收获 - acquisitions - prints!

收获 acquisition/pron: shou1 huo4

Today I thought I'd share some of the fabulous finds I've come across (and taken home) lately. Etsy is the most amazing marketplace, bursting with talents on the rise and those cruising right along. Since my housing situation changed about 2 months ago, I've been trying to beautify my living space, and this weekend, I'm framing some of the pieces I've got to hang up on these walls!

Joseph Blake

My first introduction is Joseph Blake, a Philadelphia illustrator, is a recent RISD grad. I've been admiring his work since discovering his shop a few months ago, and finally couldn't resist grabbing up one of this prints for myself.

This is the one I got, titled Midwinter:

Joseph got this into the mail immediately, and it arrived the next day, much to my delight. The packaging was impeccable, beautifully put together with extras and a personal note on the back of the print. Fabulosity!

I will definitely be following this rising star. I love his visual tone and his little narratives about the pieces. On some of his listings, he even shows the originals in his work space, which I just adore. I wrote to him that he reminds me of one of my very favorite children's lit illustrators: David Christiana:

I've already got Midwinter framed and ready to hang next to another recent acquisition: Snow Day.

OUOU


Now, of course I'm partial to this particular print, since it was made by my roomie and sister and I got to see every step of the creative process, but seriously? this is one of the cutest things ever. I can just see these two being transformed into rag dolls of the sort I played with as a kid, the sort made by our grandmas. This was our first experiment with 2-color Gocco printing with registration, and it was a phenomenal success.

Strawberry Luna

Back in August, Laurie and I went to see fabulous, joy-provoking Rufus Wainwright, and afterwards, she found another Etsy genius: Strawberry Luna, a print maker who makes gig posters! She surprised me with a gift of this fabulous print from the show:


lineanongrata

Finally, one last print is on its way to me, and it's by an artist from France! I just love being able to purchase fantastic art from folks in other countries, and have had lineanongrata in my list of favorites for quite some time. Her story is personally inspiring - she talks about her journey through other professions before going into illustration in her Etsy profile. I love knowing this about her... as another one who is coming to her artistic senses after working in other careers, I feel a kinship with this woman. I love her style and look forward to growing my collection. I can't wait to get this print in the mail: wintergirl


Are you seeing a theme coming together here?? I've got kiddos on my mind lately, and just love the idea of filling my "children & creativity" feng shui area of my home with these gorgeous and inspiring works!

bat wings WIP

I thought I'd open the studio up today... I've been dying to start using my gocco for cloth printing, but with a schedule as tight as I've had lately, the process has been slow. This weekend, I got to start on the work for the first screen.

I decided that in the spirit of the autumn, I thought I'd use the weird-looking bat nuts I brought back from Sichuan in 2002. They look Halloween-y don't they? So, I took some photos, and then edited the best one to use on the silk screen.







Then I just had to print it out and xerox it for burning the screen master.

Today I made the screen and discovered the challenges of printing on cloth! First, the ink is really thick and dries fast, making it difficult to mix. As far as I can tell, the fabric inks only come in black, white, red, yellow, blue, green and brown. When I tried mixing the brown to come up with a more appealing walnut color, I quickly realized that this trial-and error process was going to waste a lot of ink! So I tried printing the brown mix and wasn't happy with the resulting print. So of course, I switched to black!















Now I'm pretty happy with the print. It does take some getting used to, though! Although I didn't want black for this particular graphic, I'm going to stick with it for now. What do you think? Is the image too weird? Cool?



ETA: Although I don't have the towels ready to show, I do have some fabric panels finished and they look AWESOME! I'll be posting them as supplies tonight on Bamboo Village Supply.

ready, set. GOCCO!

I don't know what the block was to getting another post written... I did so enjoy looking at those blue bottles, I think that might have been part of it, lol. This week, there's not a lot of news about Zhang Lin except that she's started back to school already and now I have to figure out how to get the funds over there!

Meanwhile, not only did I finally get my gocco, but today I broke it in! Do you know what a gocco is? It's a Japanese home screen printer, and it's such a revolutionary little toy, it's crazy. I was concerned about fine lines, and was pleasantly surprised to see that I could have even gotten away with even finer lines than the ones I drew, but I'm getting ahead of myself, here.

I took pictures and everything. This is just a one by one set of shots... there are notes about them all in my flickr photostream.

Step 1: draw your design, and set in the gocco printer. Load the screen.


Step 2: load the bulbs, and set that in the cover. Press hard and the bulbs flash (and burn out), burning the screen.



Step 3: examine your screen, a.k.a. one of the coolest things, EVAR.



Step 4: Ink the screen, set your paper beneath, and peel off the original.



Step 5: press the screen down, and voila! a print!



Here are the finals - the owl and the hedgehog. I'm less confident about the hedgie, so he's not been posted in the shop...



It has actually been a very productive week over here, craft-wise. There's been a whole lot of photography for my ravelry account. And there's been knitting... knitting "Luxe" a neckwarmer pattern I am loving. Here are 2:



Finally, my sister came to visit! We went to see Rufus Wainwright on Friday night, which was truly memorable. Niko Case opened, we were in an outdoor venue, and there was a glorious thunderstorm between acts. It was fantastic. And before we went to the concert, we spent some time at Rosie's... where the sister simply sat and inhaled wool fumes and fondled wonderful fibers.