The Best Least Attended Craft Show in the World

This bird perched atop our pink feathered Christmas tree which sat at the edge of our booth to lure unsuspecting passersby. It must have worked because I did sell three ornaments.

Last weekend the Mincing Mockingbird and I had a booth at the Handmade for the Holidays Craft Show. The weather was beautiful, the booths were fantastic and had the most original art and crafts... unfortunately the crowd turnout was less than stellar. The people who did wander into our tent were cool, but few and far between.

I also purchased a piece from Michelle Caplan. The one pictured here is not it though as I'm at work and haven't had time to take a photo of it. This piece is a print that my son admired. I've liked her work for a long time, and finally decided to buy a piece for myself. I'll hang mine and post it later, when the dust has settled and I can find things under the pile of craft show debris.

Arbitrary Art Curiosity #2

I just found this cool artist, Francesca Berrini, who does her collages the old-fashioned way, with cut and paste. This one is titled "Thanks for the Oil" and you can't help but wonder what he's going to do with it.

Arbitrary Art Curiosity #1

Okay, so I'm stealing Mincing Mockingbird's idea - his Random Objects of Awesomeness. This is a Red Rebellion - Action Figure Frieze by Ethelcat who also makes crazy luxury mosaic pet feeders -- all of which he sells on etsy.

Another new ornament

Here's one of my latest ornaments. The etsy listing states:

Drunken husband steals candy cane.

Bipolar wife retaliates.

Not sure what else I can add.

Angel Bear?

So under the strong encouragement from Mincing Mockingbird, last night I redesigned my Christmas ornaments into Christmas notecards to sell at the show. I also designed this new one so that I could sell them in packs of six. With expediated shipping I should get them by early next week. Doesn't everyone need an angel bear to send their holiday greetings?

Owl Delivering Christmas Cheer

I've been so busy designing new ornaments, that I haven't been posting. This is one of my most recent ones. I also finished a painting today and worked on another one, so as soon as I get some good sunlight, I'll take photos of it and post it here. I've been so busy trying to get stuff ready for this upcoming craft show that I've been neglecting my painting (not to mention cleaning, etc.).

Meet Santa and his Christmas Friends

Stopped by Michael's Crafts yesterday to pick up stuff for my fiance and decided I'd try my hand at ornament making. Here are the two I came up with. Not sure of the thought process behind them, except my better half saw me looking at the bear and Santa and said, "Wow - I wonder what kind of trouble they could get into?" Luckily I found a bottle of bubbly in my clip art book. The images on both ornaments are digitally collaged on the computer, but then printed out and glued onto a wooden ornament covered in paper.

I don't know what I was thinking when I did the monkey angel.

More Dangerous Baths

Just finished this last night and listed it this morning on etsy. Not sure how much more description is needed. Bought more supplies at Michael's and decided that I'm not allowed to buy more supplies until I use more than I purchase.

That's going to be a challenge.

I'm Afraid to Screen Print!

It's been a while since I posted because I had to go to my grandmother's funeral which was out-of-state so I was in dial-up land and couldn't bring myself to do anything on the internet except check e-mail and flight info. Thought I'd post one of my first screen printed shirts, which has a my fiance's logo on it. His shop is The Mincing Mockingbird and I thought it would be fun to design him some t-shirts. Unfortunately, I bought a lot of dark colored shirts and found out that white on dark screen printing is much more difficult. Thought I'd better master dark on light first.
So I'm back and will try to post more often. Am hoping to work on some ACEO and one of the three paintings I currently have started. If I get my studio cleaned up, maybe I can post photos of that as well. Ha!

Roundup the Clown Duck

Here's my latest art piece. I've always been fascinated with mixed media and wanted to try it, but was always too intimidated. Recently I received a box from my mother and sister containing things they found in my grandmother's house while they were cleaning it out. I think every time they found something weird, they'd say, "This looks like something Kim would like!" I got old broken cameras, tattered children's books from the early 1900s, and a broken tea set my mother played with when she was a child in the 1940s. I was just fascinated with this stuff and thought I do my first mixed media piece using it.

New ACEO cards!

Two posts in one day -- is it the end of the world? Or is it just a boring gray day out where I felt like spending my time cutting and pasting instead of cleaning or paying bills. The woman in the bath I had designed as a card and sent it to my son, Jordan, for his birthday. So I just redid it smaller and on illustration board. The other "troubled" one I did after browsing old books for phrases I liked and then found the perfect illustration to accompany it. ACEO stands for "Art Cards, Editions and Originals." A lot of people collect them because it's an affordable way to have original art. Plus most people I know don't have the wall space to buy huge paintings anyway.

