TO GO INTO THE WORLD :: the artwork of mae chevrette

a lull and a spark

2012-02-22T20:00:00.000-08:00

Took everything off my inspiration board while I figure out how to re-work it...

Near the end of December I was feeling really burnt out and told myself I'd take the month of January "off"... I still packed and shipped artwork, sketched and planned but with less pressure to produce new work than I had felt over the past few months. I did some little DIY projects in our apartment, took photographs and worked on a couple custom paintings but not much more.

Holly of Decor8 recently blogged about accepting natural pauses in inspiration, especially when the weather gets cold and life outside seems to shut down a little too:

"I’ve been inspiration-challenged and unmotivated, like my creative fuel tank was at 1/4 and slipping rapidly towards empty. I get this feeling each and every January and attribute it to nature’s way of saying, “Slow down. Rest up, enjoy the silence in your head because it will soon be full speed ahead!”, and well… Nature knows best. Animals hibernate, trees stand naked with exposed limbs, soil freezes over with no signs of life and yet we always-hungry-for-more humans still push with all of our might to fly forward without any rest or reflection. The moment our body tells us to pause we think something is wrong and freak out. More and more, because I’ve noticed this January pattern for several years now and am “on” to it, I think something is right when I feel like doing a lot of nothing. My January down time is something I expect and roll with these days… Who cares, I reason, I’ll get back on my feet soon enough."

I take heart in the fact that other creative people get into these same slumps, where it feels like you can do everything except what you are supposed to be good at-- creating. So the choice to take a break a good thing, because January was fabulous for living life and exploring the city with Mike and catching up with friends, but decidedly uninspired when it came to producing. One thing I've learned about the creative process is that you can't force it... you can prepare for it, practice it and even coax it along in hopes that you're just overlooking inspirational seeds already planted... but if nothing is happening, then nothing happens. At least that is how it is for me.

Luckily, just as you begin to get accustomed to the pause, the winds shift and creative sparks begin to fly again. Instead of staring at a blank canvas thinking "now what?", I have fully formed visions in my head just waiting for my hands to pick up paper and a brush. Some are new and some have been percolating for a while... I've had this photograph in my head for the last few months since taking the series during an awesome, serene moment alongside a river in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and finally started playing with it in a few new pieces. Here is one.

wall collage series

2012-02-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

I've been teaching myself image transferring for the last couple years and finally found a technique I really like... it's expensive to do and frustrating as hell but the result is (in my opinion) really pretty. The colors remain vibrant while the shapes and lines in the image become just a little bit muted, softer and translucent to whatever is behind them.

Due to the texture of the layers of vintage paper below the transfer, not all of the transfer sticks and it gets a gritty, grungy look with little (or big) missing chunks. It's sort of like being able to Photoshop words and images over a textured background, except it actually makes a mess and my hands get dirty... I like that. These were all made on small 3/8" panels so they would be easy to hang together for an art wall sort of look.

All of these were originally done on canvas and then cut and mounted on panel board. I'm slowly but surely getting a good grip on substrates are best for which techniques and am able to decide between wrapped canvas, cradled wood, or gessoed panel prior to starting each new piece. It seems like there won't ever be a point where the learning stops.

Some of these have sold, and some are still available in my Etsy shop.

a little love note (to the sea)

2012-02-20T14:33:00.000-08:00

Had a great vibe going on in my studio today... I almost couldn't tell it was still February outside! I had Dirty Heads & Rome radio on Pandora, made some banana cinnamon pancakes for lunch and was just in a relaxed, beachy mood. It was warm enough to have the windows open in the afternoon... even in winter the salty air from Boston Harbor wafts through our neighborhood and it smells like the beach.

Have I mentioned I'm still beyond happy to be living right next to the ocean again after living 1-2 hours inland for seven years? Siiiiigh.

This painting was so fragile... I used a gel transfer of a photo I took and put it straight onto a Mexican envelope from 1919 with no backing or anything. Even with paint and several layers of varnish it was still wispy and felt like it was going to rip any second. It was too fragile to even put near the fan to help dry it... the thinness of old, weathered paper is definitely a challenge sometimes.

I finished it up with stamps and india ink (I was pretty sure hand-painting words might tear it) and matted it to a piece of rough canvas then put it in this floating frame. Normally I don't frame artwork before selling it... but I just loved this little piece. I think someone will see it and will immediately think of a person they love who this piece would speak to and it will already be ready to put right up on a wall :)

I'm unsure why the photos are so blurry/low resolution... maybe I'll take more photos when the sun is back out tomorrow. A Little Love Note (To The Sea) is available in my shop if you'd like to take a look.

a whoa moment

2012-02-17T12:35:00.000-08:00

Woke up feeling weirdly inspired after a few days of feeling like nothing... I told Mike "big things are going to be made today." I've been playing around with some new (to me) materials and staring at stuff just thinking about it for a few days and it all came together a few hours ago as a "whoa" moment. Kinda hard to capture that in photos but I had to wait for some paint to dry so I tried anyway...

The photos don't really do this feeling any justice. The inside of my head is just like, whoa, yes, awesome, ready, go!

Also, I swear I don't intentionally post dozens of photos of my cats... Chubby Boots has just decided that when I'm in the studio my work table, particularly the sunny part within reach of my hands, is his "spot".

You can pair these photos with a mix of reggae and folk rock to get a better idea of the vibe here today... I'm loving "So Nice" by Forest Sun. I think the best way to give him a listen is his Myspace page. Perfect upbeat relaxing music if you like G. Love & Special Sauce, ALO, Jack Johnson, Ray Lamontagne, and Zac Brown Band. (And, if you have any similar bands or artists to share, I'd love some music suggestions! Spring is right around the corner and I'd love some fresh new music to listen to.)

snowboard-inspired dresser diy

2012-02-14T12:15:00.000-08:00

Even though we moved into our first post-college apartment almost a year ago, it's still sort of a work in progress. Over the holidays I found an old but solid birch dresser (on Craigslist, where else?) for super cheap and picked it up from another artist in Somerville. It was really dinged up and the finish was literally flaking off but after a few coats of paint and some new brushed metal knobs it now looks good as new.

I bought several pieces of artwork to hang over it but am still waiting to find the right frames for them. For now I temporarily hung Always (still for sale in my Etsy shop!) so it didn't have to be tucked away in storage :)

The paint color was inspired by my snowboard, which happened to be leaning against the wall when we brought the dresser in. Our boards are still there, sad and unused so far during this very warm and snow-less winter. Since our walls are light grey I spray painted both jewelry stands white and picked up that cute cutout frame for $10 at Pier 1.

golden gardens via elephantine

2012-02-13T21:39:00.000-08:00

Jewelry designer and writer Rachel of Elephantine shared some photos on her blog that made me smile as soon as I saw them.

Golden Gardens is a small beach and park close to the house where I grew up in Seattle... though it's not far from downtown, the road below shoots off from my street and winds enchantedly through a mossy, sun-dappled forest for a mile or two before reaching a beach where there are fire pits, barbecue grills, picnic tables and even an old-school ice cream and hot dog shack alongside a quiet little sailboat marina. Since Seattle rarely gets very cold (at least, compared to what I'm used to now that I've lived in New England) it's a nice place to go for a beach stroll or sailboat watching even in the middle of winter.

Visit her post here for more of her photos. (Rachel also had her wedding portraits taken a few blocks away at the Ballard Locks, my absolute favorite place when I was a little kid and still a fun place to walk around, enjoy big shady trees, watch salmon jump from Puget Sound into Lake Washington and try to hold your breath for the length of passing freight trains.)

Since leaving Seattle after high school I was always happy to have travelled and experienced living new places, and I do enjoy living in Boston very much, but I definitely have moments of extreme homesickness for my home town, including when I saw these photos. This bustling city sprinkled with natural treasures and sandwiched between mountain ranges and salt water was really a beautiful, relaxing place to grow up.

This is one of the only photos I took the last time I was home to visit, taken randomly from some side street on the hill I lived on... it's not a great photo, but I will never get tired of seeing an ocean and a mountain range in the same shot.

inspired by: the art of missed connections

2012-02-10T08:34:00.000-08:00

Have you ever read the Missed Connections section of your local Craigslist? I'm a huge Craigslister; around half of my worldly possessions, from every piece of furniture I owned in college to our current barn door coffee table and papasan-chair-turned-clothes-rack, came into my life via Craigslist Seattle, Western Mass or Boston. I love that aside from being an online garage sale of gross couches and certified-pre-owned cats it's also got a human side with interesting, sometimes bizarre but often sweet stories.

Described as "the internet's version of lost and found," Missed Connections is a last-ditch effort for people to connect with someone they were either by chance or by choice unable to interact with in the moment. Buried between the always humorous Sorry-I'm-Not-Sorry psuedo-appologies, the Passive-Aggressive-Behavioral-Complaints, and the More-Than-Slightly-Creepy-Library-Pun-Users, there are some heartfelt pleas from Craigspeople just looking for that second chance at friendship, love, owls, whatever.

The serendipitous humor and hope in these posts inspired a collection of paintings by illustrator Sophie Blackall called (obviously) Missed Connections. Blackall does a beautiful job pairing her whimsical watercolors with equally quirky and unique ads she has found. Some are cute, some are funny, some are bittersweet. Here are some of my favorites :)

The last two are my favorite... I love that whoever the original posters were, they might not have wanted anything but to tell another person that they were awesome. There are so many people I'm now tempted to anonymously thank for existing in South Boston... the construction worker with a cowboy-hat shaped hardhat who sings country songs with an Irish accent outside the subway is first on my list.

Most of these are from Blackall's local Brooklyn MC, but she recently did an illustration for Boston.com's Love Letters column based on a real-life story of cat-shirt love found and lost on a Brookline dance floor. If you've ever been to the shady hipster outskirts of Boston you can totally imagine this scene playing out:

The ad: "you hooked me in with your sweet robot moves and cat shirt. none of that grinding stuff, just natural robotic talent. you said ‘‘hey, you’re cute.’’ and i said, ‘‘you, too’’ and then i elbowed you in the ribs because i’m not very smooth when it comes to romance... kept looking at your cat shirt thinking, ‘‘yesssss, i can see us marrying and having lots of cats.’’ went to dance on stage with friends and then lost you?!?myfriend said you got shy, which makes you and your cat shirt even more cute!!! alas, i lost both you and my heart on the dance floor. find me cat shirt guy, find me. p.s. i also put up ‘‘LOST: cat shirt guy’’ signs for you."

While there is a lot of humor in these paintings there's also a poignant undertone of loss and possibility to them that was best noted by a commenter on Blackall's Etsy's video:

"I've been a huge fan of Sophie's Missed Connections since I stumbled onto them by chance. The whole idea of the posts on Craigslist is so bittersweet. So many missed chances, so many 'what ifs,' a world of infinite possibilites with people focusing on the opportunities they lost and the people they just managed not to connect with. I hope it teaches us all to seize the moment, smile at strangers and really interact with the people around us."

Sophie Blackall's Missed Connections is now available in book form as well as archival prints (in case you want to commemorate Mr. Throat Tattoo in your living room for all time), and if you live in New York her work can be seen on the newer subway trains as part of the MTA for Arts program. And, if you're more the literary type and you ever have a few minutes to kill (or just don't like doing your job at work, no judgement here!) the CL Best-Of has some gems.

workspace + supplies

2012-02-09T13:35:00.000-08:00

While I can't share the two big paintings I'm working on this week just yet, I wanted to share my workspace and some of the supplies I'm using on them. I get a lot of emails and comments asking what materials I use... maybe if there is enough of a demand I'll put together a more in-depth studio tour someday, but for now here's a peek at what I'm using right now.

Building a bigger workspace was one of the best decisions I ever made! This big long DIY sawhorse table has more than enough room for me to spread out my supplies and still have a little space for sketching, cutting, and spilling coffee.

The paintbrushes are a given. I also love colored oil pencils. I use a spray bottle of plain water to mist paint while it's still wet. On a flat surface this creates a pebbly effect, while on a vertical canvas it creates translucent drips of paint. I also use it to "erase" acrylic paint, even after it has dried. The four types of gloss/gel/adhesive I use are Minwax water-based polycrylic finish (water-based, but wear gloves and have good ventilation), glossy and matte ModPodge, and Golden Soft Gel. You just have to play around with each type alongside different materials to figure out what combinations you like the best, as each will have vastly different effects on different materials... experience and practice really are the best teachers.

(Two of my favorite discoveries: using Minwax to attach wet paper to a collage will render the paper/material almost translucent and give it more depth; using a coat of glossy ModPodge will allow you to "erase" anything you paint on top of it with a wet sponge until you get it the way you like. Cool right?)

Mixed media is my favorite type of painting style because using found materials and thinking about how I can incorporate those materials allows me to "say more" in a piece of my artwork than if I was limited to just paint. Other supplies I use regularly are sandpaper (fine, medium and very course) and a rough sponge to distress layers of paint and photos, as well as nails, tacks, metal rulers and aluminum scraps, and scraps of fabric. The blue gauzy fabric was an old scarf and the other two pieces are from a cotton shirt.

