new ink + work in prog

 (seems like all I'm posting these days are works in progress and new tattoos)

I mentioned before that Morgan and I were going in for some tattoos, and here they are!
 
This was taken right after we finished, so they're still real dark and mine is pretty red (morgan on left, me on right). It was well after 4am by the time we finished. Ha. Thanks Derick Montez for the beautiful beautiful design & tattooing! (And thanks for putting up with my moment by moment pain evaluation.) He busted out a sketch for us in like 30 minutes while we went and got Jack in the Box curly fries (a weird tradition of ours). It was perrrrrfect. Took about 2+ hours each. Troopers!
all healed up now.


Morgan and I have been collecting skeleton keys for years, and I'm almost always wearing at least two around my neck. One year for my birthday Morgan gave me a bunch of hers, our 10th birthday maybe? I thought I had lost them in the move to San Francisco, but I found 'em hiding in an old jewlery box in my closet. I think I cried a little bit (oh I'm such a sap sometimes). Well, I don't want to lose them again, so I made one permanent.

Okay. Enough about that.
I've been putting the finishing details on this piece, it's nearly done.

I have another day or two left on the tattoos before it goes off to the New Brow group show over at The Alternative Cafe. Gonna be a fun show!

Also I'm super excited cause I'm getting a new studio space next month. It's super spacious and sunny and perrrrrfeccttt and I can't wait! yay.

okbye
xx

two art shows this week

I'm in two fun group shows that open this Thursday night, March 10th.

One is the Warhol Reimagined show put on by Warholian, over at Project One Gallery.

We were each given a panel and different works of Andy Warhol's to choose from to 'reimagine. And some artists recreated his famous soup cans. I went for good ol' Jackie O.

here they are side by side.

 

and here she is with an instagram filter, which always makes everything look better.

The panel was gesso-ed when I got it and had a trickier relationship with the paint than I'm used to, but I made it work. I like challenges. I also like that we all painted on panels of the same size, it's going to look so neat-o all together. (Yeah I just said neat-o)

 And of course I couldn't help myself. Had to give her an extra eye, tattoos and a haircut. Oh and a lil nose ring. Kind of a self portrait? I guess?

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The other opening is a collaborative photo exhibit with photographer Kelly Nicolaisen at 111 Minna. Me and a bunch of other artists did individual "light painting" collabs with Kelly, which was an entirely different medium than I'm used it. My shoot was kind of painful as it consisted of me being topless at the beach. At  night. In december. In san Francisco. I was only sliiiightly frozen. (Art is pain?) But I was really happy with how our picture came out. Shoots with her are always memorable. ha. I'm super excited to see the picture in person, as well as all the other artists' pieces.

I'll be gallery hopping, la la la! See you there :)

xx

Delphine

Delphine // La Femme Naufrage // Lady Shipwreck

30" x 40" (inches) oil & gold leaf on wood panel. 

So. While creating these wild-eyed nautical girls, I've been weaving this sort of vague backstory for them; how they're lives are interwoven, how they're connected, how they abhor and adore each-other. I originally was setting Delphine up to be a motherly figure to Ophelia and Aveline, but while the piece grew and developed, that path started to feel forced. I have several other images brewing in my mind, all tied in with their story line, and I started playing with the idea of all of them being sisters. I'm intrigued by the Greek myth of the constellation Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters, and decided to do a series loosely based around it.
So here we have Delphine, number three in my series The Seven Sisters.

 
The model for Delphine is my best friend Morgan of Whiteflowers. She wrote a beautiful song in collaboration, which I would love to share with you while you're visiting.

   Nautica [Delphine] by Whiteflowers

Here are some bits about my process for this piece.


As some of you know, a large portion of my creative process is the conceptualizing stage. This stage is really where the piece is really created, where I take a mental image and start drawing & combining elements together in Photoshop until I "find" it. Here is my "sketch" for Delphine. Naturally things change along the way, but I generally have the piece 90% planned out before I start painting. Of course I count on mistakes and bumps along the way to further shape the work.
I've become so comfortable working this way that I think it would be difficult to make up a painting on the spot. I know I would produce a completely different body of work if I was more spontaneous about it, which I'd like to explore more in the future. However, I do take my paintings very seriously, as they are a commitment, both time-wise & emotionally, so I suppose I save the spontaneity for my drawings and conceptualizing (for now).

 

So. I haven't played around with gold leaf much, so this was a fun experiment. I just sort of made up the process as I went along. I've recently fallen in love with Klimt and love the way he uses gold in his paintings, so I decided to try my hand at it.
After sketching out the figure, I stained the triangle portion black before applying the gold leaf, so bits of black would show through the cracks.

 I definitely busted out the hairdryer at one point. I'm not really a fan of the "waiting for the paint to dry" game. (I consider myself a patient girl, but sometimes you just want to keep going with a project, especially when feeling inspired and gung-ho. Paint drying times can seriously disrupt my flow!!) Okay. So. Hairdryer. Yes. Then comes the leafing. Which is oddly relaxing. I didn't want the gold to be perfect, which is really hard to achieve anyway.

But seriously guys, gold leaf is so pretty in person!! Photos just don't do it justice. There are these really delicate and lovely cracks in the leaf which look beautiful with the black behind it, which you can't really see in the main picture. Also, she looks super weird at this stage. Before I start painting, I like to erase all the extra pencil marks from sketching the figure, otherwise the graphite can muddy up the paint. So all that's left when I start painting are the outlines of the face, etc.


The rest is just clockwork and takes time - applying layers upon layers of paint, until I'm happy with it.

Early stages of the tattoos.



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Well that's enough for now. Got a Jackie Kennedy painting I've gotta finish for a fun upcoming Warhol-themed show! Pics soon!
Also thanks to those who came out for my show the other night, it was fun times!

And Thank you for all the birthday love. You're the best.
xxx