Zine Fest in San Francisco

Okay, maybe this image isn't from the zine fest, but from Chinatown the following day. How can you go to San Francisco without going to Chinatown?

My fiance and I got back Monday from a long weekend, where we were participating in the San Francisco Zine Fest. I didn't take anything, as I hadn't had time to do any t-shirts except the two I made for myself as practice ones. But I was excited because I talked to John Isaacson, who wrote the book "Do-It-Yourself Screenprinting" and he liked my shirt. I also bought the book and highly recommend it because it's written in graphic novel form, and being a visual person, it's easier and quicker to understand.

The show wasn't very big, but we sold pretty well. It was a good place for a first show since we didn't know how to run the credit card imprinter and got to practice with that, plus to just see what would sell. Our next craft show is Thanksgiving weekend and I hope to have some stuff done to sell there. Right now I have around six projects started, so my goal today is to finish one of them. I'm going to try to post at least every other day as well so I can be motivated to do more art.

Ernie finds a new home

Ernie is the piece I had donated to the California State University Long Beach auction titled Wide Angle II. The piece sold, which is good since I've started new paintings and already used the wall space where it was hanging. Matt and I are heading to San Francisco to a zine fest to show his artwork this weekend, but I hope to get back into painting next week.

Bird-crazy cartoon

Here's a sneak preview of one of Mincing Mockingbirds Volume 3 bird extras. He let me design a cartoon and it's pure nonsense so it fits in with the rest of the book, which will be debuting at the San Francisco Zine Fest next weekend, October 5th & 6th. The wording comes directly from a romance novel and the images are illustrated birds from the 19th century. Click on it to see it larger.

New paintings!

It's been a while since I posted, but I have been working on more cards and I've been trying to figure out t-shirt screen printing. I recently relocated my studio to another room, and finally reorganized it this weekend. So today I spent most of the day painting. This first painting I blocked in came from an old photo my sister sent me while she was cleaning out my grandmother's house. It's a school photo from 1959-60 and while the glasses and hairstyle indicate a middle-aged woman, when looking closely at the photo, she's probably actually in high school. The back of the photo says "Love, Pat Paguse".



This next painting is one I started last spring and just never really got around to finishing. Can't really remember where I got the photo, probably a flea market. The painting was all blocked in, but today I went over the face and background. No name on the back, but he looks like a Tad.
Still have to decide what's going in the background of both of them....

New Fish Cards!

I designed some new fish cards with nineteenth-century illustrations that I got from a clip art book we bought today from Necromance. It's kind of a creepy (but cool!) store that smells like incense and dead things, and Matt wanted to look for a bird skull for a birdhouse he's working on. The clip art book has great illustrations of animals and insects, and I'm designing a bunch of cards and selling them on etsy.

I've also finished two t-shirt designs and hope to try one out tomorrow, after we check out the Rosebowl Flea Market. Matt and I are checking into getting a book in the arts & crafts section in Octoboer, and I'm also going to look for new painting photos.

A Little Art Recess

Sorry, I haven't been painting much because I've been helping Matt with his hand-painted magnet business, and trying to teach myself to screen print t-shirts. I've done a simple one, and this weekend I hope to do some for his shop, but I'll post it here as well. We'll be getting ready for the Handmade for the Holidays craft show on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving in Los Angeles on Melrose and Fairfax. I hope to get this screen printing thing down so I can have a bunch of shirts to sell. We're also going to try to sell at the Rosebowl Flea Market in October, so we're going to check it out tomorrow. We've been there before, but this time we'll be checking out the arty booths, though I may wander into the old photo area for some new source material as well.

Lorie's Got a Face!

I had a breakthrough in painting yesterday. I decided I'd better just pick up the paintbrush and start mucking the paint around because it wasn't going to paint itself. Plus I could always paint over it. Luckily I hit a groove and little Lorie's face turned out great. I still have to do the hair, shirt, and rest of the painting, but the first grader's face was the hurdle I was trying to jump.

Back to Painting

I thought I'd start posting parts of paintings, since I don't like to post the whole painting until it's done. I've been working on this double portrait of a friend on and off for several months. I just painted the nose yesterday after not painting on it for over two months. I thought that maybe posting the progress would force me to paint more often.