Metal, printed words for gel transfers, tacks, fabric.

This pair of scissors was like $5 on sale at Michael's, but cuts everything from metal to canvas to sandpaper daily. Old letters and envelopes are obviously a favorite material of mine... some of the paper ephemera I use is over 100 years old (when someone in Chicago could write just someone's name and "Boston" on an envelope and know it would reach them) (I am beyond dorky because I think that is so cool) and have an incredible texture and patina that can't be replicated. These old papers really give life and depth to a painting. I find most of the paper I use at estate sales and consignment stores but occasionally friends will find some and pass it along my way.

Obligatory "Chubby Boots watching the seagulls" photo... like Gracie, he seems to love being in my studio while I'm working and it makes me smile. My paints are almost exclusively Golden brand Heavy Body acrylics... aside from the paint being good quality and not too expensive if you buy it in bulk/online, the tops are big and very airtight... not those tiny tops that are impossible to screw on once they get a little dried paint around the mouth of the tube or the inside of the cap.

Some supplies not shown: a hammer, spray paint, knives for scraping/shaping paint, Chartpak Ad felt tip markers, india ink, tissue paper, coffee/tea used to stain/dye materials, masking tape, license plates, recycled sari fabric, yarn and thread, stencils, stamps, and a bin of the random pieces of metal that show up everywhere around South Boston.

I hope that was helpful! Experimenting with different materials -- even ones that are not specifically art supplies -- has made the biggest difference in my artwork process and has really helped me develop my style over the last few years. As media critic and philosopher Marshall McLuhan once said (although it often mistakenly attributed to artist Andy Warhol), "Art is what you can get away with." Don't be afraid to throw something new or weird into your cache of art possibilities!

some art on the walls

2012-02-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

This weekend was so packed... between a seminar on craft beer brewing (at Harvard! who knew those smart nerds were so cool), one of my best friends' birthdays and the Superbowl, I felt like we weren't home at all. I love being in our apartment... which is probably a good thing since I spend most of my workday here. These lazy mornings before we each go to work are the best.

We're listening to a pretty sweet Jack Johnson radio station on Pandora if you'd like to give it a listen :)

Doing a little work while we wake up... still pretty bummed about the Patriots' loss.

Live, Travel, Adventure, Bless is about four feet tall and a little too big to store with the rest of my finished work... so it's hung on our wall until it sells :)

Pretty nice view for a kitten.

Sea Fever, hung over my desk.

We should probably take the holiday decorations off our Christmas Houseplant now that it's February.

Banana tree, guitar.

A small mixed media piece I made using a gel image transfer and stamps over vintage envelopes on canvas. I took the photo almost four years ago from Mike's friend's roof deck in downtown Boston.

My studio in the golden afternoon light.

Now into the studio to paint :)

sweet morning

2012-02-03T07:12:00.000-08:00

Some random shots from early this morning...

One of the best gifts Mike and I got for Christmas was 10 pounds of coffee from a local roaster in the town where we went to college... we go through a lot of coffee so it's been fun to brew different kinds each day before we start our workday.

The last photo is from a piece still in progress... I've been working on a few similar pieces, focusing on textures and a couple new techniques. Hopefully I'll get out of this inspiration funk and have something to share soon.

corey smith in boston, and some georgia reminiscing

2012-02-01T13:49:00.000-08:00

"Carolina" by Corey Smith shuffled, fittingly, on my iPod right after I drove across the South Carolina border on the drive from Georgia back to Amherst, Massachusetts for my junior year of college. It marked the end of the best summer of my life. On Thursday night at his first sold-out show in Boston, Corey opened with "Carolina" and I was right back on that road.

To make a long story (sorta) short, when I was on a road trip home to Seattle two years before, I was told by surfers in the Outer Banks to visit a "swamp hostel" in southeastern Georgia. I did, and ended up living there on staff for a month, hanging laundry, feeding chickens, meeting people, helping paint a mural and enjoying the sticky sweetness of a lazy Georgia summer. I was 19.

Helping paint a mural inside a drum circle; Chickens and guitars on the hostel porch

After just a month I was hooked on Georgia... I still love nearly everything about it. The place I lived and people I knew were unpretentious, laid back, kind and fun. For the next two summers I returned to live on nearby Saint Simons Island, serving coffee, slinging barbecue, pouring beers and living at the beach in between. Along the way I fell in and out of a relationship, made amazing friends and learned how to fit in somewhere new. I first heard Corey Smith play to a small but rowdy crowd at a bar while I sipped a sweaty pint of Sweetwater 420 after a long day of waitressing.

Bartending at the pub (also a coffee shop and BBQ joint); Me and Nikki, my close friend and partner in crime on SSI

How my days looked in between my barista shift and my bartending shift

Of all the twangy southern alt-rock that passed through the island those summers, his drawled, drinking-infused lyrics stuck with me and became the soundtrack to my time there. The Good Life has soothed a lot of anxious wanderlust and made me excited for any chance we may someday find ourselves living down south.

On Thursday, Mike and I went out for barbecue and then headed to Brighton Music Hall, where the Adam Ezra Group opened with a few original songs, an awesome acoustic cover of Ke$ha's "Tik Tok" and segued into a riotous "Country Road" before Corey stepped on stage to greet his sold-out crowd.

The show was phenomenal. So much energy radiated from the audience onto Corey, and he bounced it right back to us with a huge smile under his trademark baseball cap.

Mike, who usually doesn't like any country music (except when Kenny Chesney sings specifically about sailboats) remarked right away that Corey "seems like he's fuckin' giddy. He's so pumped by the audience. He loves this shit! Hell yeah... I like this guy." There was something about the energy and appreciation throughout the crowd that made this show really special... because he isn't yet played on mainstream radio up here, it felt like all four hundred people shared a connection through Corey and his long, steady rise as an independent artist.

While we were finishing our beers after the show, Corey, his bassist Mike and Adam Ezra came out to chat with some fans. I said a quick hello, thanked him for the show and turned to leave just as Mike mentioned how long it had been since I'd seen Corey in Saint Simons. We chatted about that show and this one for a few minutes before he was informed that a a line of whiskey shots were waiting for him at the bar.

I was so happy to have somewhat awkwardly introduced myself, since Corey was exactly how I expected him to be... surprisingly soft-spoken, friendly and as personal as he comes across in his honest, often heartfelt journal posts. Aside from loving his music, I like that as an artist Corey is constantly revisiting old work, considering his talent and honestly critiquing himself.

Adam hooked Mike up with their new CD and we walked out into the dark, rainy Boston night, but the whole ride home feeling like I could have been back in coastal Georgia (although with a much brighter skyline.) I'm not sure how to share all the tracks I'd like to here but I recommend listening to Carolina, and if you like that, you can stream Broken Record (my new favorite), Dahlonega, Maybe Next Year, Beautiful Things and The Wreckage on his website.

sunday.

2012-01-29T16:38:00.000-08:00

A lazy sunday.

heart + intuition and salt water canvas prints

2012-01-28T10:03:00.000-08:00

Three new canvas prints are now available in my Etsy shop!

Heart + Intuition is available as an 11"x14" gallery-wrapped canvas print.

Salt Water is available as a small 11"x13" or original-sized 20"x24" gallery-wrapped canvas print.

I'm so happy with how they turned out... I put the large Salt Water print next to the original painting and could barely tell the difference! Heart + Intuition is the perfect size to brighten up a small wall, so I gave the first canvas print to Mike's sister for Christmas... it looks great in her dorm room :)

You can find these two new prints in my shop here.

inspired by: line juhl hansen

2012-01-23T10:50:00.000-08:00

I didn't major in art while in college, or art history, and I can count on one hand all the art or art theory classes I've ever taken. Sadly (or perhaps thankfully) I've taught myself most of what I know, and don't have the knowledge or vocabulary to properly express what I think about most art. When I share artists or work that I like, it isn't because I know what is trending in the art world right now or that they've pioneered a particular technique, but simply because I just know what I like and perhaps if you like my art you might like the art that in turn inspires me.

I like layers of media, rustic colors from nature and folksy details. I like geometric shapes and classic typography but also carefree script and brushstrokes. And overall, I appreciate art with energy and intention, which is what I see when I look at the work of Danish artist Line Juhl Hansen. I can't really describe why I love here work so much but if you take a look I think you'll understand. It is big. It is bold. It is so simultaneously in-your-face and so subtly detailed that you can't not be drawn into it.

The fact that Hansen's portfolio and blog are both written in German meant I couldn't really decipher much about her painting process. It made me examine all her work with the freshest eyes possible and really scour the details in each negative space. I admire her use of bright, bold colors both as focal points in some pieces and in details peeking out from large swaths of black... the combinations of rust, copper patina, black and stark whitewash over found paper, stenciled numbers and scribbled symbols make me think of colors and textures found on reclaimed urban walls. Hansen is also one of those artists whose studio space is nearly as intriguing as her actual artwork... check out her studio tour here and her website here.

in a world that gets lost in making plans

2012-01-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

I heard the very beginning of this song as I was walking out the door of my gym the other day and fell in love. I stopped in my tracks on the side of the road to Google the last lyric I heard, found the song, looked up the artist on Spotify and immediately streamed it for my jog home. It wasn't exactly fitting for a 20 degree run through South Boston but it still did the job. I've been playing Green River Ordinance in my studio almost nonstop since then.

Pretty cool huh? They have a folksy, rootsy sound that makes me think of a combination of Old Crow Medicine Show and The Fray. My other favorites are Where The West Wind Blows and GRO's cover of The Weight by The Band.

snowfall

2012-01-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

Last night I looked out the window around 9pm and the sky was so bright... it was snowing! The city lights reflecting off the falling snowflakes just illuminate the whole horizon. This is the first real snowfall since we moved to Boston in March... when the rest of Massachusetts got a snowstorm in October we just got a lot of rain, and a few random flurries since then. Here is the view from our apartment over the Southie rooftops and St. Vincent's church.

I think I might get a little too excited about snow for an adult... but whatever.

gallery visit: robin luciano beaty & lanoue fine art

2012-01-16T09:14:00.000-08:00

"My process is the visceral journey of discovering something reminiscent rather than the recording of a specific space. The medium of encaustic provides me with that exploratory means of expression. Its qualities are sublime and unpredictable, additive and subtractive, translucent and sculptural..." - Lost & Found Artist Statement, Robin Luciano Beaty

I've been a fan of Robin Luciano Beaty's encaustic mixed media artwork since seeing her studio tour in Apartment Therapy a few years ago, and regretted missing her exhibit in Boston last summer. Her current exhibit Lost & Found at Lanoue Fine Art was extended, so Mike and I grabbed lunch at Berkeley Perk and battled some wicked wind on the walk to Newbury Street.

It was worth it... Luciano Beaty's work is just gorgeous; smooth, sculpted layers of encaustic wax punctuated by found objects, organic material and sparkles of glass and nails. The thick textural quality of her paintings was what really drew me in, as each surface morphed quickly from deep translucent planes into rough, gritty sand, wood, various weights of textile fabric... even what looked like a dried sea fan and a mossy strip of tree bark. I knew I needed to see her work in person but didn't realize how much more detail and texture could be seen up close.

Confluence #28 and Quiescence #6, both 36" x 36" mixed media on panel. Quiescence #6 was by far my favorite... and not just because it's a seascape. Though so many found materials are incorporated, Luciano Beaty achieves the goal of making the entire piece more than just the sum of its parts... I appreciated how they were combined so intentionally and with so much care to each layer, and how each contrasted but still complimented the adjoining layers of material.

Mike liked Traversing, a 72" x 36" diptych. He said it reminded him of a shoreline from the sky, with breaking waves and rocks. For an engineer, my boyfriend gets a lot of credit for accompanying me to art galleries and fairs and taking the time to consider and talk about abstract art with me. Love him.

Remains To Be Seen was another favorite of mine and was the piece I was most excited to see in person after seeing it online. Even in this photo you can't begin to see all the different materials, layers, colors and techniques used in each 5"x5" panel. It almost seemed like no material or brush-stroke was duplicated... each panel projected its own unique quality while remaining relative to the others. Some were speckled with tack nails and wrapped in rusting metal mesh... some were lake-smooth with gesso or aluminum... others were unique moonscapes of bubbling wax encapsulating vintage photographs or handwritten letters. I could have looked at this one for hours.

Lost & Found also featured a couple artists I hadn't heard of including the sculptures of Johan Hagaman and the paintings of Andrew Saftel.

He's More Cloud and Stream, a wire, metal and resin sculpture.

Scenic Road by Tennessee artist Andrew Saftel... you can't tell from the photo but so much of what looks "painted" on is actually carved into this thick piece of wood. A lot of Saftel's paintings had this same engraved quality, with many patterns and symbols recessed into thick layers of vibrant paint. I loved the soulful Americana displayed throughout all his work.

My photographs really don't do any justice... there is really nothing like seeing art up close and in person. After leaving the gallery we walked across the Charles River to Cambridge so Mike could do a couple hours of work at his lab while I got coffee and answered emails :)

art, cats, plants, bricks.

