Thoughts?  I have good news about the inspiration behind the project, and that is that I finished the mini-marathon that I ran in May.  And I ran the whole thing.  I KNOW.  I couldn’t believe it either.  Since then I finished student teaching (so sad), substitute taught the remainder of the school year, and taught art all summer at a camp.  I have been searching endlessly for a job teaching art but haven’t found one yet so I am back to subbing and searching.  I now have teaching licenses in both Indiana & Illinois so hopefully something will pan out soon!

Oh and my friend Karyn has started a blog to document her first year teaching, go look!

Hope everyone is doing well =)

They are going to have a ton of freedom with this project, and the only requirements are that they have to do a series of four prints, they have to use medical illustration imagery, and that imagery should be a metaphor to something that they are going through, something about them, or something going on in their lives.  Other than that, they can go wild.

Here are my brainstorming phases… I decided to go with the image of a knee (the bones, muscles, etc.) because I am currently training to run in a mini-marathon and am having some serious knee problems as a result.

It’s less than a month away… oh geez.

This is the printout of the knee I decided to use, as well as a simplified image of me “running” (haha) and the block I used to carve into.

I printed out a bunch of things from the mini website so I could experiment with printing my image on top (a map of the course, merchandise, an image of all of the people lined up at the race.)

I decided that I wanted to use the knee for sure, so I transfered the image to my block and…

started carving!  This part is going to be especially fun with the kids (please please please no injuries.)

Then I went CRAZY and printed about a million times.  I used different colors, printed on different papers, printed on top of prints, did multiple color prints… I was on a roll.  This was probably my favorite part.

And after this came the hard part.  I had to narrow down which prints I wanted to use and figure out how I was going to put them together.  DECISIONS oh my.

To be continued…

During the critique, I remember that most people got the impression that it was a call to action, that I was saying that people should get on their bikes and move more.  That works too, and that’s actually something that I really like about art: that everyone can interpret it in their own way.  It really doesn’t matter at all what the artist’s intentions were (although sometimes it is nice to know) because a viewer’s relationship with a work of art is a very personal thing.

Even if an artist creates a work of art with the intention of conveying a certain message, that message will mean something different to everyone who sees it.  It makes me think of this series, and how I was expressing a very specific feeling while I was working on it but that I’d rather have people see it in their own way.

What do you think?  When you look at art, would you rather look at it in your own way, or know exactly what the artist was trying to convey?  As an artist, would you prefer people to see it as you intended?  Does it matter?

Let me know =)

original drawing -> stamp -> print

This is the example I made in front of the class, to demonstrate to them how to do it.  It’s crazy how quick they can be, and I have soo many other ideas of what to make.  I’m not 100% thrilled with this one but I like it and it worked well as a teaching tool.

Remember the millions of things I said I needed to do this weekend?  Yup, working on it.  So many ideas/too little time/too much homework.  For realz.

I had a lot of fun making it and now I want to make them 24/7.  I’m actually really behind on work right now cause I kept trying out different colors and color combinations… oops  =)  I’m trying to think of what sort of image I should make when I do the demo on Saturday, any ideas?

oh.my.

I have never really been into stamps before (I figured I would use them once and then be done with them, so what was the point?) but she has the most amazing stamp collection ever.  Ever.  I now want to search for stamps. and to make my own so I feel a little more like it’s my work.

So anyway, I painted my bookcovers…

Gorgeous.  I know.

And then I took this girl stamp, stamped her on some white/off-white paper, cut her out and glued her on:

Seriously, how is it possible for a stamp to have that much detail?!  I mean, it’s not exactly a huge stamp.  Oh and the black on the bottom is from a dash stamp, from one of her alphabet stamp sets.  I did that across the top and bottom of both the front and back covers.

I don’t know if I have mentioned this, but I really like old keys.  So of course I had to use this stamp:

I stamped it onto a torn out page from another book (see the text?) glued a bunch of pages together, and cut it out.  Then I put it on some string and added beads, making it as girly as I possibly could.  I really don’t try to do that, but it always seems to happen when I’m doing anything artistic.  Also you can see some of the binding in this shot (yes, I taught 5th-8th graders how to do that.  And they really did, last week.  Looks like I might be able to do this teaching thing after all?)

You like?

I’m off to go tutor the non-art kids in the art class.  It’s actually a lot of fun, some of them have been turning in these papers that they write about visiting an art museum (they get to choose which projects they do) and it’s really funny/interesting to hear what they have to say about paintings they are unfamiliar with, but that I have studied and discussed endlessly and written entire papers about.  Again, I think I can really get into this teaching thing.

Oh and… LOST is on tonight!  Don’t forget.  As if you could.

Okay so here’s what’s gonna happen: I am blogging every day in February.  EVERYDAY.  (Yeah yeah, I chose the shortest month, so what?)  So get ready to party.

I’m teaching a visual journaling and bookmaking class for the next several weeks, and the picture above is of the sample book I’m working on and I’m going to make posts with my progress.  Mmmhmmm beautiful.  Also I have been meaning to make artist posts (both past famous artists and contemporary, but I want to start out with the old onez) so hopefully there will be a little of that, too.

I hope you guys, my readers, are still with me… cause things are about to get a little more interesting around here =)

-The images in the top right corner and the lower left are by an artist named Stephanie Corfee.  Her work is SO so beautiful and inspiring.  See more at her shop and at her blog, and in this interview at Scoutie Girl.  Gorgeous gorgeous.

-The image of the couple on the pillow was made by Elsie Flannigan and I think it’s such a cute idea.  Basically I love her blog and everything she does, including her store here.

-This last image comes from Design*Sponge… need I say more?  Again, beautiful.

Find Inspiration Station #1 here.  Also I’m going to start an Artist of the Week series, so if you have any artist suggestions or you want to be featured, send me an email!

Have a wonderful day and weekend =)

This is an ongoing series that began in the spring of 2007 with the above photograph.  It was taken for an assignment in my introduction to photography class that was about portraits, self-portraits, and the body.  Later that semester I decided to draw the photograph for my (introductory) drawing class.

In November/December 2008 I made a print of the image in a printmaking course.

And in January 2009 I had a self-portrait assignment in a textiles class, and interpreted the image with fabrics that I dyed.