Plinki the Bunny Carrot

I know it's been a while since I last posted. Did things like got engaged and stuff. Went to a great craft show today called Felt Club today which had a ton of fabulous hand-made stuff ranging from t-shirts to stuffed bunny carrots (we bought one shown above with my son Christian). It's inspiring me to get creative again (the craft show, not the carrot).
Trying to get back into the painting, but in the meantime, I'm selling some prints of my paintings on etsy under the name franticmeerkat. Hoping to get some of the prints made into magnets to sell, too.

Noah's Finished!

I finally finished the Noah double portrait, "Noah always does what he's supposed to." That was taken directly from his kindergarten report card. The other possible phrase was "Noah's very quiet."
We've had out-of-town guests we were entertaining, which included cleaning the whole place, but I hope to get back to painting now. Today I also took another reference portrait photograph, so I have another painting I want to start soon. I still have to varnish this, paint the edges and sign it.

Helen's Rage

Here's another art card I just completed. I'm having fun, but I also painted edges of paintings, and boring things like that today.

Art Cards!

My boyfriend, Matt, has been selling hand-painted bird magnets on etsy.com and has been telling me to put some stuff on the "all hand-made" arty website. Since I've been doing collage items in my free time just for fun (calendars, cards, etc.), I thought it would be another creative outlet for me. I love oil painting, but sometimes you just want to go back to kindergarten and cut and paste. So far this is the only item in my store (franticmeerkat), but I want to do a couple of pieces a week.

Almost finished....

Finally! I had a minor setback, what with discovering that I couldn't paint letters. I've been trying to repaint the yellow over my smudged attempts, and in the meantime failing to finish up the portraits. Tonight I worked on young Noah and now I just have to glue the letters on. I hope to do that this weekend and will try to post here more often. Just took quick photos to get them on the blog, but will take better ones in the daylight for the website.

Painting Update

I know it's been a while since I posted, and I haven't finished the Noah painting yet, but here's a portion that's almost done. I still have to finish the other face and put the lettering on. I had to get a bulb for my projector because it had seemed hard to see the image projected lately, and then I realized that in a pinch, I had put in a 60 watt bulb and it's supposed to have a 250 watt bulb. Got a new bulb and should be much easier to see the letters now.

A New Painting

I started a new painting today. Another double portrait. This one is of my son Noah when he was in kindergarten (5 years old) and today at 16 years old. This is just the underpainting, and I've decided that a black background, like the one I used for my self-portrait would be too dark with the black hair, so I have to pick something else. I even found a sentence from his kindergarten report card I'm going to use, but I won't reveal that until the painting's finished.

We're on NBC!

Here's the link to the NBC spot that aired at 5:20 on Wednesday, April 25:
http://video.nbc4.tv/player/?id=95415

Now I'd better get back to actually creating art.

We've got press!

NBC did a piece on ECO-logical Art Gallery at 5:20 p.m. today and showed all the billboards. Associate Press also did a written piece along with a video piece which you can see here:
http://asap.ap.org/stories/1395710.s
It's pretty cool seeing your billboard covered as a news story. If I can get a way to post or link to the NBC piece, I'll do that, too.

More Off the Wall 3 Photos

Here are more photos from Off the Wall 3. The top one is of all the artists who were at the show. Photo number 2 is of Keri Rosebraugh and myself. She's an amazing artist and I met her when we helped measure and hoist the billboards the first day. Her billboard is currently located in Silverlake at Beverly Blvd and Virgil. Photo 3 is of Matt Adrian and myself in front of the small version of his billboard, which is located just off the 405 at La Tijera (photo #5).
The next photo is of my two sons who were supportive and hung out at the show for over three hours, though having a food table helped. It was a great opening and fun to talk to some of the artists about their experiences with painting on such a large scale. Most said it was a challenge, but they'd do it again.

Off the Wall 3

The opening for Off the Wall 3 was last night and there was a great turnout, at least among my friends (no, seriously, there were tons of people). The first photo is of Shelly Rand, myself, Lisa Yuan, and Tom Vaillancort. The second photo is of my friend Ana and me in front of the small version of my painting. Next is Josh Margolies, who recently purchased two of my paintings and is telling me where all the great galleries are to check out in LA. The fourth photo is of Cari Marshall, who writes a blog, holarubia, about the southern California art scene. She's standing in front of Matt Adrian's painting, who's billboard was just moved to a new location at La Tijera at the 405 (east facing). I'll be posting more photos of that when I get them.

