Topographic Table

My studio is... well... it's practical. It's not lovely, airy, sun-soaked, or spartan like all good studios are supposed to be, but it gets the job done. My studio is the messy pony tail of the workspace universe -- It ain't pretty, but it helps me get my work done.

I work in the basement of our home. Sure, I have to supplement the lighting with lamps. And sure, I have workout equipment, an old t.v., dusty VHS tapes, and a stray sock from the laundry chute as my twisted feng-shui backdrop. Who cares? 75% of the year it's the perfect temp -- if on the cool side, I can crank the stereo without waking the kids, I can write off the "overhead" as a business expense, and most importantly, it's big enough that I can fit all my stuff here and I don't have to share with anyone.

So, it was a little fun when I actually made some changes to it recently. I occasionally take EVERYTHING off the 8-foot table and give the surface a good scrub. After staring at the wet marks evaporate from the faux-woodgrain tabletop, I was inspired to paint it white. I found some old white paint the former owners had left and laid on two, gooey coats of it in one day. From its age, my misuse, or something, the paint did not spread very nicely. Some parts were wonderfully white, while other parts hinted at a darker layer beneath. I'm an impatient re-decorator, so instead of applying yet another layer of paint on, I uncapped my Sharpie and went to town. Drawing (literally) from all my experience with contour maps over the last 4 years, I topo-fied my tabletop.


It still isn't spectacular, but it's brighter, more creative, much less faux-woodgrain, and totally Crafterall. After editing the "stuff" I need on the table and replacing the bare essentials, I can honestly say that it was worth it. Something about it says, "Yup. This is for real, y' know. This is your job. Now go, kick some butt."


I am o.k. (for now) with the fact that my studio will never look like Martha's or any of the dreamy spaces I've seen featured online. I do want to work a little more, though, on paring down even further, finding more out-of-the-way places for my less-frequently used tools and materials, and getting the whole place to jive a little more. If I'm going to spend 60 hours a week down here, I better darn well enjoy it! Maybe I'll get around to a complete "before and after" post when that "after" feels complete... say, in a couple years or so. *wink*

Introducing CrafterAlt!

This has really been a long time coming, and, while I'd thought about waiting until we had a really full lineup, I'm so pleased that we've got the first few things ready for you and I just can't hold it back any longer.

My dear friend, Kendra of No Moniker (formerly Green Post), and I have teamed up to create a new offshoot of Crafterall. Call it a branch, a grafting, an offshoot, a hybrid, or just one heckuva clever collaboration, and know it by its name: CrafterAlt.


CrafterAlt is a new body of work made completely from my paper scraps. The line will include frameable 8 x 10" art pieces, foldover cards, bookmarks, journals, tags, and loads more. Between Kendra and I, we've jotted down close to 50 different items that we could make and market, all of them entirely recycled, entirely handmade, and entirely gorgeous.




We've started with the simple beauty of the silhouette of my home state, Minnesota, and we will work to produce more themes and images as we go along. Stay tuned for more posts about the process we have to produce these pieces, the other ideas we have floating around in our minds, and updates as we continue to roll out more works.


I'm thrilled with the quality and beauty of these pieces so far. Everyone I've shown them to remarks that they look even better in person too. The best part? I get to work with an amazing artist and paper wizard to create something new and beautiful out of what I'd otherwise dump in the recycling bin. How many people can claim that?

Shows & Things to Show!

Whew! It's been a while!

While I'd like to be able to say that my hiatus is due to an extended snorkleing trip in the Fijian islands, I'm even more happy to say that I've been crazy busy with lots of awesome paperwork! I'm not being sarcastic. How can paperwork be awesome? When it's working with paper to churn out some of these pieces:


Above is a massive 4-piece, segmented work depicting the water of and land surrounding Lake Attersee in northwestern Austria. Each piece is 12 x 12" and at the thickest portions, there are 14 layers of cardstock. I would love to see this after it's matted and framed!