2012-01-10T10:08:00.000-08:00

Here are some photos of the big art I mentioned on Sunday... though it looks much less big hung on a big wall next to a big window. This was painted towards the end of the summer and I wasn't specifically painting it for our apartment, but Mike liked it and when it was finished it just seemed to be the perfect addition to our home.

It was inspired by a poem I wrote about standing at the edge of the ocean and is a little more abstract than a lot of my other pieces... and I love it. Beneath the paint is chunky bits of paper, metal, plastic, other scraps... some are (intentionally) peeling to reveal layers underneath. This piece is chunky, flaky, dripping, rough. Over the paint are dozens of lines of text from all kinds of poems, songs, old sea shanties, even encyclopedia descriptions of different oceans. My poem is hidden within them.

And this is just a gratuitous photo of Chubby Boots surveying the seagulls flying down our street.

Since I spent nearly every minute of the last two months on my business, most of January is going to be spent working on personal art/crafts and other projects for our apartment... I'll try to find some good DIY projects to share!

lazy sunday, big art.

2012-01-08T20:38:00.000-08:00

I love being lazy on Sunday afternoons... today Mike watched football, we played with the cats, I sent some emails, wasted time on Pinterest and just lived on the couch. Had a couple beers, ate homemade chili, snuggled. I love my home.

A couple weeks ago we hung a 30"x40" painting over our bed, and now I'm almost obsessively trying to find more ways to put up art in our apartment. I have a couple pieces of my own and of others' waiting for me to find frames and wall space for them. Until then I'm drooling over big art in beautiful spaces found on Pinterest.

Decor by Lonny Magazine

the home of Sabrina Ward Harrison via Apartment Therapy

big script art tutorial by Elise Blaha

Robin Luciano Beaty's art barn via Apartment Therapy

big wall art by Anahata Katkin

Little art and large art via Apartment Therapy

Addie Rementer painting via Apartment Therapy's Room for Color

Gorgeous, right? I want to go play with a big canvas right now!

the last year.

2012-01-06T10:43:00.001-08:00

One year ago today, I was sitting on a beach in Costa Rica with Mike, thinking my first sincere, scary thoughts about quitting my day job as a medical study research coordinator and pursuing my love of creating art. I wasn't meant to sit in a cubicle or anywhere I can't be creative, and I never want to look back on an opportunity and see that I settled for what was "safe." On our flight home, something clicked, and I knew in my heart that it was the right time to take this risk.

So much has happened since then I can barely believe it! 2011 has been good to me. With Mike's encouragement I gave two weeks notice at my job in March. It was bittersweet since I really did enjoy my work there, but absolutely nothing I've ever done compares the feeling of walking into my own studio every day and the freedoms and challenges of being my own boss. Though there have been ups and downs, there hasn't been a day when I didn't feel like I made the best decision of my life.

After living with Mike's parents since graduating from college, we found the perfect apartment in a converted brick factory in South Boston. It's small, but had a studio space and lots of storage for my art and is close to the subway line Mike takes to grad school (he was previously commuting 3 hours a day to Boston by train!) It still makes me very, very happy to wake up here.

We flew to Colorado to visit friends and go snowboarding, and went on a couple smaller camping and boating trips. At the end of summer I went on an inspiration-seeking road trip alone through the Appalachian mountains, found beautiful places and sights all the way down to North Carolina and Tennessee and started several paintings in a tiny cabin along the Crabtree River in southwestern Virginia. Though I enjoyed traveling alone and had some incredible moments of serenity and discovery, I felt sad that I wasn't sharing these experiences with Mike. It was the first time I have ever wished I wasn't traveling alone and that marked a special point in my relationship with him and with myself.

This year my artwork was sold in three galleries in three states. I wrote tearfully about my greatest creative influence. I took on seven commissioned projects and learned a lot about time management, small-business finances and budgeting. I signed a contract with a major television studio for the rights to a piece of my artwork, and did several small and major magazine interviews set to appear in 2012. In July, I was featured in Etsy's Quit Your Day Job column and received a lot of kind and encouraging feedback that helped remind me why I make the artwork that I do.

In October, we adopted Chubby Boots, a sweet little guy who plays fetch and loves lounging on my studio windowsill.

Mike and I celebrated our fourth anniversary as a couple in December.

We also both turned 25 this year. I started thinking more about my health and made a huge effort to eat healthier and treat my body better. Deciding to make this lifestyle change has had an unbelievable effect on my energy level, weight, sleep, confidence, you name it. I went from not being able to run for more than five minutes to running almost 3 miles a day. I'll run my first 5k in 2012!

2011 was great, but 2012 will be even better. Personally, I want to be even more deliberate in the art that I make and more intentional in the energy I project into it and into the other areas of my life. Professionally, my goal is to develop a local presence for my artwork and become more engaged in the awesome art community in Boston. I'll travel more and create more while traveling, become more confident in seeking out work I want to do and better at saying "no" to work that doesn't feel right. I'll manage my time better so neither my artwork nor my social life will take a backseat to one another as they did many times this year. There will be more care and less clutter, more confidence and less doubt, more passion and energy and drive.

2012, it's on!

merry&bright

2011-12-23T18:20:00.001-08:00

I lugged my very last bin of holiday orders to the post office on Thursday... then went on a lonnng run around Southie and the Seaport district, finished wrapping presents (with Geninne's beautiful DIY bird gift tags) and packed up the cats to go home to Mike's family for the weekend.

Chubby Boots was excited to see his sister, who was adopted by Mike's brother Matt. I was excited to wake up to snow (!!!) and my first attempt at making peppermint bark holiday treat bags. We were able to do most of our holiday shopping handmade or locally... it will be fun to watch people open their presents on Christmas :)

I hope you have a very merry, soulful and bright holiday season.

ever since the beginning to keep the world spinning

2011-12-19T18:21:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks have been a blur... saying I work harder and longer since becoming self-employed is more of an understatement than ever before. My days start when the sun (and occasionally jackhammers on our street.. ugh) wakes me up and ends around 2 or 3am when all emails are replied to, all artwork orders are packed and ready to be walked up to the post office, all paint is cleaned up and everything else is checked and reordered and planned and done. It's exhausting but in a really good way... I can't imagine a more perfect use of my energy right now.

Outside of commissioned work, I haven't been painting as much as usual but I've been stoking the creative fires in my head often. I plan on taking a short break from painting after Christmas to create with some other materials and thoughts I've been collecting and dreaming about recently.

Things that have been inspiring me right now...

Self Portrait by Regina Pagles.. no explanation needed.

Still feeling that wanderlust I couldn't satisfy last summer.

Star Trails Over Boston by Nimay Shah

I started running in October and still do 2-3 miles once or twice a week after dropping art off at the post office if it isn't too cold... my favorite route to run is from my apartment to the Seaport and along the waterfront because it takes me right where this photo was taken. It really is this gorgeous at night.

"Vancouver" for EF International Language Centers' "Live The Language" campaign

(Sydney and Beijing are pretty cool too! and make me very disappointed that I didn't travel abroad in college.)

Spring Swatch dying over at Scout & Catalogue
also these tips on creating natural dyes on the Free People blog

"1st Round Compilation" by The Beauty of a Second

Doing a compilation like this would be a really cool way to record special events or a year of life/work.

Charmaine Olivia's workspace

"One Day Like This" by Elbow... you'll like this but you might have to click the link to watch it on YouTube.

My own Appalachian road trip journal in progress... also Miranda Lambert's new album, Four. I don't know how to embed it but you can listen to the first track "All Kinds of Kinds" here.

Have you found anything good lately?

inspired by: 3.2 million dots

2011-12-16T09:28:00.000-08:00

"Hero" - Created, Filmed, Produced and Edited by Miguel Endara

Music by Bonobo - Noctuary

MIT glass lab

2011-12-12T23:31:00.000-08:00

Tonight I drove to Cambridge to meet up with Mike after work, and we went to the MIT Glass Lab holiday sale... you wouldn't think MIT would have classes on glass blowing, but they do and the work produced by their students is pretty incredible. Some of the pieces were so elegant and detailed it was hard to believe they were made by hand, by students.

Excuse the mediocre photos... they were taken under school hallway-esque fluorescent lighting after drinking a very large coffee.

Crazy talented, right? And everything was surprisingly inexpensive for handmade art. If you live around Boston, this sale is going on until 5pm Tuesday evening and worth checking out. Lobby 10 is in "The Infinite Hallway" and only a five minute walk from the Kendall/MIT station on the Red Line. Or a 25 minute drive from East Boston if you happen to have an outdated GPS and get lost in rush-hour traffic like someone did. (Me.)

(I did buy a tiny pink votive candleholder for my studio... maybe I'll post a photo when I finally get back in there again.. someday.)

december sounds

2011-12-05T19:08:00.001-08:00

Pandora was killin it in my studio last night... every song I already love and every song I had been waiting to find came on in the perfect order and helped make last night one of the most productive painting nights in a long time. I didn't create a lot, but what I did create was magic - something that has been lingering on the tip of a paintbrush for weeks and finally put itself down on canvas tonight.

Here's what tonight looked and sounded like in my tiny brick corner of South Boston...

December Studio by Mae Chevrette on Grooveshark

Though it was 65 degrees and sunny yesterday, it seems like Boston finally got the hint that it's December. It's so grey and rainy outside... makes me want to just shut all the blinds and hibernate. I have a lot of "business" stuff to do today (the sad truth about the holiday rush) but hopefully I'll get some painting in there too and have something long overdue to share in a few days.

inspired by: sketchbooks

2011-12-03T16:21:00.001-08:00

I've been living in a sea of prints and packing materials since the holiday rush began and also in a sort of inspiration lull for a couple days... if the feeling isn't there I don't like to force it, so I haven't been painting or creating as much as usual this week (although, I really enjoyed playing with my watercolors for When We Love.) Instead I'm working on my sketchbook, printing out old photos and playing with new materials and figuring out what I want from my next few paintings. Sketchbooks and art journals are such a good way to experiment and sometimes they end up being just as gorgeous as "real" paintings. Also a good way to collect little bits of life to save for later... occasionally I've ripped a page from a sketchbook and sewed or glued it right into a work in progress.

Here are some of my favorite sketchbooks by other artists and links to check out more of their work if you like.

Sketchbooks by illustrator Oliver Jeffers

UK Journal #11 via Just A Plane Ride Away

Sketchbook Pages via Yelena Bryksenkova
(I was a little excited when I ran across both of these.
My bedroom growing up in Seattle had a view of the Space Needle and Mount Rainier.
The beach in Ocean City was where I had my first "night swimming" experience.)

Moleskine via David Fullarton

Personal Mini Album DIY via Amanda Johnson

Moleskine via Anna Ruskova

Travel journals via Mary Ann Moss of Dispatch From L.A.

Art Journal by Debra Cooper

This is my own sketchbook... one of my favorite pages.

Okay... now I'm going to stop writing about art and actually go make some art. Ready, go.

when we love

2011-12-02T11:01:00.001-08:00

A small watercolor painting I did inspired by my four year anniversary with my boyfriend and best friend, Mike.

I have always appreciated this quote from The Alchemist because it sums up what I believe is the best part of being in love with someone (or an idea or even a place)... love encourages us to work hard for it and to grow and become our best selves, which imparts positivity and intention on not only our relationships but everything else we do in the world.

I'm very far from a perfect person and may always be, but over the years I know Mike's best traits (patience, kindness, optimism) have rubbed off on me and made me better in those ways. He was the person who most strongly encouraged me to begin selling my artwork, and supported my decision to leave my steady job to pursue creating art full-time. I like to hope that my creativity, energy and curiosity have made him more appreciative of the art and beauty that surrounds us. Our mutual love of traveling, learning and seeking out new experiences has made us great adventure buddies.

cyber monday: 10 etsy shops i love and support

2011-11-29T19:14:00.000-08:00

Happy Cyber Monday! My holiday sale is still going strong over in my Etsy shop. In addition to selling my artwork on Etsy, I've also bought a lot of beautiful handmade things for our apartment, studio, and wardrobe and wanted to share some of my favorites with you. Each of these sellers provided a great buying experience, and I use or wear their products often and recommend them if you're looking for quality holiday gifts (or just to spoil yourself!)

Obviously I'm biased, but there are so many reasons why buying handmade during the holidays is awesome - for you, your gift recipients, and the craftspeople whose creativity you are supporting. Think about all the beauty you appreciate in the world - you can encourage it by shopping direct from the artists! Many of the artists below are having Cyber Monday promotions and can ship in time for Christmas, so it's worth giving their shop a look today.

KARIN LORENC POTTERY

I love drinking coffee - it is more of a religious ritual than just a habit - and have a huge obsession with pretty ceramic coffee mugs. The blue one above from Karin Lorenc is my favorite ever and is probably responsible for about 68% of my business' morning productivity. Everything else in her shop is equally as gorgeous and functional, and Karin also makes "incorrect math" mugs that would make a great/funny gift for your favorite teacher.

KAROLIN SCHNOOR ILLUSTRATION

The first thing I bought from London illustrator Karolin Schnoor was this wolf to hang in my studio; I loved the folk-esque feel and tactile quirkiness of assembling them, but looked through her other work and fell in love with her botanical screen prints too, which are beautifully rendered in soft pastels on an organic-feeling grey cardstock. Karolin's handwritten letterpress cards are gorgeous as well and could easily be framed as artwork after (or instead of) being given with gifts.

