I'm not the person I was before

I am interested in people and their stories that they tell to make their world make sense. This piece is about that story and the way that it changes over time. I picked excerpts from my own journal, each from a different point in my life. Over these I placed paper masks or faces in rice paper, translucent so that the words underneath are not completely obscured. Each face is a unique, and fragile like the illusion that we have a distinct, unchangeable identity throughout our lives instead of a series of personae worn in different times and places.


I really liked the process of this piece - it's something I made up as I went along, which is always a fun way of doing things. I created the base for the masks using plasticine covered in plastic wrap. It allowed me to create a number of completely individual faces - although I could have made them all the same if I'd so chosen - and is a flexible enough technique that I could create almost anything using it. And I love the rice paper in itself. It's such a beautiful material.

Basket Cases

Hello internet,
Life's been crazy. I'm too busy right now to right a long, involved post about what I'm up to right now; I should really go to bed in preparation for the twelve-hour day tomorrow. So here's some teasing pictures of my recent work.




Catch you all later!

Current Projects: Ornamentation, Dress Project update

Ornamentation Project:
Can I Ask You a Question?

As an openly transgendered person, I sometimes get asked a lot of questions. They can range from the profound to the inane to the downright offensive. However, my ability to be seen and identified in the way that I wish to be seen is sometimes based on my ability to answer these questions well. For example, in order to transition medically, I must prove through psychological examination that I am serious in my intent to transition from one gender to another, know the consequences of doing so, and am mentally stable enough to know my own mind.
This piece is about all of the questions I have been asked, at one time or another. The words are layered on top of each other, sometimes clear and sometimes obscured, in reflection of the way thoughts cluster in a confused mind. The fabric is flesh-toned silk, stretched awkwardly in an embroidery hoop like skin set out to cure. It is meant to be an ambiguous work, to chain you down with questions and uncertainties, but leave you with few answers.



Notes: I am quite pleased with this work, actually. This was the first time I've done any embroidery, and I enjoy the looseness and tactility of it. I think it's a process that I will continue to use in the future. I'm pleased with my artist's statement as well, which was an integral part of the project, and actually read aloud in class. *laughs* I'm such a good student.

Project update: All I want to be when I grow up is a man in a dress


This project was due last Friday. The current incarnation of the piece is about as done as it will ever be. I don't like the way this is going, and I want to do more experimentation in order to find a better direction to go in. I got quite a few good ideas of things to explore during the critique, and this is a concept that I want to see done well. It may take me all term to finish this project as much as I want, but that's all right.



It took twelve hours to sew the hair around the top of the dress. It was crazy.

I also have a flickr account of my art online now. Check it out!

Old and Current Projects: Silver Trees and Man-Dresses

So I managed to get myself through the fall semester, and have started the winter one now. At some point I will get decent documentation of the works I did, but until then I will have to make do with crappy pictures taken with my crappy camera.

I've decided to try and take more photos of my works in progress, and use this blog as a way of keeping track of what I'm doing so I can remember at a later point. Getting into the habit of documenting art is never a bad thing.


Here's a look at a couple of projects. One that I've just finished working on to my satisfaction, and another one that is still incomplete. The first was my final project for my jewellery and metals class that I took last semester. It was pretty much a free choice project, meaning you can choose to do whatever you wish, as long as you used a couple of the techniques learned in class. I chose to create a forest of silver trees done with cuttlefish casting. Mostly because it wasn't that difficult a technique, and yet creates objects with a lot of visual interest. I made a total of five individual trees out of sterling silver, each one slightly different than the others. I also made two tiny brass leaves. I created a small landscape by 'planting' the trees in a base of plasticine, and then covering the plasticine in decorative sand. At first, all I had were gravel-sized stones, but they looked like boulders in comparison with the trees, so I redid the project last week once I had found the sand and a better container. Then I created a river out of glitter and some uncut gems I've had since my trip to Sri Lanka seven years ago.



I am ridiculously pleased with the result.

One of the projects that I'm working on, for my intermediate mixed media class in Fibre, is one that is tentatively called 'All I want to be when I grow up is a man in a dress.' I am intrigued by the notions of clothing and fashion, and how one's choice of clothing reflects one's gender and identity. I am interested in how clothes are assigned gender and thus how people in turn are assigned gender based simply on what they are wearing.



I made a basic dress, using a vintage Vogue pattern as a base. I wanted it to be pretty and flowing and feminine. That way once I've finished sewing crepe hair around the top of the dress, the juxtaposition between the feminine dress and the decidedly unfeminine furriness will be creepy and, hopefully, potent.



I've run out of crepe hair, and won't be getting anymore until Tuesday at the earliest. Which means that I will probably spend all of Wednesday tying bits of hair to a dress. I daresay I don't even need to say how tedious and aggravating this process is. Although, I suppose if I managed to stay up all night gluing rhinestones to paper tentacles, I can manage this.



*laughs* This is why everyone thinks artists are crazy.

Because they ARE.

It's so PRETTY

The reason I don't post more is that I've become accustomed to sixteen-hour days. Which really doesn't leave a lot of room for reflection and the updating of blogs. Still, I think I've finally discovered a direction where I want my practice to go, and that makes me incredibly happy.

Three words: stuffed animal sex.

On the first day I attended drawing class, my instructor mentioned that one of my classmates' drawings looked like stuffed animal sex: cute, but also disturbing. I found the idea intriguing and have started to explore it in some of my projects for the class. I love the idea of something that is both attractive and repulsive. Something that draws you in with its cute, its kitch, its prettiness, and then turns around and smacks you with a giant blood-tipped glittery tentacle. Kind of like the ones I made for my drawing class.

They're so pretty, and yet...

Brush Versus Marker: An Exploration (NSFW: language)

I'm currently in a drawing course entitled Media and Techniques. In our first assignment we had to do 100 drawings in brush and ink, each done in three minutes or less. In our second assignment we had to take our favourite ten drawings out of the hundred and re-draw them in fine-tip marker.

I'm quite fond of the results - and the contrast between the fluidity of the ink and the precision of the markers - so I thought I'd share. Some of the images got cropped a bit whilst being scanned.

News!

I have an online portfolio. It is full of shiny things. I also find it useful for remembering when I made a particular piece: I have a bad head for dates.

Adventure Bound actually sold! This will be the first time that I get money from a piece that I've made. It's pretty exciting.

Other than that, I've been extremely busy trying to juggle school and work. School is amazing, as usual. I'm learning jewellery-making, as well as cloth dyeing. I am continuously in awe at all of the things that I can learn, and all of the processes out there that I can use to make beautiful things. I've been doing a lot of experimenting, most of which I don't have pictures of. Yet.

Still, I am alive, and continuing to create. Life is good.