I've done quite a few sets lately. Another genius idea was this set of four places that traces four key locations that the buyer and her husband visited or inhabited in their young lives so far, and includes (clockwise from top left): San Francisco, Baja California, Amsterdam, and the Sunderbans of India.


Someone else ordered something akin to a "family pack" with different colors of the same lake:


Other fun custom pieces include Prince of Wales Island at the bottom of Alaska's "tail":


Table Rock Lake in southern Missouri:


And New York's Long Island done up in rich, harvest golds:


I finally worked out my plan for plastic-free packaging for my card sets:


I still have to incorporate them into my listings, and they could endure some more refining, but I like them for their simplicity, practicality, and recycle-ability!

Last month marked my second gallery exhibit, this one as part of a super cool show fronted by the brilliant Mr. Curt Lund. Curt just wrapped up his artist-in-residence term at the charming Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts in Fridley and for his grand finale, invited four other artists to join him in creating Geographies: a multi-media investigation of place. As fun and thrilling as it is to be part of any show, Geographies is so near and dear to my heart and what I do every day, that it is and will always be extra awesome to me. Here are some shots from the show:

Three all-white pieces (from left to right or west to east, if you will): San Francisco Bay, Lake Minnetonka, Manhattan


A bright, extra-dimensional piece called "Buoyancy":


This piece, two 6 x 6" layered "halves" of the same stack, I titled, 'Touched."


I invite people to touch this piece in the hopes that over time, it will begin to show the dirt and grime of a thousand hands. In a way, this reflects how we both connect to and corrode the land around us.

The show is up through the end of April, so if you're in the Twin Cities area, do check it out! There are more of my pieces than what I've shown here, and lots of other amazing pieces by the other artists in the collection.

Last Saturday, I joined Curt again, as well as a dozen other artists as an elite group vending our work at the beautiful Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. It was a very simple set-up: we were each allotted a single, simply draped 6-foot table, set in a line along a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows. The Walker staff treated us to some morning goodies, a lovely lunch, assistance whenever needed, and a free and amazing selling venue in exchange for half of our earnings that day. The turn out and response far exceeded my expectations and I sold out of a few things. You can see how spotty my card display looked below when my hubby and the kids stopped by in the afternoon:

I didn't intend to take my zip-up hoodie off, or have my hair pulled up, but it was warm and I was busy! It was a great day! One of the personal highlights for me was when an older gentleman asked me if I was from Bemidji. When I told him I was, he said that he knew my Dad. I pressed him for more information and he said he saw my last name on my info card, had a hunch, and then saw my blue eyes and knew I was my father's daughter. I was so chuffed to think that my eyes were the giveaway clue to my identity. I called my Dad after the show to tell him and he thought it was pretty sweet too. :) It was wonderful, too, to hear all the very nice comments people shared about my work. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I love what I do!

What's next? More custom pieces, each one different, each one with a story behind it. I am so lucky to be able to make pieces for people who find these so special. Who knew it would become so huge since my very first custom piece about two years ago?

Also, up next, is the very fun, very crazy, very awesome, St. Paul Craftstravaganza! This year's event is held in the same place as in recent years, the Fine Arts building of the MN State Fair Grounds. The event takes place one day only, on Saturday, April 30th, from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. I'll be in the same place I was last year as well, just off to the right side from the main entrance.

There will be loads of other handmade goodies there from all over the state and region, with some of the most unique and high-quality items you'll find in this area. Please stop by and say "hi!"

Until then, I'm busy, busy, busy prepping more fun stuff for the show, as well as crossing off pieces from my custom to-do list. New orders from my shop will be shipped beginning early May, and my turn-around time on all my work should shorten considerably soon thereafter.

Thanks for reading through this meaty update! I hope to see you soon!

Locally Harvested

Yesterday, I dropped off some work to be included in my first, official, fine art show. I've been slow to adopt the title "Artist" and have come a long way from making greeting cards to what I do now. This show marks my foray into gallery shows, and I'm pretty excited about it.

