THREE New Prints! And a Holiday Sale!

I'm SUPER happy to announce that three new prints have been added to my shop. Two are available for pre-order and will start shipping on the 12th, and one is available for immediate purchase. Yay!

Also, from now until Dec.19th, enter in the discount code "HOLIDAY2011" to receive $10.00 off of all prints. The 19th will also be the last day this year that I will be shipping anything at all, so please note that anything ordered past the 19th will ship at the beginning of January.

"I Still Feel You", Limited Edition Giclee Print

$65.00
Edition of 50
11" x 14.375" + 1" white border
Signed and numbered

Ships flat

*Please note that if you purchase this print along with one of the prints available for pre-order, shipping will be delayed until the 12th of December. If purchased alone, it will ship immediately.*

Click here to purchase

Don't forget to enter discount code "HOLIDAY2011" to receive $10.00 off!

"Shiver", Limited Edition Giclee Print

Currently available for PRE-ORDER, will ship starting on the 12th of December

$65.00
Edition of 50
11" x 15.36" + 1" white border
Signed and numbered

Ships flat

Click here to pre-order

Don't forget to enter discount code "HOLIDAY2011" to receive $10.00 off!


"I Open at the Close", Limited Edition Giclee Print

currently available for PRE-ORDER, will ship starting on the 12th of December

$90.00
Edition of 50
11" x 19.5" + 1" white border
Each print is individually hand embellished by the artist with gold paint
Signed and numbered

Ships rolled

Click here to pre-order

Don't forget to enter discount code "HOLIDAY2011" to receive $10.00 off!

Detail shots of the hand embellishments:

Cheers :)

Up Next... Chicago!

Coming up in just a few short weeks! I cannot believe October is already almost over... 2011, where did you go?

I still have SO. MUCH. TO. DO. That being said... talk to you later. <3

Blibberblabbers

I currently have 4 pieces worked out, color-studied, transferred onto canvases, and ready to move over to my easel. I'm normally a "one piece at a time" kind of gal, but painting commences on several of these today. I want 3 done by the end of the month. I have no idea if this is possible.

I'm back on my "stay up all night working and sleep for a few hours in the afternoon" schedule in a pretty hardcore sort of way... I have tried to break this cycle so many times, but I always seem to work my way back around the clock to this nocturnal life. I'm trying to just officially embrace it, as it's obviously how I work best. Also, I've been watching The History Channel's show "Ancient Aliens" on Netflix while I've been up by myself all night working - some of the ideas they talk about are actually interesting and fun to think about, while others are just historical or biblical references followed by a "...but what if aliens were involved?" It can get silly. Regardless though, my 4 AM google searches are becoming increasingly more and more bizarre.

I have exactly one more fun and mountainy thing for the summer left on my schedule and then after that I will scarcely be leaving my studio until November, so expect more randomishblibberblabber posts from me. And, I apologize in advance if you wake up one morning to a post from me discussing cattle mutilations, or crystal skulls, or the fact that the moon is actually a hollow vessel housing an extraterrestrial spacecraft. I won't be getting out much.

;)

"I Open at the Close"

I'm a little bit appalled with myself over the fact that it has taken me this long to get this post up... my intention was to post it the day Deathly Hallows Part 2 was released, but things got totally craycray due to the whole "getting married the following day" bit. So, I decided to wait until today. Why? Because not only is it the famous Harry Potter's birthday today, but it's also the birthday of the lovely J.K. Rowling herself, and it seemed to be a fitting way to say "Happy Birthday!" and a good day to showcase this story that I have grown to love so much.

So, not to be Captain Obvious here or anything, but I think it's time I officially confess to you all that I have a bit of a thing for Harry Potter. Ok, OKAY, so maybe it's not so much of a "thing" as it is a... total and complete obsession? I'm totally outing myself here, but I am one of those folks that lined up for hours so they could be first in line at the midnight releases, one that has read each book multiple times (as well as listened to the audiobooks while painting way too many times to even keep track of), I am fairly certain that someone in my circle of friends has got some wonderfully drunk pictures of me dressed as Mr. Potter himself at a post-college Halloween party (it is also entirely possible that I kept my college graduation robe just incase I might end up needing any last minute Halloween costumes of the Hogwarts variety), and I could go on and on and on. So, when the fine folks over at Gallery Nucleus emailed me a year ago about participating in their Harry Potter Tribute Show, well, let me sum up my reaction by saying that I just about peed my pants.

"I Open at the Close"

I had already decided years ago (after finishing Book 7 for the first time, actually) that I would make this piece. The moments that transpire between Harry and his parents in the Forbidden Forest are at once so heartwarming and so completely heartbreaking, and there was never really any question of what part of the story I would choose to focus upon. (Though, really, I could fill an entire house with Potter pieces.... someone ask me to. please?) So, a big thank you to Gallery Nucleus for inviting me to participate in this show and giving me a reason to finally get this image out, and a monumental and heartfelt thank you to J.K. Rowling for giving the world Harry Potter in the first place. I know I'm just one among millions who feel that life is a bit better with all of these characters in it. :)

Oh and P.S. The show opening at Gallery Nucleus looks like it was a total blast (check out some images here), and it's definitely one that I wish I could have attended myself. You can check out all of the pieces that were on display here!