RED ONION WOODWORKS

I can't share what I purchased from Camille at Red Onion Woodworks just yet, but when it arrived I was floored by how gorgeous and solid her work is. All of ROW's rough-edged serving trays and cutting boards are made from lumber salvaged after storms or industrial logging operations and crafted with a ton of attention to the wood's unique texture and shape - there are burls, marbled patterns and knots galore. Camille also writes this great blog about her life and work in a self-sustaining, off-the-grid cabin in Oregon.

PAULINA CARCACH

To celebrate getting my first job out of college, I splurged on the Victoria (2nd photo) from Paulina Carcach to bring to work. I'm not into high-end handbags or shoes at all (they'd probably end up covered in paint) but I fell in love with Paulina's structured, layered designs and still feel a little glamorous every time I walk out with my bag. Her work is very high quality and definitely stands out.

THIEF & BANDIT

Thief & Bandit is unique among Etsy clothing designers because T&B actually screen-prints their own original geometric designs with non-toxic ink onto organic fabric prior to turning it into shirts, scarves and jewelry. They also created the leather feather headband (which then made it onto billboards in Berlin!) which is unique, well-made and one of my favorite accessories that I own. T&B also have a kids line and some of the best customer service I've had the pleasure of dealing with on Etsy.

UNTAMED MENAGERIE JEWELRY

Untamed Menagerie's fleur de lis earrings (middle) arrived very fast for made-to-order jewelry. Everything in Nikki and Penny's shop is not only unique but affordable as well. Their handmade, vintage-inspired silhouettes range from simple to dramatic and are a perfect balance between whimsical and modern.

THE SUCCULENT GARDEN

Did you know that you can buy plants and food on Etsy? Almost all of the succulents in my apartment and studio came from The Succulent Garden, a great little shop that specializes in plant cuttings and terrariums, which are perfect for anyone with a less-than-green thumb because they grow fast and don't need a lot of attention. Daniel can even tells you which plants are safe around dangerously curious kittens and other pets.

SIXTH AND MAIN PHOTOGRAPHY

Sixth and Main has an eye for capturing beautiful details and angles of everything - from vintage subjects to dramatic landscapes - and a talent for tweaking her photographs to create dreamy and ethereal worlds. I have two lustre prints - Mangia Bene and Al Mio Amore - in my studio and they add a sweet pop of color to my walls.

ANDERSON SOAP COMPANY

Dennis Anderson's Etsy shop had to close for a few days after Black Friday - that's how popular his line of natural/vegan bath and beauty products are! I've bought a few flavors of his whipped soap to treat myself and loved the lip balm that came as a gift... I had Pomegranate balm, but definitely wouldn't mind trying the "sipping rum" flavor. He also has stuff for dudes as well - Mike loved PBR in college so this soap made a fun stocking stuffer. Luckily you can still shop in his Big Cartel shop.

PAULA ART

Texas artist Paula of PaulaArt uses her design and metal-smithing skills to create these gorgeous industrial-rustic vases and candleholders, and more recently recycled wall decor and clocks. I've shared her art a lot recently but that's just because I am so intrigued by her process. The vase I bought from Paula was a thick metal pipe in a striking ocean blue with a little bit of oxidization, and it gives a gorgeous splash of color to the windowsill in front of my work desk.

I hope these recommendations help you find the perfect gift for someone on your list! If you've found the perfect gift or had a great shopping experience on Etsy please do share it in the comments below :)

snapshots

2011-11-26T09:27:00.001-08:00

The windowsill at my work desk... my own painting, a mason jar of tools and some flowers from Mike in an industrial pipe vase by Paula Art. Another recent Etsy purchase from the lovely Geninne.

Revisiting the sketchbook from my summer road trip through the Appalachians.
Experimenting with trifold pages and little hidden photo flaps... I'll share more of this soon.

The newest addition to our family... 12 week old Chubby Boots.
Interests: sleeping and riding bikes.

Starting the largest commissioned work I have done yet... it is very intimidating at first.
What to do with a huge blank canvas? But it's coming along beautifully.

Some script words in the commissioned piece... so much fun.
My gym has motivational sayings painted on the walls... this one is my favorite :)

Back in Mike's hometown for Thanksgiving... his parents' house is full of interesting old antique things.
We went out to find them a Christmas tree in a rural area of Central Massachusetts... bonus: horses!

giving thanks

2011-11-25T12:44:00.001-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

The last couple weeks have been so, so busy preparing for and beginning the holiday rush... It was really nice to leave Boston for a few days and spend the holiday in Mike's hometown with his family. The only time I've flown back to Seattle for Thanksgiving was my freshman year of college because it's such a long, expensive flight... every other year I've gone to various friends' family gatherings and one year I even went camping in Maine alone... thinking back on those years, I am so thankful to now have another place that feels like "home." Mike's mom put together an incredible family meal and today we found the perfect Christmas tree for their beautiful house, followed by an impromptu pizza picnic at the water reservoir near the tree farm. I guess I'm thankful for picnic-quality weather at the end of November as well.

I'm also so thankful for all of you, and a bit overwhelmed by the last year... sometimes I look around my full studio late at night, or notice a big stack of packages waiting to be mailed, or read someone's response to receiving their new art, and I really do get a little choked up that this is my life now. I am literally living my dream, spending every day doing what I know I am on Earth to do, and experiencing my best life because of all of you and your willingness to share and invite my artwork into your homes.

I am beyond grateful for your support and I hope I can keep creating things that inspire you in return. I hope you enjoy your weekend, and all we have to be thankful for :)

original painting giveaway winner

2011-11-16T11:37:00.001-08:00

Hi :)

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway. It was really nice to hear your sweet comments about my work and about "Home." I tried to play around with some different colors and make this a more feminine, comforting piece and from your feedback it sounds like it worked. Thanks again.

I used random.org to generate three random numbers and picked out those #s from the comments. The winner of the original painting "Home" is... Stacey of Star Hitched Wagon.

The two winners of a 14"x11" paper print of "Home" are... Laura W. of Paper Taxi, and Susie Carranza.

Please email me with your addresses within 48 hours to claim your artwork :)

I wish I could give away a print to everyone, because it makes me feel incredibly humbled that so many of you would open your homes and walls to my art. Maybe that sounds cheesy... but... I really, truly appreciate all of you and all your support.

"Home" is now available in my shop as 14"x11" and 8"x10" paper prints. I began my Holiday Sale a week early, so these and all other prints in my shop are up to 25% off their regular price from now until 1/1/12. Original works are also discounted.

To thank you for reading/entering/participating, you can get free U.S. shipping today and tomorrow on this and any other print by entering the code FREESHIP in the coupon code box at checkout. International friends, enter FREESHIP in the message to seller box and I'll refund half of your shipping cost after checkout.

move & learn & eat

2011-11-14T12:03:00.001-08:00

I've shared MOVE on my Facebook page before but I wanted to share it again alongside its companions, LEARN and EAT. I can't get enough of these! I get a little choked up and feel so good after watching them... it is so exciting that there is so much in the world to experience.

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

"home" - an original artwork giveaway

2011-11-09T10:18:00.000-08:00

With the holiday season coming up, I thought it would be fun to give away a piece of original artwork. Maybe this will brighten up your home or become the perfect holiday gift for a loved one!

I'll pick a winner randomly from the comments next week and they will receive "Home", an original 14"x11" mixed media painting on a deep gallery-wrapped canvas. Two other winners will win a print of "Home" when it becomes available.

There are five ways to enter to win this piece. I'm having this giveaway on my blog as Facebook has some strict new rules about giveaways, so please note that Facebook does not endorse and it in no way liable for this giveaway.

* * *

~~Ways to enter:~~

~~1.) "Like"~~ ~~Mae Chevrette Art~~ ~~on Facebook. (If you're already a Facebook fan, then you've already got this one! Just~~ ~~make sure to leave a comment below~~ ~~and let me know.)~~

~~2.) Share your favorite piece of artwork~~ ~~from my Etsy shop~~ ~~on your own Facebook. You can copy and paste the address as a status update~~ or ~~post the image alone with a link to my shop in the description. You~~ ~~must~~ ~~add @Mae Chevrette Art (it will show up as a linked tag)~~ ~~and~~ ~~a link to my shop~~ ~~somewhere in the description.~~

~~3.) Tweet about your favorite piece of artwork~~ ~~from my Etsy shop. If you don't have a favorite piece, just tweet~~ ~~a link to my shop. Be sure to comment~~ ~~with a link to your Twitter page~~.

~~4.) Repin~~ ~~this pin~~ ~~to your~~ ~~Pinterest~~. ~~Comment below with a link to your board.~~

~~5.) Share three pieces of my artwork on your blog~~ or ~~blog about this giveaway. Comment below with a link to your blog.~~

~~* * *~~

~~For each thing you do, please leave a~~ ~~separate~~ ~~comment - since the winner will be chosen randomly from the comments, more comments increases your chances of winning.~~

~~You~~ ~~must must must~~ leave a link to your twitter, blog, Facebook and pin board posts in your comment. If you accidentally left it out, just delete this original comment and comment again with it included. I appreciate feedback on this piece, but any comments that are not giveaway entries will be deleted before the winner is picked so they don't interfere with the randomized pick.

~~Good luck! I'll announce a winner on Wednesday, 11/16.~~

This giveaway is now closed to comments and entries. Non-entry comments about this piece or other artwork are so appreciated, but will deleted to keep the giveaway fair to everyone who entered. I'll use a random number generator to choose a comment on Wednesday 11/16.

inspired by: olaf hajek

2011-11-07T21:28:00.000-08:00

Maybe the best way to describe why I love illustrator Olaf Hajek's artwork is because it reminds me of a circus and a vintage botanical encyclopedia and a craaaazy dream all at once. If your taste in art is similar to mine these might blow your mind.

(You could also look at these with Lenka's "The Show" playing in the background if you want to ensure full mind-blowing potential.)

His portfolio is so extensive... Hajek has worked on everything from commissions in the New York Times to illustrations for a children's yoga book and has even designed stamps for the British Royal Mail. I would love to be able to afford a print of his artwork... I have no idea how much 710,00 € is in U.S. dollars but it looks like a lot and I'm scared to even find out. If I ever got my hands on one, I'd immediately hang above my bed so it would be the last thing I saw at night and all my dreams would be half this interesting.

around my studio

2011-11-05T12:28:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos from after I finished setting up my sawhorse table and organized my studio a little bit... it doesn't always look this clean when I'm working though :)

Pumpkin muffins and iced coffee have been my standard breakfast over the last few days... the recipe is from Camille over at Wayward Spark.

diy: rustic sawhorse table

2011-11-03T17:46:00.000-07:00

The last couple weeks there has been so much stuff needing to get done, including organizing my studio for press photos and the holidays. Something that has been on my mind forever has been finding a better work table and I finally made it happen last weekend. Here is my gorgeous new handmade table, living it up in the sun and ready to have a million arts and crafts made upon it:

The table I used for the last two years was an office table from Mike's parents' attic, but it was made of cheap, peeling laminate that didn't photograph well, with lots of chunks of paint, glue and paper stuck to it from my various projects. Sometimes a well-worn painting desk can look really cool... this one didn't. I know looks are less important than utility, but I needed to have a surface that was neutral and not distracting when taking professional-looking photos of my work. (Not having jagged chunks of dried glue cutting into my forearms when I worked would be a plus, too.) I looked forever but didn't have any luck finding a table that was big enough, within my budget and less loveably hideous than my current one, and was cringing at the thought of my old table being in (insert cool upcoming press thing I can't talk about yet) so I decided to make one.

I've always liked the look of sawhorse tables, and that style fit the semi-industrial look of my studio. And it was so easy to make!

Home Depot haul: two Fulton metal sawhorse legs ($16 each), three 6'x10"x1" soft pine boards ($9 each), a can of some Miniwax wood stain ($10), a 1" x 2" wood plank ($2) and 1" nails. IKEA sells prettier wood sawhorse trestle legs, but since my studio is entirely brick with a ton of random black pipes all over, metal was fine. And it meant I only had to brave a 1-story Home Depot instead of a 4-story IKEA.

Here are the boards laid out on my old table:

To give the table a rougher, more rustic look I used Young House Love's tips for making new wood look old. I whacked the boards with both ends of my hammer. I made random nail holes throughout and even nailed a couple nails sideways. Hammered the handle of a paint roller into the boards to make some cool lines.

The YHL blog advised dragging screws across the boards and luckily there are like two million random screws and nails sticking out of the bricks all over our apartment (not quite as dangerous at it sounds but definitely not child-safe) so I pulled one from the wall and scratched around with it.

Random screws and a sharp metal bracket sticking out of our wall. Safety first.

I got a little overzealous and looked around for other objects that could be hammered into the wood to make cool patterns and dents. Metal paint stirrer? Old paint can? A horseshoe? Why not.

