A boyfriend at the time took a picture of me that he really liked, but I did not at all. So to get rid of it I made it into this portrait, which I do like.
Tag Archives: wall art
Cellist for Grandma
My grandmother was a wonderful cellist, and she loved everything music related, so for her 80th birthday I made her a cellist portrait. I used glossy paper to make up the instrument itself in order to make it pop a little bit.
Self Portrait 1
I wanted to start posting my stuff on Etsy, which never actually happened, but at the time I thought I should do a self-portrait that I could use as my thumbnail, or whatever. This one comes from a photo taken at the Sasquatch Festival campgrounds at the Gorge in George, Washington.
Fundraiser for Haiti
After the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, a coworker held an art auction as a benefit and I donated two pieces. My coworker gave me some images from Haiti that I could use. The first is a woman praying – this piece was important for me obviously because of the cause, but also because I hadn’t really thought about framing or negative space before. The second is children on their way to school. This was important because I hadn’t done much with multiple people, and especially with such small people. This was also a diversion from what had really only been pictures of women before. (Please excuse my reflection in the photos!!)
Pregnant Jen
A darling friend of mine from Portland was pregnant and had this beautiful photo series done with her husband. I’m not sure exactly how I decided to use one of her images to make a portrait, but I think it might have originated in a facebook comment conversation based on some of my other pieces. Anyway, portraits of people I know are awesome, and I want to do more of them. So cool to think about the person who I’m creating it for when choosing the photo and the papers. I chose the reindeer paper for Jen’s skin because I thought about her creating life within her, and the energy of it seemed appropriate.
Yoga
Another calendar my old roommate brought home was of yoga poses, so I picked three of them and made a little series. I decided since it was to be a legit series that I would use the same paper choices for all three. And I chose more muted patterns to reflect the calming nature of yoga.
My First Commission
My best friend and I were having a Hanukkah party at my apartment in Portland. But if you know anything about Portland, you know that there aren’t many Jews. In fact, if we just invited our friends, there would be one and a half Jews coming aside from ourselves. So we told our friends that they couldn’t come unless they brought a Jew with them. This ended up being amazing, and hysterical – I wish I could have been there to witness people asking their token Jewish coworker or friendly acquaintance from their volunteer job if they wanted to come to this party. But it was a great turnout, and super fun.
As it would happen, one Jewish friend-of-a-friend who came to the party saw the Brooklyn Girls haphazardly taped to my wall and started asking me about them, and ultimately asked to buy two of the girls from my wall and to commission a 3rd that would become a birthday present for her boyfriend (hence why those pictured are colored copies). This was pretty exciting!!
Turns out her boyfriend didn’t like them – I think he felt uncomfortable because of how provocative they were. I’m not entirely sure what ended up happening with them, but it was cool for me!
Religious Propaganda Girl
For years I liked collecting what I call religious propaganda, which basically refers to anything faith-based that someone is handing out on the street, and other things like glow-in-the-dark Mary candles and Bibleopoly (actually kind of a fun game). I decided to use the handouts to recreate the Brooklyn Girls Baywatch Babe. Not sure it worked that well because the whole point is the contrast between the papers, and it’s also such small pieces that you can’t really tell what’s written on it, but it was a fun project nonetheless.
Brooklyn Girls
I’ve always been into making collages with magazines, and then at some point started getting into scrapbooking paper. This was back when I was living in Portland. One of my roommates at the time worked at a bookstore, and when they had calendars that didn’t sell, they would rip off the cover to send back to the publisher, and then they could do what they wanted with the rest of the calendar. One of these that made its way back to our house was the Brooklyn Girls calendar, where queer girls from Brooklyn dressed up as pinups from the different decades. We didn’t love the way they looked as such (no offense) but another roommate suggested I remake the girls with scrapbooking paper, and thus my art form was born!
Art by Raealize 