:)

As The World Falls Down (Crazy4Cult FIVE)

Gallery 1988's fifth installment of their Crazy4Cult show opened earlier this month, and this year I chose the Jim Henson classic, "Labyrinth", as my inspiration.

"As The World Falls Down"

The decision to focus on the masquerade scene was partially influenced by my desire to use either a song lyric or a song name from the movie as the piece's title (I use to rock out to the "Labyrinth" soundtrack on my morning drives to high school - I'm not kidding), but mostly I just wanted to incorporate that DRESS. (sidenote: My hubby wasn't sure that people would recognize this image as a Labyrinth moment, to which I replied that he's bonkers crazy and that any girl who was a girl at the time knows good and well that this dress was one of THE best dresses to come out of the 80's... if not the best. sigh. silly boy. )

In other Crazy4Cult news, there is now a book showcasing highlights from the previous four installments of the show and I have work in it! It is a 176 page hardcover book packed with super fun cult movie art, and topped off with a forward by Kevin Smith, who has always played a big part in these shows. Gallery 1988 hosted an artist book signing a few weeks ago that I was invited to, but was very sad to have to miss out on (you can check out their own blog post covering it here), and if you purchase the book through their website your book will come signed by at least one of the featured artists. Get one. :)

A Skipperdee Makes a Very Good Hat!

So, this piece has actually been finished for several months now, but I think it definitely deserves to be posted! This one is a commissioned piece in which I was asked to do an image based on the commissioner's favorite children's book series from when she was little, "Eloise". Eloise is a precocious and quirky six year old girl who lives in the fabulous Plaza Hotel in New York City, and the books focus around all of the imaginative adventures she concocts for herself on a day to day basis. She also has a penchant for "making very good hats!" out of things that surely no one else would consider very good hats, hence her pet turtle, Skipperdee, residing on her head. These books are super fun and it was an equally fun piece to work on!


One note about commissions, because I do get emails about them from time to time... they are really hard to fit into an already established work schedule. That's not to say that I don't ever do them (this post proves otherwise!), it's just more to say that generally they will take much longer than other pieces to bring to a complete finish, because they end up squashed in between other deadlines or worked on in small chunks as time opens up. If I can't foresee a good chunk of open time in a year, often I will turn down commission requests since it is so hard to guarantee a "finished by" date. That being said, I do have one more on my plate for this year (don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you, James! ;) ).

More posts coming soon! :)

Back to life, Back to reality

I debated whether or not to post this, because it's a bit more personal that what I usually share on this blog, but it's relevant to my year, so I decided I'm okay with it. I just got back from getting hitched to my bff of the last nine years and fellow arty nerdboy Josholland. We are finally resettled after having the most hectic month of our lives thus far and learning firsthand that all of the barfy cliches about planning a wedding are actually... 100% true. Somehow, as a girl who never cared about weddings, never fantasized about her "bigdayblahblahblah", and as someone who very likely scorned and looked down on the importance people put on this one party, somehow this one day managed to completely temporarily take over my brain and my life for a few months. I'm not complaining. I'm just saying it's funny. And, in retrospect, I suppose it's to be expected - it is the one day you get to make a completely acceptable big fuss out of the most important relationship in your life, might as well make it fun and worth all the trouble, yeah?

There are two reasons I'm posting this.

The first is to say that my brain is back to being mine, and that my creative energies can once again become devoted to nothing else but making lots and lots of artwork over the next few months (good timing too, I have a two person show rapidly approaching that I NEED to get my butt in gear for!).... soooo, hurrah! I have felt stretched very thin, creatively and otherwise, over the last few months, but now I am feeling super good and super excited to get back to the grindstone. :)

The second is to give a well deserved wedding related, but also art related, plug to some serious talent we discovered in our planning process - the lovely gal we hired to be our photographer. The really fun thing about weddings nowadays is that people are getting really artistic with how they execute and document them (I will maybe eventually share a couple of the things we made ourselves... if I decide that it would actually be the slightest bit interesting to anybody but me. ha. we'll see). Wedding photography (along with maybe every other wedding related thing in existence, actually) has a notoriously bad rep for being the most horribly cheasy looking stuff out there, but in the last few years this has really started to change. As someone who loves pretty images and whimsical things, I must say that I am a huge fan of this new trend. It's no joke when people say that the day passes you by like a big blur of a "maybe that happened?" memory, so having such a fantastic eye working behind the camera has so far been credited as the best decision we made. Melissa, the face behind Fresh in Love Photography, is an amazing artist with the ability to capture seemingly ordinary moments and make them look beyond wonderful and, REALLY, more people should know about her. She is awesome. So, if you are so inclined, go and oogle a sample of what she did for us here, and if you are getting married or just want some lovely images, hire her! She travels and is goobers of niceness too. (...goobers, Shannon? I have no idea.)

Anyways, so it's back to life and back to reality for me from here on out. Expect several new posts from me over the next week - there are a lot of new pieces that missed out on being properly blog-posted due to my terribly befuddled brain!

Cheers :)