As you can see the wood is all kinds of messed up now and almost looks like it actually had some kind of life outside of an urban Home Depot. I should mention that all of this is REALLY LOUD. As I type this, our upstairs neighbors are breaking the cardinal rule of city apartment-dwelling and letting their kid stomp on their hardwood floors and throw tantrums just like he does for about two hours every night, so I'm beyond caring about them, but if you actually like your neighbors I'd recommend putting a few towels underneath the boards to muffle the noise while you hammer.

Next, I sanded the wood, wiped the dust, then stained it with two very thin coats of Miniwax Whitewash. It lightens the wood, which is good, but I was disappointed that it didn't bring out the grain and dings as much as a darker stain would have. Here's a closeup of the stained vs. unstained wood and some of the dings:

Our friend Brendan brought us a handsaw and with the boards propped up to dry in front of a fan, Mike cut the 1" x 2" planks down to size, about six inches shorter than the width of the boards combined. I could have done it myself but... I just didn't want to. And what's the point of keeping a boyfriend around if you can't ask them to do stuff you're too lazy to do?*

*TOTALLY JUST KIDDING. Thanks Mike!

The planks were nailed to the underside of the boards to attach them, using 1.25" nails. I'm pretty sure the hardwood flooring in our apartment is worth more than my life so I always have a drop cloth in my studio covering it. You could use towels or newspaper to ensure no rogue wood chips or wet stain ruin your floor.

Here is where the project went mildly awry, because I mistakenly believed that by buying wood marked as 10" wide, I'd actually be getting wood 10" wide. However, in Dorchester Home Depot Land, 10" wood is actually only 8.5" wide, so my 30" tabletop became a 25.5" tabletop. The sawhorses were 30" wide and stuck out, so I had to get another board in the morning, repeat the process and attach it to the other three.

Lastly, I used three coats of Miniwax fast-drying oil-based semigloss varnish to seal it. This is the same stuff I used on our barn door coffee table because of how easy it is to wipe off stains and spills off a slick surface. It's important to do this in a room with good ventilation or outside because most chemical varnishes have a hunger for brain cells.

Anyway the final product was a gorgeous, rustic yet minimalist table that I am in love with and really enjoy sitting at to work. It's about a foot longer and an inch lower but with more leg clearance than my old table, so my flat file drawer rolls right underneath when I'm not using it. There's room for a plant, art supplies and even extra large canvases:

After setting up the table and giving the room a good organizing, it feels like my studio is finally the perfect little nest to seclude myself in and just paint away.

Even Gracie has a spot.

inspired by: handmade fashion

2011-11-02T00:13:00.000-07:00

I generally keep my Etsy Favorites private because I buy a lot of my vintage supplies there (and sometimes just want to selfishly keep awesome finds to myself in case I win the lottery and can suddenly afford all of them)(and a miniature giraffe) but I've been coming across so much beautiful handmade fashion that I had to share.

These are some recent Wintery favorites, items I've been lusting over for a long time, and one or two things I found using Etsy's Taste Test feature.

Oxidized aquamarine ring by Andrea Bonelli. I think rough-cut gems and silver or oxidized metal go so well together... they tell a great story of beauty in a natural, unrefined state. Handmade rings in general are fascinating since gems and metals sort of shape-shift through time... the (very) old becoming new again.

Alpaca buckle scarf by Tallulah g. The pairing of a big masculine buckle with such soft knit material is such a great contrast. And no annoying loose scarf ends blowing around.

WWII era canvas and leather bag by Forestbound. Her bags are pretty expensive but so interesting as they use materials up to 100 years old - grain sacks, canvas mail bags, army rucksacks - paired with new hardware and leather... another example of old becoming new. Most forestbound bags can now be found on her website.

Feather and cast silver assemblage necklace from Midwest Alchemy.

Endeavor crab claw necklace by Natalie musgrave. I'm beyond obsessed with the sea, and specifically sea creatures with shells, and I love the detail that a silver mold made from a real crab claw provides.

Going Hunting hand-printed circle scarf by Bark Decor.

I met the ladies of bark at the SOWA handmade market in Boston's South End this summer... they were so nice and all their scarves, shirts and prints were very high quality. They are also Etsy's current featured seller.

You can never have too many sea creatures or silver rings in your vicinity. Nautilus ring by HappyGo Licky

The Nomad scarf by artlab. They also have a more masculine version with various studs and hardware. Most of their unique handmade designs are so far beyond my budget I try not to think about it, but this keeps catching my eye because of the awesome lettering.

Stamped rings from Monkeys Always Look. I have three custom stamped rings now but there's just something about silver rings... these would be great with latitude/longitude numbers.

Hooded scarf pattern by Pretty Ditty. I don't even care that this looks like something Christopher Robin or Peter Rabbit would wear, it looks like it would be fantastic in the winter. The amount of inexpensive sewing patterns on etsy makes me really I wish I knew how to sew.

Snowman ugly christmas sweater t-shirt by Vardagen. No explanation needed, just awesome.

Many of these are a little on the expensive side, as a lot of handmade fashion understandably is. When purchasing handmade, you're buying from someone who did everything from brainstorming the design, to handcrafting it with higher-quality materials into sellable goods, to marketing and selling it without help from sweatshop workers or underpaid labor (Bark and Vardagen, like many Etsy clothiers, swear by American Apparel's U.S.A.-made supplies.) However, most are more affordable than you'd think and all of them have fresh and interesting designs that come with a unique creation story.

To be honest, I'm still rocking most of the same stuff I wore in college... I have even less reason to buy clothes now that I spend most of my day in ripped jeans and a painting smock (it's like elementary school art class all over again! except now I get paid and sometimes there is beer). Unfortunately pajama pants aren't as acceptable in downtown Boston as they were in my former state college town so I'm slowly building up a more "grown up" wardrobe. When I do spend money now, I've been trying to be a lot more conscious about where it goes. Etsy has been a great facilitator of this (almost too great) and I'm working on a holiday gift post featuring some artists and designers that have found their way into my home and closet.

Do you have a favorite designer or jeweler on Etsy? Have you bought anything you really loved? Please share!

leap in the dark

2011-10-28T11:30:00.001-07:00

A corner of my sketchbook.

the charles

2011-10-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

One thing I love about living in New England that I never experienced in Seattle is that there are really defined seasons... after months of brutal Summer heat and humidity (which I also love, inexplicably) you can walk outside and immediately turn around to get a jacket because nature suddenly decided it was Fall. These crisp days are perfect.

Mike works and goes to school in Cambridge and usually takes the subway from our apartment in South Boston, but at least once a week (lately, twice a week...) we'll drive to get breakfast together near his work. This place has such awesome smoked salmon eggs benedict for so cheap that I don't even mind that it takes half an hour to drive three miles home. It could probably take less... but we usually go around 2 or 3 in the afternoon and I end up driving home in evening rush hour traffic. My waking hours are now 11am to 4am so breakfast at 3pm is less weird than it sounds.

The Boston skyline from Cambridge

Boats on the Charles River at the MIT dock

Harvard University, with boats practicing for the Head of the Charles regatta

A little mixed media piece I created with the top photo and some new found paper.

Available here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/84633615/

giveaway winners + free shipping

2011-10-24T14:15:00.001-07:00

Thanks so much to everyone who entered the giveaway! I really appreciated your thoughtful pins and comments :)

The winners were picked by the random number generator at random.org. Their names are at the top of my shop announcement in my Etsy shop.... click here to find out if it was you! Winners, please contact me within 48 hours with your address and print choice :)

I really wish I could send a print to everyone because I truly appreciate all the sweet things you've all said about my artwork. If you did not win, you can still use the code SUMMERSHIP to get free U.S. shipping on anything in my shop until midnight 10/25. (I'm aware it's definitely no longer summer... but I wish it was.)

new print + pinterest giveaway

2011-10-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

I painted this piece earlier this year after Mike and I took a vacation to snowboard and visit friends in Colorado. In my head, Colorado was nothing but mountains and rocks and snow, but in real life a lot of it is really beautiful prairie crosscrossed by fences and train tracks, and nothing but big huge sky from the horizon up. I scribbled down a poem and later used it for this piece, which is a little more rustic and organic than most of my other work. Lots of graphite, metal, rust, etc.

Under the Open Sky is available in my shop as a print in three sizes.

The original will be available later this week.

Also, thank you to everyone who started following me on Pinterest! I'm still fighting off this cold and and had a blast chilling on the couch and looking through all of your boards. I decided to do a Pinterest giveaway today as well... two winners will win their favorite 14"x11" print from my shop!

~~To enter:~~

~~- All you have to do is pin your favorite print from~~ ~~my Etsy shop. If you've pinned my work anytime before this, I very much appreciate it but also ask that you pin again to enter this giveaway.~~

~~- Put the title of the print and @mae chevrette somewhere in the description.~~

~~- Make sure to comment just once below with a link to your board or Pinterest profile to let me know you've pinned. I'll pick two comments randomly and announce the winners on Monday :)~~

~~Good luck!~~

This giveaway is now over at 1am EST - I'll announce the winners on Monday afternoon. If you didn't get to enter, don't worry, there will be another one soon!

inspired by: handcrafted typography

2011-10-13T16:57:00.001-07:00

I woke up SO SICK this morning. My throat hurt, I felt like my head was going to explode and I could barely lift my body out of bed... it prompted a totally desperate "where's my mom, I need some soup/cocoa/a hug" moment. (Should I be admitting this at age 25? Whatever. If you are reading this and you are a mom, take heart in the fact that even if your children grow up and move thousands of miles away from you, these moments still happen.)

I have a lot on my plate right now - two magazine interviews in the works, two commissioned artworks to finish by the end of the month, a state tax oops to deal with, an original piece to get shipped to Australia, a wholesale order to get out the door and some work to finish up and make into prints before the holiday rush - but I had to force myself to totally chill out for the day because I was so groggy I probably would have royally screwed up each of those things.

There was no way a creative thought was going to make it through this many layers of blankets and DayQuil, so I went through some old bookmarks and caught up on blogs and lived vicariously through other people's creativity for a couple hours. Here's some cool typography stuff I found or re-found today...

Hand Lettering for Uppercase Magazine by illustrator Darren Booth:

Intricate papercut typography and portraits by Julene Harrison:

Screen print by Jon Contino (who also has an awesome inspiration/in-process blog):

The chalk art and lettering of Dana Tanamachi (whose time-lapse process videos are literally jaw-dropping):

Brushy scripty illustration and watercolors by Chris Ballasiotes:

Illustration and hand-lettering by Eduardo Recife:

Linen paintings by Kristina and Jason of Inaluxe (I have been wanting this pair FOR LIKE EVER):

"Locals Only" by David Fullarton, who also has a super hilarious blog:

It's kinda obvious to write (not that deep thoughts are my strong point right now) but there are so many talented artists out there it blows my mind! Since all of my artwork and lettering is handcrafted with paper and ink on a canvas (as opposed to digitally rendered on a computer) it is really inspiring to see that even in the time of digital everything, all of these artists are finding commercial success creating work with an organic, rustic, handcrafted feel. Maybe the over-saturation of glossy, sleek sans-serifed design is creating a demand for products that actually look like they were made by humans? Awesome.

Each one of these artists has a really incredible portfolio worth spending some time looking through if you're inspired by interesting hand-lettered design and illustration... definitely check out David Fullarton's and try not to laugh when you think about me trying to navigate it with my eyes half shut and a brain full of antihistamines.

the white mountains

2011-10-11T20:22:00.000-07:00

Spent the long weekend camping in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with Mike, his family and our friends. Lots of music, sunshine, drinks, apple-slingshotting, nature and sports. All my favorite things! (Except sports.)

inspired by: liz brizzi

2011-10-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

It isn't often that you can look through an artist's entire portfolio and just really love absolutely everything you see, but that is how I felt after coming across the artwork of Los Angeles based mixed media artist Liz Brizzi.

The Gateway

Untitled

The Last Train

Allegory

Fragments

Water Tower

Outskirts

Delusion

I'm not an art critic, a trained writer or anything in between so you'll have to bear with me while I try to describe everything I appreciate about Liz's artwork and how it makes me feel (which is a lot!)

Like previously featured artist Jessica Hess, Liz's work explores the often overlooked beauty of urban landscapes, layering the solemn shapes of industrial architecture over vibrant acrylic washes and street-art inspired textures. Born in France to Italian parents, she's lived in Los Angeles but travels to various metropolitan areas (even moving alone to Italy for almost a year) to gain inspiration for different approaches to her art.

My favorite aspect of her work is how the roughness and visible tactility of multiple layers of paint, paper, and her original photography are the perfect catalyst for her subject matter... In each painting, raw silhouettes of bridges, streetlights and buildings area easily transformed from potentially solemn scenes into really bright, bold urban dreamscapes. I also love that there is sort of a pop-art aspect to a lot of her pieces too... she doesn't shy away from incorporating text, faces, fragmented lines and images to give each piece a gritty abstract feel.

