⇋☼⇌ Recent Work ⇋☼⇌

Working on this colorful illustration for Michelle at The Sacred Expanse was so much fun and turned out to be one of my favorite commissioned projects! She had a specific celestial image concept in mind to reflect her offerings: workshops and events focused on intuitive, spiritual well-being and harmony in the everyday. We incorporated balanced imagery of the sun and moon with silver and gold acrylic paint surrounded by watercolor, arced with a vibrant rainbow and an overall geometric vision of symmetry. 

⇋☼⇌

It's always an honor and privilege to be trusted in helping someone's business come alive in image-form, and while the nature of my work doesn't usually lend itself to logos, when my friend Suzy spoke with me about what she had in mind for her business ILLUME (professional organizing services with a focus on Feng Shui), I was more than happy to be a part! From start to finish, this design was hand-drawn and painted, with a black and white design chosen to represent the main logo as it is flexible and graphically bold. For the full-color image, an ink circle still surrounds the watercolor butterfly, kept simple with black, white, and a warm turmeric yellow. 

⇋☼⇌

Image via Craft Not Crap

When Nick contacted me about collaborating with him on the label for his latest beer, Spirit Braid, part of the Brewer & Artist Series at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery, I jumped at the chance! I had been wanting to work on a project like this for a long time and was so excited for the opportunity - and I love this brewery! Such a supportive group of people for all things Richmond. As a Lead Brewer at Hardywood, Nick has an affinity for saisons: this would be an effervescent farmhouse-inspired ale brewed with a hearty blend of yeasts, raw organic wheat and oranges, light and perfect for the warmer Virginia spring days. He wanted something simple and lettering-focused, with a small braid and feathers as an accent illustration to complement. To capture the bright elements of the beer, I painted the Spirit Braid lettering in a pinkish-red watercolor with bursts of yellow orange to represent the pops of citrus.

⇋☼⇌

Definitely click through the links to visit the websites for more info on all!  

Tompkins Square Label 10th Anniversary

What a cool experience it was to create this poster for the 10th Anniversary celebration of Tompkins Square Record Label in NYC. This show has such a dream line-up of musicians, and now that it's one month away it's finally almost here!

The first time I came across Peter Walker's beautiful 1968 album "Second Poem to Karmela..." some years ago in the basement of Plan 9 Records, I remember pulling it for a listen based purely on the appeal of its lovely cover art of swirling hand-drawn illustrations around a black & white photo filtered in pink. All too often this particular "pretty cover, must listen!" judgement call doesn't work out as well as hoped, but this record quickly became one of my favorite and most listened-to finds during those days, and I would never have imagined a time that I would be carefully painting his name out in watercolor for an actual event in 2015!

The case is the same with Michael Chapman, who I had the great pleasure to see when he came through town a few years ago and played two mesmerizing sets that conjured up magic both dark and beautiful with his particular style on guitar. And as a note to those also in the Richmond area, I hear he will be coming back through town again to play on October 7th at Black Iris - mark your calendars!

So the ethereal, transporting sounds of Peter Walker's "Second Poem" and his earlier "Rainy Day Raga" from 1966, Michael Chapman's fantastic "Rainmaker" (1969), and Ryley Walker's latest album "Primrose Green" remained steadily on repeat during the process, with the hopes that some of the spirit within their music would be injected into the artwork.

Please come if you will be in New York on October 9th, it's sure to be a special and once-in-a-lifetime event!! Truly perfect sounds for the changing season and another Autumn on the way.


Tickets / Event Info

~ ~ ~

Tompkins Square 10th Anniversary Mix on Spotify

Interview in REVIVE #1

Apologies for the poor quality of these screen shots I took, but just wanted to share a short interview I did for the first issue of REVIVE Vintage Magazine, put together by the Pavo Collective - a group which includes lovely friend and prior collaborator Lise Silva. What a cool honor to be featured in it, along with her most recent beautiful art fantasy photo series (pictured on the cover)!  

REVIVE #1

↞◈✿◈↠  ↞◈✿◈↠  ↞◈✿◈↠

Dream Threads: Shop Show at Quirk Gallery

I briefly mentioned this show in my last post, but with the reception this evening, I thought it would be a good time to share a bit more about it here today! 

I'd been working on these paintings nonstop since returning from California, and it's so exciting to see them finally all neatly installed upon a freshly painted white gallery wall! My theme for this show was a collection of colorful watercolor paintings that could be hypothetical textiles, or that held a common or repeated geometric pattern which could be part of one. Patterns that are timeless - they could be worn, lived with, meditated on, enjoyed - and bright, vibrant colors that would fit right in with the summer sun. 

Pieces created with a principal intention of celebrating beauty and with a simple purpose of making viewers feel good. 

Quirk Gallery was nice enough to do a Q&A blog post on their featured work this month, which hasn't been posted yet, but I'll be sure to share the link when it does. And in the event that you happen to be in the Richmond area, the shows are up through the end of August!

✲ ✲ ✲

All Around

First Day of Creation - from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle

                                                            

                                          ○○○○○○○ 

Something about circles has been so appealing lately, to the point where I included two new paintings of them in my own show that just opened at Quirk Gallery (more on this soon!). I may have to do a bit of meditating on what could be the personal current significance with this particular geometric connection, but for now I wanted to share some artwork by others (from a variety of eras, and that I haven't already posted about before) that focus on a prominent roundness. They are everywhere!

