Bizarre Market! & Referring to a Donkey

Bizarre Market!

The 2nd Annual Jonny Z Festival + Bizarre Market is this Sat., August 8th.

12pm-5pm
200 Block of Shields Ave.
(Between Grove & Hanover)

I'm planning to attend/vend and will have some repeat odds and ends, including Cats in Space, Seed Packet Notebooks and other stuff, pretty much just like last year.

Art 180's current events page has more details.

In other project news, I recently made a sculpy figurine of an angel donkey for a friend at work whose friend's donkey had passed away.

Unpainted it was weird and fleshy:



Then painted, it was cuter:







I had to use a photograph (generic internet donkey) as a reference. It got me thinking about needing "references" in that way. Not that I'm great at drawing cats, but somehow cats have become semi-embedded in my consciousness, anatomy-wise, and I don't HAVE to have a reference to avoid absolutely ridiculous results. Whereas, even though in my mind, I totally know what a horse or a mouse looks like, if I try to draw one without a visual reference, it will just be goofy as all get out.

It would be fun, maybe, to draw a series of things using references vs. not using references, and see how off I am. I actually sort of like the silly result vs. the serious, but I know it's laughable.

I'm wondering what affects the mind to the point that something is memorized visually and you know what it looks like, yet can't get it out of your head and onto paper properly. And what switches that to something which can be translated outwardly... just practice, or time, or staring a lot at things?

Maybe I should have been a kid who traced things more. I never really traced anything.

Polar bears, sardine can, and good karma

Finally, here's the polar bear bag I made out of a polar bear "tapestry" from 1975. It's put together with a repurposed vintage fake blue fur coat. The lining is a slick/stripey upholstery type fabric. Straps and bottom in canvas. This thing is gigantic, though hopefully useful.



This is a donation for Art 180's very shortly upcoming Art Karma, which will be held on this Friday, THURSDAY! 12/4/08 from 7-10pm at Plant Zero, $10 admission. So, you can go get it, when you go. I can't go because I will be out of town.

Thanks to Suzanne from Silver Tree Art for gathering donations for a Richmond Etsy Street Team collection of items, including a couple of other small things I put in.

And now for the big announcement:

From this day hence, save me your sardine cans.

Yes, in addition to tape roll tubes, I have another random thing to collect in hopes of using it to make something in particular.



This is the sardine can art, which is more or less a variation on my "chunko-scenes" from art*o*mat days. Though now that I did an internet search, I've learned of course I'm not the only one who's thought of using these. In this case I used an empty (clean, clean!) sardine can and set a relief collage inside, then topped with magnifying sheet (still need to find a decent source for these since I've never seen them at the dollar store since 2001). The fun part was turning the can into a "frame" by using a nut and bolt to affix the tab as the hanging mechanism.







So there you have it. This sardine can art, titled They won't find another earth, was also sent off as a donation to Art Karma.

* * *

In flip book news, I took a trip to Kinkos and their laser printing is really pretty nice for the election flip book. However, they couldn't do a bleed so part of Obama's arm kept getting cut off. I am currently reformatting the book to allow for a margin and then hopefully I'll invest in getting the nice prints. Then I'll have to do some calculations and actually sell some to recoup the printing costs, because full color on cardstock is a pretty penny. Once I get back from my mini vacation, I'll have to set about getting that in order, tying up some other loose ends and then tackling some major, though not particularly crafty, projects.

Push Pins for the Dentist's Office

I finished the set of 10 toothy push pins. The spray painting process makes sense, but masking off the tooth part from the gums is a hassle and gets gunky. With these I ended up doing touch up all over with another shade of pink which was more of a magenta than the original spray paint. I'm working on a set of beads which will hopefully make better use of the spray paint. And I'm going to look for more small push pins I can use for making more of these.

Entering the dental office supply business could probably be quite lucrative.

In other news, I've created a HALLOWEENY section of my etsy shop. I need to restock it with more of the spooky mask goods from last year and then make something else spooky if I have time.