The brighter pieces in particular make me think of those rare, awesome moments after an evening storm passes through a city, when light and color seems to bounce off wet concrete and brighten the normally grey surfaces sparkle with sunset color. The colors are dramatic and vivid without being an eyesore. Her work is just awesome! I can't get over it. I'm pretty obsessed with "The Gateway" and though the original is a little out of my reach, I'm buying a print for our apartment from Liz's Society 6 print shop. You can check out the rest of her portfolio here or keep up with her new work on her Facebook fan page.

six new artworks

2011-10-03T10:50:00.000-07:00

Six small artworks inspired by my recent roadtrip. All are 8"x10" on a flat, rigid canvas panel and are for sale in my Etsy shop.

"In Harbor" ~~$125~~ (SOLD)

"Find Ourselves" ~~$95~~ SOLD

"As Is Ever So On The Road #1" $125

"As Is Ever So On The Road #2" $125

"The Earth Laughs In Flowers #1" $45

"The Earth Laughs In Flowers #2" ~~$45~~ SOLD

the road home

2011-09-26T10:17:00.000-07:00

1,900 miles.... found what I needed.

gertie's country store

2011-09-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

It was hard to make myself leave Crabtree Falls because it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever camped, but I got on the road and made my way west on Route 56. I drove past Gertie's Country Store and BBQ (and chicken farm, liquor store, used trucks and farm stand) and remembered Dan said it was good ("Gertie is a real old lady from the back country so you know her cooking is the best you're gonna get anywhere.") so I pulled over and grabbed breakfast before getting back on the road. I had the Little Fawn (two eggs, bacon and toast) and the best short stack I've ever had. Gertie's is one of those little side-of-the-road places that I've almost driven past and then stopped in on a whim, and then was so glad I did.

Gertie's is filled with a little of everything... Southern civil war memorabilia, ragtag antiques, dusty canned goods and coolers of Miller Lite, and tens of thousands of signatures, quotes and destinations written on the walls - even a marriage proposal - from people passing through either on the road or hiking the Appalachian Trail. It was really cool. I left mine, and then got back on the road headed north.

riverside

2011-09-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

After packing up my tent in Shenandoah National Park I drove the rest of the ridge road. The sky was bright blue, but the valley was filled with clouds right below the road for almost the entire ride. It was pretty wild driving on winding roads alongside this for so long.

After a while the road went beneath the clouds and I got an almost endless view of the Shenandoah Valley. I've only seen the Appalachians in passing (when driving from Massachusetts to Tennessee for Bonnaroo, and from Georgia to Ohio for a boy) and to camp and weave slowly through the mountains now was really incredible.

(This is my road-tripping partner... a 10-year old Nissan Xterra that I have had for six years, 100,000 miles, 28 states and a LOT of road-singing. I love it almost a little too much.)

From Virginia, I explored North Carolina and Tennessee. The area of far western North Carolina outside of Boone is so pastoral, with so many small farms and animals enjoying themselves in the sunshine, small cabins with rocking chairs on porches overlooking rolling blue and green hills, and patches of wildflowers everywhere. At one point I got out of my car on the side of a dirt and gravel road and sat on the hood for half an hour just smelling the warm, clean air and listening to the awesome silence... nothing but a couple cow moos and rustling grass and trees. Amazing.

I planned on going much further south, and I'm not sure why I turned around back to Virginia... it just felt right at the time, so I drove out of Mountain Home, Tennessee on some backroads and back towards Shenandoah. It was late afternoon and I realized along the way that I wouldn't make it there in time, so I found another campground 40 minutes away very deep in George Washington State Forest. I hesitated a little; as a female traveling alone most of the time you feel safe, but sometimes you don't, and that hesitation is an instinct that deserves attention. After discussing with Mike the possibility of camping in the pouring rain alone (decision: it sucks, but I should do it anyway) and asking the cashier at the gas station if she knew the area ("It's beautiful up there... and don't worry, we mountain folk aren't too crazy and dangerous." Ha!), I headed up Route 56 on the darkest, most winding mountain road I have ever driven on. It was midnight and pitch dark out when I finally got there. The campground was nearly empty, so the manager gave me a small cabin to stay in for the same price as tent site.

This is what I woke up to:

My cabin.

The view from the cabin porch.

The Tyro river.

The campground I was at calls itself the best kept secret in Virginia and they're right. The whole night I could hear the river but had no idea it was ten feet in front of my cabin door. The north fork of the Tyro river runs through the campground and is the cleanest, coldest water I have ever seen or felt, fast-moving and surrounded by lush green forest and moss-covered rocks and wildflowers. The cabin porch faces away from the rest of the campground (which was only 3 other cabins and about 15 tent sites, all empty) and I spent most of the morning drinking coffee, sketching, listening to the river and being scouted out by a little cat, then hiking most of the Crabtree Falls trail in the afternoon.

After getting back, I stuck some beers in the river to chill and sketched and made art for the rest of the night.

shenandoah

2011-09-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

An early morning in Shenandoah National Park. And by early I mean, I left my tent at 5:00am to charge my camera's battery in the bathroom of the campground, cleaned my telephoto lens, then walked to a clearing in the dark and hoped to catch a good sunrise and see anything worth shooting. It was freezing (part of why I woke up) and the frosted grass crunched beneath my feet the whole time.

All of these were taken with a Canon Rebel t2i, using either 200mm telephoto or 50mm f1.4 lenses.

The last few were just taken on the Skyline ridge drive, the C&O railroad in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, at my campsite in Big Meadows, and one during a traffic jam while I was bored :) I'm so excited to begin new artwork with these and the interesting stuff I've collected along the road so far.

daniel eldon, and the journey that changed my life

2011-09-14T22:54:00.000-07:00

Mtu hujua atokao, hajui aendako.
- Swahili proverb
("One knows where they are coming from, not where they are going.")

Who would you say was the biggest influence in what you do? Recently I've been thinking often about Daniel Eldon, who has been one of the most inspirational and influential forces on my artwork and life. I was given his posthumously published journal The Journey is the Destination early in high school and can honestly say that it changed my life. Dan was an incredibly talented photographer raised in Kenya who documented his own life and travels as well as the brutal conflict and famine in Somalia through photographs and in his personal journals. While on assignment for Reuters in 1993, he and three colleagues were stoned to death by an enraged crowd in Mogadishu after a mistakenly targeted bombing by U.N. forces. Dan was 22 years old.

After his death, Dan's 17 journals made their way home. Realizing the importance of their contents, his mother Kathy published them in The Journey is the Destination and later The Art of Life. I can still remember flipping through The Journey cross-legged on my bed, mesmerized, turning and revisiting pages until the corners were dog-eared and the edges soft. I remember feeling like it had pulled me in and cast a spell over me, sort of like a really good novel sometimes can, except everything heartbreaking, visceral and haunting about this book was true; these pages were someone's life. I felt a deep ache in my heart the whole time, partially from the sadness of such a full, vibrant and purposeful life cut dramatically short, but also from an overwhelming gratitude that Dan collected his thoughts and discoveries in such a way. Without exaggeration, that feeling was most closely comparable to what I now know a broken heart feels like.

The title of The Journey is the Destination was pulled from a handwritten ad for "Deziree Safaris", Dan's playful expedition group, and fits both his life and his creative process. Though we'll never know if Dan planned on ever publicly sharing his journals, we know he took incredible care to curate them; like his travels, the creative journey of his artwork was infinitely more important than arriving at any particular finished state. Fittingly, there has never been a more faithful parallel between travel and art than his creed, "What is the difference between exploring and being lost? The journey is the destination." Approaching art, and life, with that understanding makes both infinitely more interesting (and forgiving.)

His hulking memoirs, thick as telephone books, spanned years of his life and thousands of miles and were written not just in words but in feathers, found paper, coins, passport pages, African travel permits, newspaper clippings, snakeskin, trail maps, Dan's own comical sketches and of course photographs. The journals begin with his earliest childhood artwork and follow him throughout his various travels to Europe, Asia and America, charity-driven safari explorations through Africa and into his time as a war journalist. They are visually exquisite and emotionally lavish, full of observations on humanity at large and truths about Dan's life and the complicated world unfolding within him.

Like all of us, Dan struggled deeply with the questions of where? and why? and who else besides me?, and answered them with art, filling some pages with lighthearted or satirical musings and trinkets of daily life, and others with deep, frustrated reminiscence of love and love lost, or heart-wrenching photos of the famine, violence and unrest that would eventually claim his life. In the last pages of The Journey, photographs of automatic weapons, famine and shattered cities stand starkly against empty white journal pages-- likely place-markers that would have been drawn on, painted over, given background stories and vibrant settings had they not been the last things life allowed him to catalogue in his final journal.

What made his journals so powerful to me back then, and still today, is the message created by the sheer volume of it all-- there is just so much. So much good, bad, hurt, love, pain, pleasure, lostness and "foundness." In life, in the world, in ourselves, in each other, waiting for us. Everyday, yesterday, tomorrow, and all this is so overwhelming that it's scary and exhilarating at the same time. As a reporter and an artist, Dan recognized that, and knew that every road deserved to explored, every bit of torn paper or snapshot deserved space in his art, every photograph told a story that had a right to be heard. I think this feeling is why working with mixed media and in journals is so fulfilling to me, as it seems it was to Dan, because it incorporates a little of everything-- the oft-overlooked tangible parts of our very quickly passing days, the mundane moments and the extraordinary finds in life. There is so, so much for us.

Our shared tendency towards wanderlust-- the feeling of needing to be constantly on the move, going, exploring, and preference for being lost rather than found-- has long made me think of Dan Eldon as not only an artistic inspiration but a kindred spirit. I know there are other people like us, too, maybe even someone reading this who is thinking, "I know, I know, I know, yes, yes, yes, exactly!" If any of this has rang familiar for you, these books and his story are for you.

(Yet another incredibly inspiring part of Dan's story is that it was not allowed to die alongside him; his family and friends have ensured that his art and purpose live on in many ways, including the inception of the Dan Eldon Project and the Creative Visions Foundation, both created with the intention of furthering creative activism and honoring his life as a humanitarian, photographer and artist. With permission of the DEP, I photographed some of my favorite pages shared here. Check out more pages of Dan's journals here, some of Dan's photography here, and a short CNN documentary on Dan here (warning: the footage from his work in Somalia is, obviously, very graphic.)

process: follow that train

2011-09-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

This weekend was really busy, but I spent every spare moment working on a sort of gritty, dusty piece with some lyrics I liked from Jessica Harp's song "Follow That Train." Kept this one sort of simple with just a photograph I took on Montana's Route 2, some town paper, vintage fabric and metal stripping. And nails... always nails.

I also kept my point and shoot on hand, hoping to make a sort of time-lapse video of the process of this work, but it turns out that hurried, badly shot low-res photos turn into just a hurried, bad low-res video. Here are a few I salvaged to give an idea of the process on this one.

Halfway through this piece I started experimenting with drawing out words and letters on gridded paper, scanning them and then printing them onto inkjet transparency paper, then transferring them with gel medium (laying down a thin layer between the canvas and the transparency, rubbing gently, then pulling up after about 3 minutes seems to work best). Though I really need to work on my hand-lettering, I loved it and am going to do a lot more of this.

a late summer feeling

2011-09-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

Spent some time camping with Mike's family in Rhode Island... it was a great chance to get away from my studio, relax and play a little.

Peace out, summer. It's been real.

sketch & wander

2011-08-31T12:05:00.000-07:00

I started a new sketchbook the day after I decided to quit my job to pursue art full-time. It was mostly to record the details of life and work in my new job and new home in Boston, little milestones and things I didn't want to forget, and techniques and materials I've started experimenting with. I've also gotten a lot of inspiration by leafing through older pages.

A couple pages inspired me to work on a new piece with a little less organization and planning than I usually do... and I ended up working a favorite quote and a favorite photograph of mine into a sort of rustic, go-with-the-flow sketchbook-esque painting... pretty much exactly what such a process would look like in the pages of my sketchbook. "Wander II" is 20"x16" mixed media on canvas with a little bit of everything... my photography, maps, old stamps, old letters and postcards, fabric measuring tape, aluminum tacks, text from a vintage book and a polaroid from my last camping trip.

I'm happy to say that it sold within a few hours of being finished... I feel like a little piece of my sketchbook is traveling on to a new home :)

this week's work

2011-08-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

Started out the week with some personal frustration, but I tried my hardest to funnel all the negative energy into organizing and painting... it worked. I finished a few older pieces and started three new ones, writing down thoughts, experimenting with image transfers and learning to use my new palette knives. Going to bed at 4am exhausted and accomplished feels good.

This is a pretty good take on life... finding the warm, sunny spots and appreciating the shit out of them.

inspired by: jessica hess

2011-08-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

"Making art is one of the loneliest things a person can do. I spend a crazy amount of time alone in my studio making work. Every inch of every canvas is evidence of time passing and recorded, my life in inches. It is fitting that my subjects are also lonely." - Jessica Hess

When I first came across the work of realist painter Jessica Hess, I was struck not just by her talent but by the unique interpretation of her subject matter. Jessica portrays urban landscapes, street art and decaying structures not only truthfully but lovingly as well... her attention to details from metal oxidization to the dribbles of spray paint down brick shows that these are subjects she truly feels compelled to paint. Though each scene is from a specific locale scouted out by Jessica (many in Western Massachusetts and the Boston metro area, which I recognized) they are reminiscent of the street-art reclaimed alleyways and abandoned structures hidden in every small town and large city.