Julio Le Parc

Emil Bisttram

Anne Nowak

Alexander Rodchenko

Naum Gabo

Michelle Tavares

Lena Wolff

Erika Giovanna Klien

 ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○

A California Dream...

Here are some quite belated photos from our trip back in May for my Into the Golden show at The Tarot Woman Vintage Boutique: a short but sweet visit filled with Bay Area magic in Berkeley and San Francisco. We really lucked out on the weather while we were there, and everything was just beautiful... I'm ready to go back anytime! 

Friends new and old!

Some of my pieces from the show, image collage originally posted by The Tarot Woman


Paintings from the show as well as greeting cards are still available for purchase via The Tarot Woman etsy shop, though I'm not sure for how much longer - get them while they're up!

↢✧❂✧↣

Dreams from the Psychedelic Dollhouse

So excited to finally post my collaboration with DC-based artist Lise Silva (you can read her narrative about the shoot here)! 

Virtual pals via the blog realm for quite some time now, when Lise moved from Brazil to Washington, DC last summer, we determined that while only living a couple hours away we just had to get together for some kind of artistic collaborative project that incorporated our mutual love for 1960s-era & vintage references.  

We paired vintage clothing and jewelry with projections of our drawings and watercolor paintings onto lovely model Kate Greene, and dreamed of a magical "day in the life" from a Valley of the Dolls-inspired interior.

Concocting a project like this with Lise was just fantastic! I'll really miss her when she moves out west this summer, but hopefully future collaborations will still be able to come together despite distance! Technology can be a very cool thing sometimes. 

✳

Creative direction & styling: Lise Silva and Sara Gossett

Artwork: Lise Silva and Sara Gossett

Photography: Lise Silva

Model: Kate Greene

Clothes & jewelry: CellardoorSequins

Prints of the artwork used in this photoshoot can be found at GoldenHaze and CellardoorSequins.

✳

Into the Golden...

To make more than a brief mention of the fact that I've been beyond behind on this blog would be overstating the obvious (!), so I'll begin my return with the simplest update I can make:

 SO excited to make my way west and show some brand new work at this special boutique! 

I wanted to title this show "Into the Golden" as it felt like a good connection between the golden haze name, the shining gold paint present in many of these pieces, as well as a symbol of touching down in California - the Bay Area in particular!

It's been such a busy 2013 (I hope it stays this way!) and there is even more to come... more amazing projects and collaborations to share very soon!

SACRED

Apologies for the low-quality phone photos (they were originally posted via instagram). Cell phone and instagram photos are great for many reasons, but image quality - at least in my case - is certainly not among them.

Anyway, 2013!! These paintings are in-progress shots of works that will be up in a group show, Sacred, this Friday at a new small art space in town, the Rear Gallery. The three pieces are all monochromatic, geometrically-based watercolors that represent Planes of Meditation: abstract linear forms on which the mind can be cleared of all else while vision is focused on the lines of color. It's been a fun series to paint, and I'm really looking forward to the show and other events to come in this brand new space.

Hoping it's a great year for all of us!

> > > < < <

More about the gallery here.



In Betweens

Some experiments with carving rubber stamps and a quick painting of a cardinal (in anticipation of the colder months ahead) that I made just before our move this weekend.

Now all of my things remain in their temporary boxed-up homes, but I can hardly wait to get everything unpacked and put together - especially the room that will be my studio space! I keep saying this to everyone I see and talk to about the process of moving, but I just really wish I had the magic witchy powers of Samantha from Bewitched and could have the whole house put together perfectly with just a twitch of the nose. It's pretty overwhelming. On the bright side, it's so nice to think about a fresh start and new ways to arrange old favorites, examining and reconsidering what we really love and what we may have outgrown.

Anyway, more updates to come once the dust has settled - but in the meantime, check out these beautiful dresses on display at the Biba exhibition in the Brighton Museum as blogged about by Miss Peelpants. Gorgeous, everything - from the clothing to the lovely illustration by Barbara Hulanicki! Wish I could be there to see it all in person!

And another for any other lovers of vintage style out there (or fashion history, or just plain old history itself), a hearty recommendation to see the film out now about Diana Vreeland - The Eye Has to Travel. It is eye candy in each and every scene!  

\\\\\\\/\/\/\\\\\\\\/\/\/\\\\\\\\

Program Progress

One very special aspect I forgot to mention about the wedding in the previous post was that I was privileged to be able to create the design for their ceremony program! Abbey is an old friend of mine from college, and I just loved being able to paint this for her. The event took place on Jesse's family farm in Maryland which also happened to be where the couple met, and I've been fortunate enough to have been able to spend a bit of time up there as well! It's such a beautiful place right near the water; gently rolling hills and lots of trees, and maybe best of all - there are ponies! So it seemed perfect that they wanted to incorporate this scenery with falling autumn leaves into the image of the program cover. Drawing and painting the leaves was the best part!

The image above is a shot of the program in progress. It's always so fun to see projects start to come alive!

⪥: Maria Calderon :⪥

Thanks to an incredibly warm and humbling blog post by Amy of Daughter of the Sun, I have been introduced to a wealth of tremendously inspirational artistic women. Maria Calderon is one of those immense talents, and her colorful mystical paintings and installations are just stunning. They touch on indigenous elements as well as beautiful representations of present existence.

As Amy wrote, "Her work reminds us where we come from and where we are going."

⪥⪥⪥

Such gorgeous work! More paintings and information can be found here:

Maria Calderon

⪥⪥⪥⪥⪥⪥⪥⪥⪥