The Show: Locally Harvested "small art - big beauty". Held within the Capstone Gallery at 4325 Nicollet Ave S. in Minneapolis, November 12 - December 28. Opening Party will be November 19, from 6 - 9 p.m.

The Works:

"Reincarnations No.1" & "Reincarnations No.2"


These pieces represent an idea I've had rumbling around in my head and in my sketchbook for at least a year. I wanted to play with the silhouette trend that's been hot lately, and yet do something new and maybe meaningful with it. For this work, I've tried to capture the sense that we go through a series of different selves as we age, and that somewhere inside us, there are traces of ourselves as younger and younger "reincarnations."

These are some of the first pieces I've designed digitally for the Silhouette cutter. The newer software application is so much easier to use and has opened up a new world of cutting possibilities for me. So far, I'm quite pleased with the results.


"Flow"

This is another idea I've had for a long time: to create a topography-type piece in sections for a puzzle-like look. The result turned out better than I expected. I am digging the "friction" caused by seeing the flow of the water subject interrupted by the separation. Perhaps it's a comment about how we've disrupted the land around us. Or perhaps it's just neat.


"Elevated"

This piece is similar to "Flow" in that the subject has been sliced apart, but here, I've mounted them on a single piece of cardstock, and then elevated two of the pieces for more depth. I'm playing with the idea of topography, the height of the land, and the disruption of the status quo.


"Harvest"

Cut from 14 layers of brown and cream cardstock, this work has both the mountain and the quarry from which it was "mined" as equal halves of the same material.


"Clary Lake"

My last piece is an homage to Mr. Charles Clary, a contemporary paper artist to whom I've been nicely compared by some. I tried to mimic Clary's technique of layering with space in between the layers, while still maintaining my flair for topography, land and water.


This was my first experiment with this and I have to admit that my respect for the precision and complexity of Clary's work rose immensely throughout this process.


While working on these delayed my production of some custom requests and general shop stocking, the show is exactly the motivation I needed to work out some of these ideas, and feel a little more worthy of the title, "artist."

I'd love to hear what you think of these. And I'd really love to see you at the show!

Alaska, Forida, New York, Oh My!

More custom requests have been filing in, with miraculously workable timing. Do you all get together behind my back and sort yourselves out, or am I just this lucky to maintain a lovely, nearly constant stream of requests? Either way, I'll take it!

Here's a look at what I've been up to lately.

Auke Bay, near Juneau, Alaska


Auke Bay (detail)
This piece shows one of the few times that I used the darkest color for the land as the base layer, instead of working the four shades the other way. I think the effect works really well since the land closest to the ocean here is rich with giant evergreens, and just up the steep sides of these mountains are glaciers and snow caps. I also really like the greater contrast between the light blue of the water and the dark green of the land. Might have to try this with my next few Islands pieces.

Next up, warm and sunny, Sanibel Island in southwest Florida:

Sanibel Island


Sanibel Island (detail)
Because the topography is very subtle here and much of the island is marshy wetland, the buyer and I agreed that just two layers of green would suffice to represent the land in this area. I chose the middle of the Grass Green set for a nice, true-green tone with good contrast to those gulf coast waters. With all the little islands and lakes, I don't think we missed the other two layers.

Back up north, this time on the eastern side of the country, I had another request for the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. This time, I was asked to recreate the land's topography as well as the lake depths. It was fairly crucial to be as accurate as I could be as the buyer and her friend participated in a thigh-busting, 300-mile bike ride up and down this terrain, and these pieces were to be souvenirs of that event. It took a few tries, and quite a bit of back-and-forth communication, but I think we did O.K. in the end, and I'm very grateful for the patience and flexibility of this buyer. These pieces aren't the winners, but they'll give you a good idea of the project and all those lovely hills.

Finger Lakes

Finger Lakes (detail)

Staying in New York, but moving to the big city, I recreated a section of Manhattan's Upper West Side, along the Hudson River, and across from the Fairview area.

Upper West Side

Upper West Side (detail)It's a wonderfully simple piece with quiet sophistication, done up in creamy browns. I like how the river, at a distance, could almost be mistaken for a piece of bark, then the fabricated piers on the west bank reveal that it is something else entirely, and perhaps, to a keen observer, give away its true location identity.