Pittsfield Tracks II

Jessica in her studio finishing "It Finds You"

Beverly III

Hope

Pittsfield Tracks IV

Allston II

Eureka Day

Her Facebook page shows interesting glimpses into her process and environment, and Jessica's interviews are worth reading as well. She nails it when discussing the artistic value of graffiti and decay... the compelling and eloquent way that she describes her affinity for nature's reclamation of abandoned human structures is exactly how I feel biking through South Boston, past the aching, rusted shipping warehouses and dilapidated brick walls layered with graffiti and ivy and barbed wire. The passing of time is tangible in these areas of Boston (as they are in her paintings) and in stark contrast to the four shiny new condominium buildings rising just outside my studio window. It probably wasn't that long ago that everything I bike past and everything she paints was brand new as well.

There will always be heated discussion about whether graffiti is guerilla art or criminal vandalism, but Jessica's unique "vandal-by-proxy" style really adds weight to the argument that graffiti can add color, life and attention to structures otherwise ignored and left by a community to decay by the hands of nature. It's an interesting game being played between humans, nature and time, going back and forth between construction and destruction... and definitely one worthy of being recorded in artwork.

Jessica's work is being shown for a few more days at Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, MA and Ferrin Gallery in Pittsfield, MA. She has an upcoming solo show at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco... if you make it to any of these, please share your thoughts on seeing her work in person.

far more important is our own vision

2011-08-21T22:30:00.000-07:00

Last week I took the plunge and bought a new lens and an external flash for my camera. I slipped the new lens on, started taking photos around my studio and immediately fell in love.

It is so crisp, and clear, with an incredible range of depths of field. Later, a storm passed through as we were helping our friends move into their new apartment. A medium depth of field and a fast shutter speed caught the individual raindrops as they fell in front of the trees.

We went back to Mike's hometown for a family party and spent the next day relaxing in his parents' backyard... I explored and experimented with my new lens some more.

I don't consider any of these great, but they are so much closer in style to the shots I have been wanting but unable to take with a previously inadequate lens. Most of these were experiments with the aperture all the way down to f1.4-f2.6 and were taken completely manually (ie, no little green square or autofocus). I loved seeing that each one was just a little better than the last.

Having this lens for even just a few days has already changed the way I approach photography. Everyone I talked to before buying a DSLR last year recommended just buying the body without the 18-55mm stock lens because its just not very good... of course I bought the lens anyway, and it wasn't good, and it made me frustrated that I couldn't take the kinds of pictures I hoped for and capture the kinds of moments I wanted. Even after learning how to manually adjust the aperture, exposure, film speed and shutter speed I was still just not getting it-- no bokeh, no crispness, no prominent focal points. But, because of the drastic difference in depth of field and clarity of my new 50mm f1.4, it finally felt like all the work I put into learning how to use my DSLR as more than just a glorified point-and-shoot has finally paid off. I am getting the shots I want.

The best advice I ever got on photography was from Junshien, a professional lifestyle and wedding photographer who purchased the first To Be Brave canvas print and has been my photography idol and someday-dream-wedding photographer ever since. Though he had already written a blog on it, he kindly gave me some 1-on-1 advice for picking out a good camera and lenses, but also gave me the much-needed advice that the camera doesn't make the photographer-- "The imagery that comes out of the camera will only be as good as the photographer behind the lens, because far more important than the equipment is our own vision."

The best equipment won't make much of a difference if the patience to learn how to use it isn't there, and if truly interesting shots aren't been sought out and really worked for. In this sense, I'm happy I was stuck with a mediocre lens for so long because it forced me to learn how to use my camera correctly and seek out ways to make my photography interesting (since the lens sure wasn't doing it for me). Now with a much better lens I feel like I actually have the ability to use it to the fullest and the drive to learn and adapt to it... it won't guarantee me good shots, but I'm no longer limited by anything but my own ability.

this august afternoon

2011-08-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

Today was great... so relaxing. After spending the last two days packing and shipping orders from when I was away, I'm finally getting back into the swing of things. Mike and I woke up and went to Zoe's Kitchen in Cambridge for breakfast (brunch? lunch? It was 2pm... but we got eggs... so I dunno). Our friend introduced us to Zoe's a few weeks ago and now we can't get enough.

(I also can't get enough of waking up, having a cup of coffee and sometimes even going out to breakfast together before starting our days instead of me waking up at 6am to commute to work and Mike spending 3 hours a day on the train to and from work.)

He got the "Three Sons" breakfast, which has three of everything you could possibly offer in a breakfast, and is probably called that because you could feed three dudes with it. Or one Mike. I got the smoked salmon benedict, which is incredible and delicious and undeniable proof that you really can (and should) incorporate seafood into every meal possible :)

After breakfast I dropped him off at work and made the trek up to the huge art supply store in Somerville... it's only a little over 4 miles from our apartment but takes about 30 minutes in Boston traffic. I took some photos while I was sitting in traffic next to Faneuil Hall... but they're depressing.

Haul from the art store: Liquitex Super Heavy Gesso and Black Lava texture gel, some image transfer paper, as well as a couple palette knives and pads of ink.

All the walls of my studio are brick, including the little arched entranceway where this plant sent out some new leaves.

Mike's mom gave us this plant when we were living at his parents' house... I thought we killed it when we moved, but its slowly taking over the archway into my studio. I love plants and love the idea of them creeping all over our apartment. I'd live in Jumanji if it was possible.

I love it here.

A poem I wrote at the beach has been stuck on my inspiration board for a while, so I took a few lines of it and played around with some different lettering styles and colors on a smaller canvas. A couple other paintings have also been started this week, and the finishing touches on some overdue custom work done as well.

I've also been teaching myself to better use the manual settings on my camera... it's silly to own a nice DSLR and expensive lenses and rely on the auto settings all the time, so hopefully forcing myself to experiment and learn different techniques will help me become a better photographer and get more out of my photographs, and later my artwork. Baby steps though... I still carry around an ISO/aperture/shutter speed cheat sheet in my camera bag :)

because i am married to the sea

2011-08-12T20:09:00.000-07:00

i spend my summers in a tree, i roam the world while sipping tea
and lots of things are built by me
from house to ship and this decree
i'll spell it out so you can see
i cannot marry because i'm free and one more reason this may be
is i am married to the see

Every once in a while I check my web analytics, just to see how people are finding my artwork and my blog. Recently someone somehow landed at my shop after searching Google for the above poem... it is beyond awesome, so I searched for it myself and found only one result: this print offered at tastes orangey by Clare Elsaesser, who's artwork I have been a fan of for a very long time. Our sea-themed artworks are in a lot of Etsy treasuries together, and her featured seller interview was one of my favorites-- to quote Clare, "it’s okay to try and do what you want to do."

I admire artists like Clare who can create really moving, captivating artwork from very subtly beautiful subjects... pillows, sleep, dreams, sighs. Her subject matter is intimate and familiar, yet distant as the subject never seems to be fully aware of having been painted. To me, her paintings seem almost like candid photographs of people or places that were unknowingly stumbled upon and happened to be captured by a vintage camera or even recorded only in memory. I also love the very textured feel of her prints... rather than looking at all flat or printed, so many of them (especially Sweet Dreams and Undertow) maintain the thick, visceral brushstrokes which, along with their sewn borders, give her prints so much personality and depth.

if you work really hard and you're kind

2011-07-28T15:01:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to be featured in Etsy's Quit Your Day Job column this week. Click here for my interview.

I was so happy to get to answer these questions and share what I've learned in the past (almost) two years between offering my first print in my shop and today. The Quit Your Day Job and Featured Seller interviews have always been some of my favorite parts of the Etsy blog because there is so much we can learn from each other, as artisans, sellers and people. Not just about marketing and shop knowledge, but about having a positive attitude and really believing that there is a place in this world for work made with our own hands and consumer connections beyond mass marketing and big box stores.

I hope, if you read this interview, it helps you with your own creative visions and motivates you in the way that so many past interviews have motivated me. We have a lot of time in some ways, and in other ways, just a little... we might as well spend that time doing things that make us fulfilled :)

won't take nothin' but a memory

2011-07-26T20:30:00.000-07:00

Julia of Free People said it best... "Something about these images makes me sad, not in a bad way, but in a nostalgic, why-do-things-have-to-change kind of way." The Dear Photograph project has been floating around for a while now, but I wanted to share some of my favorites here. In case you couldn't tell by the millions of maps, photos, bits and scraps in my paintings, I'm a very nostalgic person so this project really hit home.

Dear Photograph made me think of the oldest photographs I have, when they were taken and where I'd have to go to take a photo like these. It made me nostalgic for all the times I haven't photographed that have stuck in my mind just the same. There have been so many times in my life when for one quick moment I wished I could just stop time, like a photograph... I've been collecting eggs out of a chicken coop in Georgia, flying down a Montana highway a 90mph, sitting in my college apartment with my best friends laughing about what happened the night before, walking around in the Costa Rican surf with my mom, or hugging a friend goodbye at a summer concert, and wished it could last so much longer. I didn't want anything but that moment. That picture.

This happened the other day when I was riding my bike around Southie... as I got closer to the beach at Castle Island, I got a whif of hot, salty air. It took me back to four years ago when I lived in Georgia, working as a barista in the morning and a bartender at night, riding my bike to the beach for the few hours between shifts and ducking the trailing wisps of Spanish moss in the same hot ocean air. On the side of East 1st street, Boston (900 miles from Mallory Street, St. Simon's Island) I thought of that moment, and this one, and of everything in between. There is so much in between.

I wish I could be in all of those places now, while still being appreciative and grateful of where I am now, which obviously is a product of all those past places and times. But everything changes and passes, and if it didn't, I wouldn't be in Boston, sitting in my own studio, watching paint dry, listening to Mike talk about the Red Sox, planning the next move on this painting. I wouldn't be in this present, making plans for the future like I made plans for right now in the past. There is nothing to do but look at old photographs, remember old friends, cherish the scents and songs and hot ocean air that bring us back for a minute and then move on. They are now the catalysts to the life we are currently living. In the end, I guess being nostalgic for the past just means you did it right.

I hope I am doing it right.

today, inspiration, and a work in progress

2011-07-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

Here is what today looks like, in my studio.

On Sunday, Mike and I went to the SoWa Open Market in Boston's South End (only 10 minutes from where we live in South Boston) and ended up strolling through a couple art galleries near the market. Bromfield Gallery was showing Kathleen Volp's "Meridians and Parallels" collection, which explores the geometry of ordinary objects and simple lines, and I was in complete awe of the crazy amount of different textures and materials in every piece. I especially loved "the Veronica" and "Meridians and Parallels"... the second canvas of Meridians and Parallels was so intricate, with so many layers of graphite, collage, pvc, gel and (I think) image transfer that I got so caught up in the details I barely noticed that the canvas was representative of a white men's button-down shirt. In the Veronica, a rough stick and layers of crusty graphite and gesso sat upon a delicate canvas of lace, while in "I Still Miss You", only a sliver of corrugated cardboard or or some kind of wood was peeking out from the seam in what might have once been an embroidered tablecloth. More than one of her paintings had "rust" written in the materials description... how cool is that?

I think the universally present theme in Volp's work that I appreciated, and in all artwork I'm drawn to, is that it initially appears as a whole cohesive work. But, upon closer inspection, there are lots of individual works within it that play off one another, usually where contrasting techniques collide or different subjects contrast... Mixed media is such a great medium to both work in and admire because it allows for a lot of varied textures (and thus, stories and expressions) upon a single canvas or board (or in many of Volp's pieces, vellum and pvc or a shirt.)

Seeing her work, and enjoying the surprising inclusion of such a vast amount of materials, inspired me to go home and pull out a few bits and pieces of wood, fabric, metal and hardware I've been saving to use in just the right piece-- which I have decided is this one.

I'd love to get a little more inspiration for this project... have you ever used a particularly unusual material or medium in your art or craft?

Live, Travel, Adventure, Bless

2011-07-15T12:21:00.000-07:00

Two out-takes from a studio photo shoot done for a couple upcoming projects. I always loved wearing a smock during elementary school art class... I guess some things never change :)

Gracie always steals the show! You can't see her in the first photo, but she's hidden behind the painting, headbutting my right foot. I've never had such a weird, funny, attention-hungry cat.. as I type this she is meowing in the other room, probably about something along the lines of HAY GUYS HAYYYY FOUND A CATNIP MOUSIE TRIED TO GET AWAY BUT I CAUGHT IT OOO A HAIR ELASTIC OOO PIECE OF CANDY OOO I HAS A TAIL? YAYYYY

Anyway, the painting in this picture, "Live Travel Adventure Bless," is 48" x 20" mixed media on canvas-- you can find it here in my shop today. To give you a better idea of the size of this work, I am about 5' 2" (on a good day). It is nearly as tall as my shoulders. This painting has been in a state of near-completion forever now. It actually went out to get scanned twice, though when it came back the first time I had to be honest with myself that I wasn't completely happy with it, so I packed it away for a couple months and then pulled it out once I had a clearer idea of what I wanted from it. My neighborhood was actually the driving force behind the last few touches-- I've been very inspired by all the graffiti surrounding us and put the finishing touches on with drippy, industrial wall art in the back of my mind.