A Disaster in Downtown

While driving through downtown LA, you may come upon one of Matt Adrian's disaster paintings, currently located at Cesar Chavez and Mission Street. He is also participating in Eco-LA's Off the Wall 3 show, and painted a 14" x 48" billboard all by himself in a San Fernando valley parking lot while fighting the hot sun and wind. It went up at this location this past Monday, but both he and the gallery owner are fearful of possible spray paint additions, so it may be moved before the show. I'll post the new location if it gets moved.
In the meantime, I'm pretty excited about this Saturday's show. I even had official business cards printed, which I'll probably leave in my car or apartment.

Just talked to a co-worker who drove by it Wednesday night and it still looks good (no taggers).

I Finally Visit the Billboard

Today I dropped off my original painting of "Kim Has a Good Skip" to the gallery and was able to see the billboard in person.

It's really big.

We were actually so busy trying to find a parking place that we drove by the first time without seeing it. I hope other people are more aware of their surroundings than we are. Unfortunately I was looking into the sun so in most of the photos I resemble a mole in the bright morning sun.

New double portrait

I'm finally getting back to a double portrait that I started before the whole billboard painting. It's of a friend who visited last fall and hopefully I'll be able to post the progress, but I currently don't have any photos of it and it's grey and overcast today. I'm going out of town next week, so the next post will likely have something to do with the big Off the Wall 3 show opening April 21. There will definitely be photos. I'm actually dropping off the original painting at the gallery this Monday, so I'll try to post photos of myself in front of the billboard on Monday.

The Billboard's Up!

Got an e-mail today saying the billboard's up and here's the first of many photos. Click on the image to see it bigger. Now I guess I'd better get back to work on some new paintings.

Off the Wall Invitation

Here is the invitation for the Off the Wall gallery show (click on it for a bigger image). The billboard wasn't actually hung in time for the postcard, so this is just an approximation of what it will look like (thanks to PhotoShop). It's pretty exciting and the gallery owner did an interview with Associated Press and hopes to do one with NBC and the LA Times Calendar section.

Off the Wall 3 Press Release

Here is the press release for the Billboard Show I'm participating in. The opening is on Saturday, April 21 at 6 p.m., so if you're in the L.A. area, please stop by and check out some great art.

“OFF THE WALL 3” Turns Old Billboards into New Works of Art
Unique Indoor/Outdoor Art Exhibit Premieres April 21
LOS ANGELES—To celebrate Earth Day, Peter V. Schulberg, owner of the Los Angeles Eco-LogicalArt gallery (www.eco-logicalart.org) will host OFF THE WALL 3, a unique, indoor and outdoor, fine art exhibition in which discarded billboards are transformed into spectacular works of art. For the first time ever, original artwork will also be created on actual 14’ by 48’ recycled billboards located around Los Angeles for the run of the gallery show which will premiere on Earth Day Eve, April 21st , at 6 p.m.

OFF THE WALL 3 will feature works by a two dozen local artists who have created paintings out of vinyl canvases made from recycled billboards. The work will be on display both inside ECO-LA’s Los Angeles gallery and on the building’s exterior, and include both new works and a retrospective of the previous OFF THE WALL 1 & 2 shows.
Displaying large-scale artwork on billboards is not only a novel concept; it will take OFF THE WALL 3 to unprecedented heights. “Once again, ECO-LA is working with cutting edge artists to turn ‘dead’ ads and the staid gallery world inside out,” observed Schulberg. Traffic data indicates that the original art billboards may be viewed by more than 250,000 Southern California motorists per day. Los Angeles’ popular Getty Museum, by contrast, attracts on average 4,000 visitors per day.
More than 60 artists participated in the two previous OFF THE WALL shows. The shows attracted hundreds of eager visitors to the Eco-LogicalArt gallery and resulted in more than $25,000 in sales of recycled vinyl art. “As an eco-bonus,” Schulberg noted, “approximately 10,000 square feet of pvc vinyl has been diverted from local landfills.”