What fun stuff you guys throw at me, and what a great way to "travel" the world. Thank you!

Welcome to dee islands, mon!

I finally got around to creating more fictional island pieces for the shop, after making (and selling) the first two back when there was still snow on the ground. As ever, I continue to be inspired by cutting actual locations for custom requests, and it's so fun to be able to do "whatever" with these imagined places. Each piece is, at its most diverse points, eight layers thick, and the pieces are available in three different sizes:

8 x 10"

No. 5
No. 5 (detail)

No. 6

No. 6 (detail)

No. 7

No. 7 (detail)

10 x 12"

No. 3

No. 3 (detail)

No. 8
No. 8 (detail)

and 12 x 12" (The Big Kahuna!)

No. 4

No. 4 (detail)

I'm pondering new colorways too. Tan to brown land surrendering its ore to rusty orange waters? Monochromatic whites, greys, into black? All white? What do you think?

Until I work up the budget to spend time on a real tropical island, I will be happy to pretend, as my blade cuts land and volcanic peaks from cerulean waters, that I am there, sipping something chilled and mildly intoxicating, swinging lazily in a canvas hammock, the lullaby of waves hush-hushing me to sleep.

Thanks for having a look.

Working the Land

uffta (OOF-tah): interjection: Exclamation of Norwegian origin, popular in strongly Scandinavian settlements in the upper Midwest, used to express surprise, bewilderment, astonishment, pity, pain, and fatigue. Syn. yikes, oh boy, whoa nelly, hoo-wee, good gravy.

I'm happy to report that the custom requests continue to pour into my shop at a nicely steady pace. While many of them remain in the style of my original lake-style bathymetries, the most recent requests have begun to grow legs and climb onto land for a look at the good life. Starting from the simplest, though not necessarily easiest, to the most complex, here's a look at what me and my trusty lil' blade have been up to lately.

The first piece is basically a reverse of my typical pieces. Instead of the land being a single, solid white layer with the water represented in layers of deepening color, the water here is a base layer of white, and the land is layered on top in the shades from light to dark. Abstract veining, or a chunk of Mobjack Bay, near Gloucester, Virgina?


Going with more land-like coloration, another patron requested a 12-layer representation of Little Switzerland, North Carolina. If you notice, there's a handful of little lakes scattered throughout this area as well.


Incorporating the water into the land-based topographies took off from there. Starting small, here is the stunning Plage du Pyla on the southwestern coast of France.


From here, it was an all-out war against my brains and hands to work both the land's topography and the water's depth into a single piece. Here is an artistically isolated Marrowstone Island, from the great state of Washington.

(detail)
(entire piece)
And it didn't get any easier from there. A request for the Rhode Island coastline near Westerly:

(detail)
(entire piece)
And then onto the largest lake in New Hampshire: Lake Winnipesaukee. I counted at least 53 islands here, not including the little hills of land that were islands of another sort.

(detail)

(entire piece)
Finally, the biggest, most time-taxing, brain-busting piece to date was actually a set of pieces. Two pairs of pieces of two different areas of Quebec -- Rouyn-Noranda and Montreal.

(detail)

(both sets)
(detail)
To answer a question that I'm sure many of you have in mind at this point, YES, these take a good, many hours to complete, and cutting the pieces is only a small portion of the process. For many of these, especially those attempting to capture a big area in a much smaller space, it's difficult to find easy-to-read topographic maps that generalize the land's topography enough to be of use. Most of the time, I need to zoom in to see the lines, choose which ones to follow, and then zoom out to work the lines into the piece itself. I feel like I add more wrinkles in my brain by doing this. It is mentally exhausting, and it is totally worth it. The results look way cool to me, and I'm excited to tackle some more. Not all areas seem to translate as well as others, but they all have an artful final look, and, best of all, the recipients get to own an original art map of the place they love.

You can say it with me: Uffta!