East Austin Studio Tour

The first weekend of EAST is a wrap! Thanks to everyone who braved the rain & chilly temperatures to visit! EAST continues next weekend, so if you didn’t make it out drop by Canopy Studios suite 218 to say hello!

Holiday Open House at Mockingbird Domestics

So excited for this Saturday’s Kimball Prints Holiday Open House at Mockingbird Domestics! Join us for free ornament give-aways, holiday tea towel raffle + festive seasonal sips & nibbles! 11am-3pm

 

 

the dancing bee: a collaborative print

For the October installment of our studio subscription, Cathy Savage and I teamed up to make a print about something we’ve both been obsessing about: honey. Cathy has long been fascinating by the intricate dance bees do to tell one another about their food sources (complete with factoring in the angle of the sun and seasonal shifts!) and I recently received some avocado blossom honey that is so heavenly, I can’t stop eating it.

I started out making a honeycomb woodcut, using a combination of laser-cutting and hand carving. (Asel is Arabic for honey.)

tucked into the drying rack, waiting for the bees! 

Then Cathy printed the bee dance over the woodcut.

And carved two bee stamps.

proofing the bees

Then we finished up by printing the bees on top:

I haven’t done a collaboration in years and this was so fun! Definitely think there will have to be more down the road.

let it snow

The snow has been piling up in my studio even though it’s still a balmy 65 degrees outside. These epic snowflakes are part of a custom laser-cut window display I’ve been working on this month for one of our favorite Austin stockists, Mockingbird Domestics.  Can’t wait to see the finished display, more pictures soon.

Fall photo shoot

It’s hard to think about fall + winter when it’s 102 out. But recently I got all my new towel and ornament designs ready for their close up, in preparation for holiday show applications. Here’s a sneak peak:

Gelatin Printmaking workshop with Linda Germain

Gelatin Printmaking guru Linda Germain made her way south from Massachusetts in back in April for a 3 day workshop put on by WPA. I didn’t quite master the stencil technique, but I had a great time playing around!

gelatin experiments

things got progressively more abstract

I love the soft texture the jello plate gives the images

Check out Linda’s YouTube how-to videos.

Moving in: Canopy!

Last month I moved into a new studio space at Canopy with my friend + artist Cathy Savage. Cathy’s been my art marketing partner in crime for the last couple of years, and we were both ready to take the leap, so it seemed like a natural fit.

Canopy is a new creative complex over on the eastside, located at 916 Springdale Rd, we’re in suite 218. Canopy has individual artist studios, gallery + office space and even a spot for a cafe or restaurant.

Moving has been slow, but things are finally starting to take shape!

Canopy has artist studios, gallery + office space and even a spot for a restaurant.

Shelves going up

Hanging art on the walls for the progressive studio tour

 

Right now Cathy and I are trying to figure out when we’ll have a studio warming party, but first we need to finish moving in. We’ll keep you up to date on the details as they happen.

The stars at night

The stars in Big Bend are magical. This photo was taken by Tyler Nordgren, an astronomer we heard speak while we were in the park last week. He’s started an initiative to preserve the night sky in National Parks from light pollution, called Dark Sky Parks and also educates park rangers and guides about the stars. Turns out Big Bend is the darkest National Park in the lower 48 and is the second officially designated Dark Sky Park. We had a great time camping and hiking there with my Dad and Stepmom. We also went to the McDonald Observatory where we got to see the moons of Jupiter moving in orbit and the stripes of the storms on Jupiter’s surface. Mind blowing and magical.

The South Rim, looking across into Mexico

Sotols in Big Bend

Now that we’re back,  I’m trying to catch up and am working on putting together some wood supports for my new bird relief prints:

Flights of fancy

Sometimes the best surprises happen when you have no preconceived ideas. A week or so ago I was meeting a WPA member for open studio and decided to go in early. I wanted to play around with a chipboard plate I’d laser cut at Makeatx way back in May. I lasered the chipboard with the same bird image from one of my favorite recent pieces, Flight over the Dead Sea. In the original the birds were a trace monotype, each draw by hand, which gave a really nice effect but was super time consuming. I wanted to be able to play around with the same imagery without having to hand draw them each time. First I tried wiping the plate intaglio, but the ink kept wiping out, almost like an open bite. So then I tried rolling it up relief:

I then realized I was out of paper, and routing around in my drawer I found some strips of paper that I’d saved after tearing them down for other prints. The long horizontal format seemed like a good fit for a strips of sky:

The dark strip at the top is first pull, fully inked. For the second and third ones I didn’t re-ink the plate, just put down another piece of paper, the ghost and ghost’s ghost made a cool ombre effect. After gray I tried blue, orange and red:

I also found some etching scraps in my drawer that I’d been hoarding because they were too pretty to toss. I tried a layer of birds on top of them too:

WEST!

I’m excited to be a part of the second annual West Austin Studio Tour! This year’s tour will run two weekends, April 27th & 28th and May 4th and 5th. More details to come.