The idea of turning old billboards into new works of art came to Schulberg in 2004 when he learned that tons of billboard advertising is tossed into landfills every month. Schulberg, who makes functional art from recovered materials, thought the situation cried out for a green solution. He began experimenting with applying paint to the vinyl sheets used in billboard advertising and invented a new stretching process so that the material could be used as canvases. He then placed notices on art newsgroups offering free canvases and exposure on the exterior of his gallery.
Schulberg compared the response to the movie Field of Dreams. “I asked artists to work for nothing on this weird new material for the opportunity to have their work exhibited on the exterior on my gallery—hostage to the heat, wind, rain, and a kid with a paintball gun,” Schulberg recalled. “But the artists, some who sell for thousands of dollars, came and keep coming.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the vinyl canvases proved almost impervious to the elements. None of the artworks showed signs of fading, flaking or wear, even after being pelted by winter rainstorms. Even local graffiti artists left the artwork alone. Schulberg notes that the vinyl canvases turned ECO-LA into Los Angeles first “drive-by gallery.”
The warm response generated by the first two OFF THE WALL exhibitions gave Schulberg the idea of expanding the show’s reach by returning some of the vinyl canvases to the place where they began—that is, to actual billboards. With grants supplied The Vinyl Institute (www.vinylindesign.org), a national trade organization representing manufacturers of vinyl products, and Scion (www.scion.com), he then enlisted the support the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (www.oaaa.org) and display heavyweights CBS Outdoor and Van Wagner Communications to donate prime billboard space. As a result, “eco-logical” artwork will appear on five billboards located around Los Angeles, including atop Schulberg’s gallery, during the month’s of April and May. Once the billboards are taken down the art will be stretched into conventional canvasses and offered to the public in a “back to earth” event at the gallery.
Schulberg’s hopes for his eco-logical art experiment continues to rise. With ECO-LA about to go non-profit, and with hundreds of billboards getting “killed” daily he has plans to create a national “renewable imagery” billboard art tour, of getting the material into public schools and to providing free mural walls to the inner city kids. “It’s a green win-win whose time has come,” he said. “But this new dynamic also recalls an old Shaker saying that is one of my touchstones: ‘We do not inherit the earth from our parents; we are borrowing it from our children.’”

More Filming

I thought I was done with the billboard project, but yesterday I received an e-mail saying that the film guys wanted to take more photos and do more interviews with us for the mini-documentary, but it should only take 15 minutes. Plus I had to sign my painting. It was weird talking about a giant painting of myself, but they said I did a good job, though I think they tell everyone that. I did find out that I no longer have to paint it over in yet another size -- I could use the oil one I'd already done. That's a relief. Now I can get back to a couple of paintings I'd started previous to all this and maybe have something new to post. The billboard will be hung sometime this next week over the gallery and I'll hopefully get photos by next weekend.

Painting Day 5

Okay, here is the finished piece. I know it doesn't look much different from the last one, but I finished up the red dress and tried straightening out the letters a bit. It's really hard to do lettering on swaying vinyl 10 feet above a cement floor, especially when you start feeling light-headed because you're holding your breath to paint a straight line. I got up at 5:20 a.m. and left the house at 6 a.m. so I could beat the Monday morning rush hour. Unfortunately, it was still dark when I got to the gallery, so I had to lug lights around so I could see to paint. I'm pretty happy with the results, but yesterday I found out that I have to paint this image a third time on a 37" x 48" vinyl so it can be hung at the show. And since the show's in a month, and I'm out of town for a week and my son's visiting me for a week, that leaves about one and a half weeks to paint Kim Has a Good Skip AGAIN! I'm really starting to not like me.

Painting Days 3 & 4

Sorry I didn't have the energy to blog yesterday, plus the photos didn't make it look like I did very much, even though I was at the warehouse painting from 9:30 until 3 p.m. It was a scattered day because there were two other artists painting, plus some people were setting up a St. Patrick's Day party and they had a band doing sound check, so anytime you started talking to someone, you were drowned out by a rendition of Sweet Home Alabama. The was a slight problem because another artist was painting on the billboard on the other side of mine (behind it) and as they're backed up against each other, there was some swaying of the vinyl. So I was forced to repaint my crazy hair because there was no fine detail work involved.
The other distraction was that there were a couple of guys filming and taking photos for a mini-documentary of the process. They interviewed each artist and asked questions about your piece. All I'm going to say about it is they asked me if I had a good skip...and I actually had to skip for the camera.
The first photo is what I completed on Saturday, the second one is what I completed today. Tomorrow I'm going in at 6 a.m. (to try to avoid rush hour) and finish up the red dress and touch up the background and letters.