3 days til depature

Whew, it's been a busy busy week on my end-- I swapped out pretty much every portion of my bike to prepare it for its 3,000 mile journey, added nine new prints to my etsy shop, finished some pieces for a group show I'm participating in while traveling (yay for doing things in abstentia), packed up my art studio, finished writing up an interview I conducted with Justin Kane Elder, and was extremely flattered to have some really lovely posts on a number of art blogs I respect and admire. You can take a peek here at Lost at E Minor, Pattern Pulp, and Hard Feelings.

I'm most excited to have been mentioned on My Love For You Is A Stampede Of Horses-- I have had a huge art crush on them forever, so it means a lot to me that they liked my stuff!

Annyywayyss, it's been busy, but good busy, and I am really, really ready to spend four months with nothing that needs doing except hopping on my bike and biking about 50 miles every day. And, dear friends, I think I might have decided to relent-- I think I'm going to bring a small watercolor set with me. But only a little one. With one brush. It's strange to have all my paints and brushes boxed up; the thought of not touching them until July is too strange to wrap my head around.

I realized I haven't done a great job of posting images lately, so here are some pictures of some smaller pieces I've done in the last month or so. I've been wanting to devote my time to working on large scale projects, but haven't been able to with all my last minute preparations, so I've mostly been working small.

Print project is up, go forth and purchase!

Alright folks, my print project is up and ready for your buying pleasure! I have decided to call it The Wanderlust Project. Prints are available through my etsy shop (Yes, that's right! I finally, after 3+ years of procrastination, opened an etsy shop. Better late than never!).

2 weeks 'til departure

I'm two weeks away from leaving on my trip and it seems like time is going by ridiculously fast! I'm in the process of cleaning out my studio and trying to pare down the really amazing amount of extraneous scraps of paper I have collected over the years. I generally am someone that is good at getting rid of unnecessary possessions, but my weakness is paper-- if it has an interesting pattern or a fun image or just a nice weight or tooth, I huck it in my drafting table draw and justify carrying it around for the next five years. Anyways, I'm hopefully (fingers crossed!) subletting my art studio while I'm gone, so I'm trying to clean to A. free up storage space for the artist who will be using my space, and B. avoid horrific embarrassed over someone else actually seeing my total lack of organization.

I'm alllmmmooossttt done with the travel print project I posted about last week, am planning on heading to my studio after finishing this mug of tea and adding in the last line of text. Also on the agenda is another to do list item I've been procrastinating on for at least a year-- I'm going to draw a banner for this blog, and for my hopefully-soon-to-be-open etsy shop. So many little things to do!

I just had a few pieces posted over at Supersonic Electronic, a super fun illustration and street art centric blog. I really like the work they generally showcase, so I'm happy to be featured! In other art updates, the group show over at Bherd Studios is up through March 9th, and there's some really awesome work that is well worth seeing. The opening happened to coincide with my very last day of work at my day job, so I was in as fantastic mood to begin with, and then someone bought my giant piece so I was basically a giddy panda!

Here's a picture of the piece that sold-- I posted some pictures of it as a work in progress a while back, but here it is finished... Normally I don't get hugely attached to paintings, but I worked on this one for so long (three months on and off, maybe?) that it is hard to let it go. That and it's a convoluted self portrait in a lot of ways, so I feel like I ended up a lot closer to this one that usual.

Anyways, if you find yourself up in Greenwood neighborhood, go take a peek at the show.

Oookkeeee, off to my studio! Hopefully hopefully hopefully I will have images of the print project posted tomorrow.

Been busy beyond all point of reason

Howdy everyone. It's been a while between updates, and that's because I have been absurdly busy prepping for upcoming shows and getting things in order to leave town for 4 months.

I'm leaving Seattle in about three weeks to ride my bike across the country! I'm flying myself (and my faithful steed) down to southern California and am going to be biking from San Diego to somewhere in Florida. If you have friends in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida and possibly Georgia, I am actively looking for couches, floors or yards to sleep in. I'm also extremely interested in checking out art and artists along the way, so if you know of any artist colonies, intentional communities, enclaves of treehouses, or anything generally strange and at the margins, do let me know.

I've been working on a series of paintings that incorporate some of my favorite book passages about travel and wanderlust, and am going to be selling a limited print run to partially fund my trip. I'm **hoping** to have everything up and running for the prints to go on sale next week. More on that later, but for now here in a sneak peek of the first print, the text is from an essay by Barbara Kingsolver.

In other announcements, big thanks to everyone who came out to my opening at Monster and made the show such a great success. I'm happy to report that every piece in the show sold! In large part that is why I have been a bit incommunicado on the blog front-- I've been in my studio finishing paintings for XX: A Tribute to the Female Chromosomes, a group show opening next Friday at Bherd Studios. It's an all ladies show featuring work from myself, 179, Jenn Brisson, Sly Cooley, Devon Urquhart and Redd Walitzki.

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And here's a sneak peek at one of the pieces in the show. I've been slowly but surely creeping up to working on a larger scale, this will be the first time I'm showing some of my larger pieces.