Big Things in the Works!

In case you haven't noticed, I took it upon myself to take a little 'online' sabbatical for a few weeks. The dust-bunnies blowing around my Etsy shop and blog have been offset with frantic printing. The scale and duration of my next show is huge and totally new for me, so I'm trying to make lots and lots of prints. In the meantime I have become significantly more frequent with the tweeting-- please feel free to stop in there if you'd like!

I've also been thinking a lot about how to take things to 'the next level' after that, so it was very fitting that I received an email from Sue Daly of Renegade Handmade inviting me to sell work in her Chicago store. I am a huge fan of her and her husband Mat's work-- (he's one of only a handful of people I can find who use the same screen print process as I do!) and am well aware that it doesn't get much awesomer than Renegade, so I promptly accepted!

click to visit!

All right, back to work-- I've reworked some pieces with amazing success in addition to entirely new designs-- will be posting photos shortly!

Celebrate Summer

We always pull together a 'look' for the store entry for each new flyer-- this time we decided to go with 'Celebrate Summer' because it was nice and simple and we're just so glad that the sun is finally here!

I cut down a truck-load of triangle flags from four shades of textured cardstock in fantastic beach-side colors-- and then we hot glued each one to white string at 4 inch intervals and hung them up in long, graceful, 'county fair-like' swags. Adam made all of the signs-- from hundreds of gathered paint chips.

Its really simple, but came together so beautifully.
I love the negative space on the sign.

Here's a closeup of the fabulous paint chip job.

love this 2!

we carried the flags throughout the store. they were the perfect punch of color-- easy to make and effortless to hang. we'll definitely be revisiting them again, maybe with scantron sheets and old lined paper for back to school!

This seemed fitting to post tonight because I'm off to celebrate summer myself-- our first camping trip of the year starts tomorrow! Chris and I are meeting up with our friends Andy and Holly on Lake Michigan for a long weekend. I will be back next week with photos!

And another!

I had a blast in Mt. Clemens over the weekend-- shared a tent with lots of really nice people, enjoyed an elephant ear, and made a little money too. This show was huge in terms of exposure-- my work was awarded 'Best of Show' for the Urban Art Tent and I was also featured in Thursday's Detroit News Arts Section:

Hooray!

I don't have a lot of time to rest on my laurels because I was accepted into the Ann Arbor Art Fair last week! The Ann Arbor Art Fair is a famous group of four fairs throughout the downtown area that take place over four days in July. It draws about half a million people into the city, and claims to be ranked the #1 Art Fair in North America by various publications. Here's a shot of the fair from a few years ago:


This is just one block of many that make up the fair as a whole!

I will have a whole tent for this show, which means I need a lot more inventory and furnishings. I have many, many more screen prints to pull in the coming weeks and lots and lots and lots of woodcuts. Endless woodcuts. I'd like to say I'm not wasting any time getting started, but I already made plans to spend the next two weekends out of town-- so for now I'm doing lots of planning. Tonight I will be placing a very large Dick Blick order and trying to decide what to print. I'm buying a bigger screen so that I can make some larger work, and I guess I'll just hope for the best!

Three Days!

Tomorrow is the first day of my first multi-day show ever-- the Mt. Clemens Art Fair. This event has showcased fine artists since its beginning, but will be trying their luck with the indie crowd this year with an alternative and urban crafts tent, under which you'll find my little table. I don't know anything about this fair, so I don't have a whole lot of expectations, but I'm sure I'll have fun.

I like to try something new for each show-- at this one I'll be selling a handful of little screen printed acorn gift cards along with everything else. I've also decided to mix things up by playing some (very soft) music.

If you can't make it, feel free to follow me on Twitter. I'll be reporting in using 140 characters or less all weekend long.

Whoa.

This print from Tugboat Printshop took my breath away.
(click to enlarge)