames, and make it super creepy. Until then, here's some jam for your brains [this week is a-mite glam rock-y. What can I say? I've been addicted since I was 14 and used to wear glitter under my eyes like Bowie & Bolan]:

...I'd just like to say that I love this Lou Reed song so much that I almost missed the bus to campus the other day because I was singing it in my car. Very Loudly, in fact....didn't even see the bus coming.....

XO.

Some day You Will Ache Like I Ache.....My Influences List:

As mentioned in my last post [Click to read if you're lazy and don't wanna scroll down.] I am going to list my artistic influences and music/writer/movie influences for your reading pleasure. Plus, if my sketchbook ever gets lost, combusts, etc., this will be recorded on here and I can come back and read as well:

ARTISTS: [And What I Like About Their Respective Work]

[Pages From My Sketchbook. Click to Enlarge.]

1. Lee Bontecou

* organic shapes, autobiographical, the statements her work made about war, politics, being a woman in the 1960s, rhythm, autobiography, her drawings are as a free-spirited as her sculptures.

2. Barbara Hepworth [See this Month's Inspiration!]

* round organic shapes, simplicity, boldness as a woman in the art world.

3. Kiki Smith

* dealing with the figure, "what it's like to be a woman", organic shapes, boldness, use of plaster, use of material, rhythm of the figure.

4. Frida Kahlo

* colors used, autobiographical, deals with all issues in her life, bold, the theme of "womanhood", connected with her culture.

5. Judy Chicago

* ambiguity of shapes, "what it's like to be a woman", BOLD, different media used - not just painter; sculptor; installation, Feminism, autobiographical but also about all women in general.

MUSICIANS/WRITERS/MOVIES:

1. Ryan Adams

* his honesty, emotion, pain, autobiography.

2. Walt Whitman

* honest, autobiographical, true to himself as an artist, paints pictures with words.

3. Bob Dylan

* poetry, true to himself, autobiography, you can "hear the pain."

4. Wristcutters: A Love Story

* darkly funny, in your face about issues in life people don't want to talk about - mainly suicide, death, sadness, music, honest.

This is a movie based on the short-story by Etgar Keret [Kneller's Happy Campers], there is also a comic book adaptation. The score of the film is done by Bobby Johnston as well as including songs by famous suicides such as Del Shannon and Joy Divison (Ian Curtis). Plus music by Gogol Bordello. Plus Tom Waits is in it. I Love It. Watch This Scene.

5. A Cross Between Jeff Buckley, Allen Ginsberg, and the Counting Crows [Because I couldn't Decide]

* they were/are truthful about themselves and their art, went with their instincts even if that's not what people around them would expect them to produce or like. They inspire me daily.

[Ryan Adams]

"...I can smile in the face..of mankind..."

Interestingly enough all my art inspirations are women and all my musicmoviewriters are men. Food for thought.

People who almost made this list worth mentioning: Niki de Saint Phalle, Eva Hesse, Cindy Sherman, Sam Phillips (lady musician, not Sun Records), Miriam Schapiro, Faith Ringgold, and so so many more.

What Inspires You? XO.