That Is My Tool Box.

That is my tool box.

on the sides it has two little slips of paper one says "you are a good person" the other says "you are a fucking tool" the bottom has one of my prints that says "FUCK" printed on brown paper.

inside is: a strop, my speedball carving tool, a couple of X-acto knives, what's left of the fancy carving set  I bought when I realized I was going to be doing this for my BFA (note to the world: never loan out your tools, even if you think not loaning out your tools makes you look like an asshole, nobody notices your name carved in the handles and they will not give them back) other things: my engraving twist which is unsurprisingly nice for working up scratch board, my scratch board tool, a lump of eraser, some utility knife blades, some mechanical pencils, some mechanical pencil lead, an eraser and an Altoids Small's tin where I keep my tool-bits. (I like to think of it as the Altoid's sharps tin) the box interior is also decorated with a couple of these silly librarian-themed temporary tattoos.

I felt like showing some progress pictures today of something simple. I'm trying to get back into the swing of making things and what better opportunity for that than a three day weekend?

I am making several more of these simple herbaceous prints to be ready for my show at Dandelion Botanicals in April. it always pays to have a range of prices available, somebody who won't drop $200 on a piece might still want something for $20.

alright, this one has a descriptive title so I'll just lead with it here "As They Walked The Lantern Lit The Roses"  which has the double meaning of implying that carrying light next to these roses causes them to glow, which explains why they stand out so nicely. also, I don't usually intend to imply that her antlers glow, but a lot of the time I need them to stand out from whatever is going on in the background, such is the case here.

so this was the one where I was like, oh right, the wolves aren't evil, they're just wolves, they have a different viewpoint and it's a wolf one.

this one was also made to address the technical problems of This One, as you can see I upped the detail everywhere and took time to light the trees with texture, futz around with all the dang roses, and put stars in the sky. some of my strengths are in my use of obsessive texture and this is a good example of allowing myself to indulge that urge.

what else can I say about this piece? oh yeah, the wolves are usually not male. (not that it matters, but this has been an issue when people want to see psycho-sexual themes in my work, which I do address, but not all the dang time in every one) it's a bit of a play on the idea of "Bad Bitches" or "Mad Bitches" or "Bitches Be Cray-Cray"  whenever I am using them. and this one in some ways is about being at home with my sister, who supports my creative work, but she is very critical of all of my deer-girl series.

the gesture of placing a hand on the shoulder of a large dog is a very natural one to me in my life and the fingers that dig into the fur is one of my favorite details. they are on an adventure together and that contact plus the eyecontact is a show of trust.

this is one of my prints that I consider to be on the unsettling and weird side of my output.(as opposed to nostalgic and cute which is my other axis)  all I'm going to say about the content is she's not actually asleep (note the one perked ear) and all of my symbolism is always puns.

you'll note that I'm not giving you lot a title to gnaw on either with this one. I hate titles. it's an image. supposed to be enigmatic. and if I spoon fed you all everything with words all the time you'd think you understood what I meant to say. bask in ignorance! that's what I wish to say with this one. antler-chronology applies of course if you wish to puzzle out where it goes.

anyways, I make art out of things I wish to obsess over. I need to grind out my feelings and slash my fingers with my #4 and get embarrassed over everything every once in a while to feel like I'm making authentic art. basically, I need to throw my heart onto the wall. sometimes I need to feel judged both for my art and for my life. I need to confess and to over-share.

the part of me that produces the deer girl images, rather than my old anthro drawings I used to do is about exploring that deer-girl side vs the old were-kate side. my usual way to react to feeling unsafe and unsure is to snarl and lash out be fierce and shouty and I'm learning how to do the other things. to ask for help, be vulnerable, and be open.

I like making art that makes me personally get emotional about it. something that can remind me of how I was feeling. to hammer an emotion or a moment into a block, that is an intensely meaningful thing to me. even if, and ideally if, it conveys nothing to a viewer.

this has always been the case.