(Also, how cool is the crate on the left? Our coffee table is made from a barn door I bought from a barn constructor up in New Hampshire, and while I was there he gave me this World War 2 ammunition crate for free. It makes a nice photo prop... I love the dingy, industrial feel alongside all my colorful artwork and supplies.)

flying horses

2011-06-29T10:52:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, we went to see Dispatch's reunion tour with a group of friends at TD Garden (where the Bruins and Celtics play) in downtown Boston... we bought some very cheap, bad seats originally, but amazingly, a friend was able to get us seats in the center of the front two rows about ten feet from the stage. I had never heard of Dispatch until moving to Massachusetts for college, but I remember someone playing them the first night I moved into my freshman year dorm and have loved them ever since. They broke up around 2004 and I thought I'd never get to see them live, so being front row in a concert of 80,000 people was extra special.

My camera's battery died after taking the first photo, but I got some okay ones with my iPhone.

"Flying Horses" by Dispatch - Silent Steeples EP

This video was on the Dispatch website-- you can see Mike (light blue shirt) and I hugging and dancing in the second row above the two empty seats :)

They were so good! They played every song I was hoping to hear and some new ones that I loved, and just had so much energy... at one point they went out into the crowd dressed in Bruins jerseys and did some impromptu rapping and dancing and other random stuff. I even caught a drumstick at the end of the show. The band played for three hours straight and it was one of the best shows I've ever been to... it's so great to go to a concert or any kind of performance and really see people loving what they are doing. So inspired!

new summer artwork now available

2011-06-28T09:29:00.000-07:00

Yes! New artwork-- inspired by the salty air in our new Boston neighborhood, the beach down the street, the bright flowers of spring popping up through concrete and winding around chain link fences, and the promise of summer sailing adventures-- is available in several different sizes of prints in my Etsy shop.

The last photo is an awesome example of how crisp and detailed these prints are... these butterflies are about 1" wide and were sewn right onto the canvas of the original painting, and in the print you can make out the fibers of the thread and the needle holes. I think I'll be listing the original works for sale later this week.

A new piece.. Salt Water

2011-06-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

(Note: This work is available in 3 different print sizes in my shop here: http://maechevrette.etsy.com )

Last Christmas, I was able to be part of a really awesome, inspiring experience and I've wanted to share it ever since then. A woman who had recently lost her mother was anonymously gifted a print of "In The Sea" by a friend, and I got to send it to her along with a note from the friend. I didn't know the details then, but within a few weeks the woman posted an entry in her blog (which the friend sent me) about what the piece itself, as well as the gift, meant to her after all she and her mother went through and their close connection to the sea-- something I could never have dreamed that a piece of my art would mean to someone. It wouldn't feel right to rewrite it here, but it changed the way I approached my own creative process and caused me to strive for something deeper, bolder and more meaningful in making artwork.

I started this new piece because I read a wonderful quote that I liked by Isak Dineson (the pen name of Baroness Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa). The photograph is one I took along the northern California coast, on a road trip from San Francisco to Seattle with my then-boyfriend who had never been to the west coast or seen the Pacific Ocean. As I painted it layer by later, splatter by messy splatter, the more I thought about it the more it meant to me and the more I wanted this piece to be important-- to someone, somewhere, who has known the understanding and tears and joy that the sea brings.

What is it about the ocean? What is it about the sea that, feet close to the edge of the water, salt air clinging to hair and skin, makes us at once calm and at home but also simultaneously energized and ready to stray and adventure? There are countless ways to explain how the ocean makes one feel free, ready, understood and not alone. I think everyone who has dipped their feet in the waves, felt the anticipation of cold surf rushing to cover their toes, delighted in tingle of gritty, soft sand slip past their ankles as the wave retreats, known the last whisper of bubbling seawater as it ebbs with the pull of the sea-- everyone just knows. And it is a unique understanding of the sea that no one else can know, which intrigues me immensely... how does one thing make everyone feel the same, yet so different? I love that something so universal has so many different meanings to so many people.

I think art is like this too. Art can change lives. It can bring new meaning to a few simple words, create a connection between an artist and an art lover, stop someone in the street for a moment of clarity, and create feelings that are unique to each person who sees it from an angle inspired by their own lives and understanding of the subject. The sea is the same-- it is a subject that, known to us all, intimately challenges each person's experience and understanding of it, and rewards the artist with some really beautiful, emotional work. Every photograph of the ocean that I've taken still conjures for me the same feelings that were present when I took it; I hope each piece of artwork I make conjure specific emotions for each person who views it, as the woman who lost her mother was able to feel and share. The knowledge that this experience is possible is now the driving force for why I create art. I hope this piece, and all my future ones, will give you an experience of familiar understanding and emotional connection based not just on what there is to be seen on the canvas, but what you see.

This work is available in 3 different print sizes in my shop here: http://maechevrette.etsy.com

some new work and new music

2011-06-23T07:16:00.000-07:00

This post was brought to you by two things I found last night...

and

Colours of Byron from Rest Your Eyes on Vimeo.

I worked most of the day on Tuesday putting the final touches on some new pieces, then took a frustrated break at night when I couldn't get them exactly where I wanted. I don't want to force it, I want to be in a groove and feel it and let each piece of paper or splatter of paint happen on its own, but I also wanted to get these done and bring them to get scanned and made into prints and feel like I've been somewhat productive over the last two months.

Halfway through some sushi (that came with the above fortune) and a mason jar of pinot gris I happened to find Garrett Kato via Spell & The Gypsy Collective's blog... wow. His unreleased song "Silver Moon" is in the video above (about Spell's native Byron Bay) and hearing just the first five chords was such a heart stopping moment that I frantically searched the internet for who this could possibly be. I immediately bought both his albums, plugged in my iPod and got back to work with my little brick studio filled with his incredible, gravelly Eddie Vedder-esque voice and guitar-harmonica-violin acoustic storytelling. By 3:30am everything was finished and I was in love with "Tree Talkin'" and "Pull Down The Window". Pretty cool night.

Here are Mandala, an untitled piece, Salt Water, Sea Fever, The World is Pretty Amazing, and Promise.

Today I'm making the trip up north to the print shop that scans my work... so hopefully these will be available soon :)

a day in the life

2011-06-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

I love reading Wayward Spark, a blog written by Camille of Red Onion Woodworks about her experiences being a craftswoman, mom, farmer and homesteader. Though we are both 20-something American women and artists, our lives are so totally different that I'm fascinated by everything that goes on in her small Oregon cabin and farm. Her recent "day in the life" post blew my mind and inspired me to catalogue my own day as an independent artist-- unfortunately, since I don't wake up at 5am, have any cute kids or goats, or run a homestead in the woods, mine is far less interesting. But here it is, in case you are curious about some of the things being a full-time artist entails :)

Except for days when he has to go to work early or nights I've stayed up until 5am painting, Mike and I usually wake up together for a cup of coffee and yummy breakfast. This is one of my favorite things about my new job as a full-time artist-- I really love "getting started" for the day in a slow-paced way with Mike before he goes to school.

Blueberry-raspberry-chocolate pancakes and some amazing coffee. We visited Mike's parents the weekend before and got to bring home a bunch of beautiful flowers from his mom's garden.

I have a weird thing for nice coffee mugs-- drinking strong coffee out of a nice mug is just awesome, who knows why. This mug was handmade by potter Karen Lorenc. The butter dish was made by Sumiko, and the plates are stoneware from IKEA.

Not everyone wants to get up early.

After breakfast Mike walks to the subway and I get right to packing and shipping the last day of orders. I used to only ship every 2-3 days, but now that I have more time and the post office is super close I try to ship every morning. My desk is outside my studio (read: computers are away from paint and brush water) and is actually a kitchen table from college (as is all of our furniture, excluding our couches and the TV that came with our apartment). This is where I do most of my business stuff and where I sit when Shit Needs to Get Done.

A couple prints packaged, tied up and tagged. I'm working on new packaging, due out at the end of summer.

I had a very large order to ship out to the Vessels & Jewels art gallery up in New London, NH along with my regular orders. Big print orders get shipped wrapped in about a dozen layers of bubble wrap, which is almost entirely free and recycled from Mike's office.

After everything is packed, I take a break for lunch, which is usually a protein smoothie. I've never been big on vegetables, but at one point a couple months ago I realized I literally hadn't eaten a single vegetable in over a week and that kind of creeped me out. I started replacing one meal a day with a green smoothie when I found out that you can completely hide the taste of vegetables (kale, cucumber, lettuce, spinach) by blending them with fruit and juice. I bought an Oster personal blender which is super easy to clean, and on days when I have a veggie smoothie I feel like a million bucks and have more energy than I know what to do with.

On my way to the post office with about 25 orders. I knew there was a post office nearby our apartment when we moved, but then found out it was only about 4 blocks up the street, meaning I could walk or bike there! So I got a basket for my bike and only drive when I'm shipping a very large piece. Boston really hasn't gotten the hint that it's summer now, as you can see from the raincoat and long pants. On nicer days I try to bike around our neighborhood for a little while before going home.

After shipping orders, I try to get as much business stuff done as possible before getting my hands covered in paint. I answer emails, blog comments, Facebook posts, any pending wholesale or custom orders and then do an inventory of supplies if it looks like I need them. On this day I ended up stocking up like crazy- 250 mailing tubes, several bales of bubble wrap, cardboard mailers and archival paper. Gracie is either sleeping or doing cat yoga?

After the business side of things is done (and there is a lot) I finally get to play in my studio and actually make art. I started this piece over a month ago and really wanted it done, but couldn't figure out exactly what to do for a while.

The inspiration is back :) I'll move things from the easel to the desk constantly so I can see what different colors or lettering will look like before making it permanent. This is the last piece I have to finish before taking it and 4 other paintings up North to the print shop that does all my high-res scanning prior to selling or making them into prints. Since it requires two 2-hour round trip drives I try to get a lot of finished pieces together and make it worth the trip.

About half of my text is hand-lettered (ie, my handwriting or hand-drawn letters) and the other half uses stencils or stickers that I resize, cut out, paint over or otherwise alter to look how I want while still retaining some of their original shape/size. I paint on top of recycled cellophane print sleeves that are torn or wrinkled-- it protects my table, and the letters or other painted paper lifts right off.

More of this piece. I've been working on it forever, but I know if I don't force it, it will come out just right on its own.

After painting that day, I went to pick Mike up at work in Cambridge. He is currently pursuing his PhD at M.I.T. so I usually park and meet up with him in the biology lab where he works on his thesis project, which focuses on capturing sustainable solar energy from marine algae. I waited for him to finish doing some kind of intense-looking science thing and then we headed home.

I got lazy and stopped taking photos at this point, but if I had to guess, I think our night probably ended watching hockey and eating sushi, and a little more painting... Not bad for a full day of self-employment :)

giveaway winner and a free shipping code!

2011-06-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the giveaway for the first signed print of "Bloom."

It was great reading all your responses and it gave me a lot of inspiration for future artwork. I used a random number generator to determine the winner, which is...

Brandi Wyatt Dentice, who's quote was "There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." Pretty fitting, too :) Brandi, just leave your contact information in the comments or send it to me via an Etsy convo and I'll send your print along.

"Bloom" is now available in my shop as an 8"x10" archival paper print with a thin white border for framing. The colors in this one are really vibrant and I'm so happy at how it turned out.

To thank all of you for participating, I'm offering free shipping for all U.S. orders and half-off shipping for international orders today only. This will apply to anything you order, not just this new print. U.S. customers, enter the code FREESHIP at checkout and the discount will be taken off automatically; international buyers, enter the code FREESHIP in the message to seller box and I'll refund half the shipping cost after you checkout. Thanks again to all of you, and to my lovely aunt who inspired this piece :)

painted votives diy

2011-06-09T12:57:00.000-07:00

How awesome is this painted votives DIY from once wed? I love that it was inspired by artist Michelle Armas' brush cup, of all things.

I'm having enough trouble getting my own artwork finished right now (and our little 750 square foot apartment has about 1 square foot of horizontal space left in it) so I have to keep myself away from any more DIY stuff for the moment but I had to share it as I know some of you will love this project. If you do it, let me know how it turns out!

day in the sun

2011-06-06T09:03:00.000-07:00

Spent sunday afternoon with Mike and some friends at the beach a few minutes down the street from our apartment. Tiki sticks, lobster rolls, salt air, bare feet and watching planes land across the harbor.

I love our neighborhood and I'm so glad we moved to South Boston... being five minutes from downtown and five minutes from a beach makes it almost like living back in Seattle :)

july dreams

2011-05-14T10:18:00.001-07:00

Outside, the world is this:

(actual shot from my bedroom window)

but in my head it is this:

(Click each photo to go to it's original source.)

I can't wait for summer and all the hot, weird adventures it brings.

small things

2011-05-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

Three new, small original works I recently finished:

All available in my shop.