SERGIO, WHERE HAVE YOU GONE?

Sergio's gone. Off to Austin, Texas he went. Aaron and I are still left in Los Angeles and to my utter and extreme disappointment, we're not leaving for New York for 7 long, tiresome weeks. I had been saying 6 weeks for a couple weeks, just to make myself feel better, but today I thought I better tap back into reality and count exactly how much longer we have. 7. weeks.

It's Tuesday today, 9:30 PM as you might recognize from the time stamp on this blog, and I am extremely bored. Aaron and I are working on this project, making art pieces out of shoes for a travel show at New Puppy gallery in like... maybe a week and a half. April 10th, whenever that is. I've been making things out of sculpey and dipping dead lizards from my garden in resin. Things like that. I'm not sure we'll get it done. Aaron is walking around bored too. Come on New York, just be May already. Jeez.

AMINALS

Sly's wearing it as a hat.




So, Aaron and I went to Graphaids the other day and bought some sculpey. I've never used sculpey but I've seen Jessica and Danielle do it enough that I thought I'd mess with it.

For the BoomKat costumes, I'm going to make a tiger head hood for Tiger Lily. I was trying to work out a pattern, figure out how the hell I was going to make this thing look beautiful and functional and not like a craft student project, and I couldn't wrap my head around the 3D aspect of it. So I decided to make a little tiger head out of sculpey! Really fun. Gonna keep doing it. I also made an elephant for Marissa because I feel like she needs one. For good luck, of course.

PISSA PAINTS

Last week we painted my sister Marissa. I want to replace the image of me with her for the show. There's something a little too self indulgent, even for me, to put my partly naked self in something. Maybe one day, but not now.

I still wanted to used Mondrian as a piece in the collection and also figure out how to do it with out it seeming too similar to the Yves St. Laurent dress from the 1960s. We found this painting called "Broadway Boogie Woogie" that was far enough away from the Mondrian we all know and love (the three colors, the big geometric rectangles and squares) while also completely recognizable as the artist.

Anyway, it went well. Marissa was great, as she often is. She's been subject to my photography practice time and time again and she never ceases to amaze me.

Good work Piss, oh and I miss you terribly and please come home!

NEVERWONDERLAND

Success! Ah such great success. This was a hectic weekend beyond belief. I don't even think that I would call it a weekEND because it very much felt like Monday. Every. Day. I guess this is why everyone else in the world dubs Americans to be such hard workers. It finally makes sense.

We had our photo / video shoot for NWL this weekend. I'm actually not sure if I've ever mentioned this project on my blog, so I'll do a bit of explaining. Aaron Needham, Danielle Buerli, Jessica Dalva, Steve Edlund and I make up the design team for a dance company called BoomKat. (www.boomkatdance.org) We're currently working on revamping NeverWonderLand, a show that went up about 10 months ago. It's a lovely story, developed by BoomKat, existing as the prequel to Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. Anyway, we all have our designated jobs, mine being costumer.

I included 3 costume sketches that I did a few months ago in preparation for the shoot. Seeing them come to life was so... awesome. For lack of a better word. Phenomenal maybe. We shot the Queen of Hearts played by Juliana Tyson, Alice played by Lili Fuller, Peter played by Nathan Parsons, Captain James (Hook) played by Donald Webber Jr., The White Rabbit played by Joe Sofranko, and Tinkerbell played by Emily Iscoff-Daigan.

The final photos and video will be up in about a month. Get excited.

WEBSITE THOUGHTS

I'm still working on the website design for The Writing Company. We're going with the typewriter style for the overall look, also incorporating classic editing symbols like the double line underneath something that should be capitalized, the paragraph sign, etc. Here's two ideas, Aaron figured out how to work out the piece of paper with his fancy shmancy photoshop skills.

Dear designers reading this, please don't hesitate to give feedback. I'm in need of crit. Lay it on me.

ALEXIS NEXUS

What a day! No hangover, up and ready to go, another painted girl that worked beyond perfection, a team that is getting pretty near flawless, I could go on... What a day. We painted Alexis Branger today, an old Otis classmate wearing a strapless semi-heart shaped Hans Hofman painting. Aaron and I planned the shit out of these colors. We mixed about 10 colors prior to Danielle and Alexis's arrival making sure that each one was perfect on its own while similaneously considering the extent to which it would mix with the other colors. A methodic process indeed, and well worth it. Not to mention the fact that Alexis was a superb model - a ton of fun to work with, brought ideas to the table, incorporated props. Thanks Alexis! You were awesome.

At this point, the only one left to finish is Eba - the Jackson Pollock peice which will take place at New Puppy Gallery pretty soon. The hands on aspect of this project is coming to a close, time to fuck with the photos.

GUESS WHO?

It's time to start a new painting. A couple of months ago I took pictures of Aaron and Sergio for a project they never finished. Really good facial expressions though. Since Sergio is taking off into the Texas abyss to chase southern bells and record producers, I figure it'd be good to spend some time painting him. As Jack Nicholson. This is the drawing I started today.

TESTING EBA

Eba Weber came to my lovely abode last Monday to do a test run of the Pollock piece. EXTREMELY glad she did. For the final piece we're going to go to the gallery and document it and all that jazz, so figuring out how to work with the paint in a splattering fashion was crucial prior to our little adventure. Luckily we now have a few tricks up our sleeves in order to make it the best we possibly can. Understanding how to make it look like a Pollock rather then just a ton of paint splatter all over her is also going to be a bit of a challenge, but I suppose we'll manage. Ain't nothin we can't do. Lots of pre color mixing, lots of patience, lots of drying time and a shit ton more tape. Eba is a trooper. Cheers girl.

NICOLE BABY

Last Saturday we painted another girl : Nicole San Filippo. What a doll. We used a Franz Klein painting. Mostly black and white, with some smaller touches of blue. In painting more girls and working with these abstract paintings, something that I completely forgot to consider was the fact that all of these artists used OIL! OIL! But of course! We're using non-toxic airbrush paint which cracks and dries within minutes. Not exactly the same feeling as oil. Trying to find the happy medium (ha!) between these two types of paint has been a bit of a challenge, but certainly never ceases to make me fall in love with it more. We're figuring out how to photograph better, how to direct the model more cohesively and how to develop the concept. All in all, success.

SIMPLY CAKE

It worked! Huzzah. My cake adventure, beginning in catastrophe actually ended up being awesome. I don't think i got the taste down too well, but I can always work on that. Got a super design nerdy cake out of it, most of which got eaten. The other of which is sitting in my kitchen, wanting desperately to be consumed, and I refuse to do it. Too sweet for me.