Screen Prints!

alright these are the three screen prints I did for Ben Moreau's summer screen printing class that he liked so much he said it was better than a visit to the dentist for a root canal.

and what else could possibly be better than dentistry?

alright, these are a bit of a departure from my other stuff. I was just not feeling it during the summer after I made it into the BFA program when it comes to sticking to my "theme" and making art that would be useful for my BFA portfolio in the coming year. it was my first summer in Bellingham, I was mostly crippled all the hell, and sick of being pretentious and sad. So, I made OZ Fanart.

the first one is a reductive screen print of myself as Glinda the Good Witch of the South in her costume as she appears in the first OZ movie. it glitters. it is hard to convey just how much these things glitter in the sunlight like fairy-taffy made of pink and shimmer but they do. I would have to convert it into one of those glitter .gifs to give you an approximation of how nice they look.

this print was made with reductive screenprinting, which I have a pretty hard time controlling because I am like, comprised of 90% sloppy mess. I still love it.

the second one is of Christine as Ozma the rightful Queen of OZ. I was mostly trying out all different kids of techniques with this one, the swirls of the sky, the layers, the bajillion million layers and colors and the fact that it could still use a pattern on her dress. the gold bits also glitter.

this print was made through transparency processes, both using clear plastic and ink/paint/cutouts to expose the screens, and gobs and gobs of transparent base to give the inks character and clarity. (note her head flowers over the building)

third one: A Tribute For The Wizard.

photographic processes and fucking up repeatedly by not saving my progress lead to the end result you see here, this is Ben as the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz being displeased by our offering of One Good Print.

as he said in crit "YOU MUST HAVE AT LEAST FIVE PERFECT PRINTS!!"

everybody in class except for the Asian kid we never really saw posed for this.

first silhouette is Jake, then Brendan, then me holding aloft the golden print, then Allison and Stacey.

this class was good times.

alright, in my last post I talked about how I get different kinds of support from the people around me. my art friends are of the opinion (mostly anyways) that anybody can do anything and that's good art, as long as the artist does that thing with skill and care and can then explain why the choices they made were necessary.

non-art (aka: normal) people can be more of a mixed bag, they can't critique you effectively on technique because they have little idea of how you made what you made, and so there is more of a direct attack on the ideas.

my sister dislikes my deer girl series for a number of reasons, first, because it's really very hipster to have women standing around with either antlers on their heads or branches made to look like antlers. (I can explain that I'm tapping into the collective unconscious mind and the current zeitgeist, but this is dismissed as an excuse for copying an already unoriginal idea)

secondly, because they are self portraits of me showing me as a person who has stupid and vulnerable feelings. Kenz views this as worthless and self indulgent narcissism.

third, at times my work is either trite or visually unappealing and I am derided for being insufficiently appealing and commercial. not that I will ever make enough money at it and why don't I have a job yet?

my life and my work are thus deemed worthless and immature, like Freud who opined that the artistic urge ultimately derived from an infant's fascination with their own feces and the corresponding urge to smear poop on the wall.

haters gon' hate, as they say.

but credit for these two skulls goes to Mackenzie and her critiques of my work, I asked for inspiration because I was in a rut and she said, "I'm bored of your whiny bullshit. draw me some skulls or something and you'd better make it look cool" and lo, an idea did come upon me and I did make it, and it was good.

I consider these two to be a diptych, and the only complete pair is now in private collection. (so HAHA I already found it a good home bitches, ya'll can just be envious) I only printed two of the deer skull on the black before carving it away to make my colored prints, and one of them was destroyed. it's weird for me to have unique art and there is always a printmaker-ey fret that I should always have backups of my art.

the plants are aconite and creeping blackberry. the skulls are from a wolf and a deer.

edit: added some old photos from when I first printed this image to show some of my process

The most pure nonironic models in life, however, are to be found in nature: animals and plants are exempt from irony, which exists only where the human dwells.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-without-irony/