Category Archives: art

Behold! The Biblioburro

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There is a long and glorious history of mobile libraries powered by sure-footed donkeys, delivering books to people in remote or undeveloped areas where readers have no other access to texts, so when the librarian asked me to decorate the cart she intended to use to bring books to classrooms on days when the library is inaccessible to students, I knew I wanted to make this donkey-drawn bookmobile to pay homage to the most literate members of the asinine species.

Total run time was probably just over 2 hours. The school counselor helped me laminate it so it should last for a while.

Feigned Glass Window III

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Whew! That’s a wrap on this project (more or less; I still have to add some latticework to cover the gaps but I’m glad to be done with the difficult part). Keen eyes will note some themes common to my work.

The whole thing took about 30 hours, a smidge under but will likely get to 30 with the latticework. My hand and my scissors are wrecked. I’m taking the scissors to be sharpened but my hand will just have to be endured.

We did the tech rehearsal last night and the whole thing looks even better with light streaming through the panels as intended.

Anyway, school starts next week so I have to go do my bulletin board now.

Feigned Glass Window II

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Whew! This second one took one about 5 or 6 hours, maybe half as long as the first one. Plus I didn’t have to wait for materials to be delivered. There should be enough of everything left to finish the third one in style (wish I had a *bit* more blue, but with care it should suffice).

This piece seemed to dictate itself. I had different ideas about how the color would play out, and for the geometric shapes as well, but then it sort of came together with way more yellow than I intended, with more complexity at the edges and less where I ended up using bigger pieces. But I think it looks great.

The person who commissioned it loves it so far, plus I got another commission today!

I can’t seem to figure out how to do captions on my phone; maybe I’ll edit it later. But the caption should read, “Google ‘lemniscate’ right now.”

It’s been a minute

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Yeah, I haven’t posted lately. All my equipment is messed up so I can’t do digital art until that’s sorted, the new BJC comic likely will NOT BE allowed out in public until 2025, and I have a new gig that pays money for my time.

I have started a new painting, and I have a potential new project that might materialize in 2024, and I have this fun activity—I’m helping transform this freestanding tent/pavilion thing into a church by creating faux stained glass windows with transparent plastic wrap and metallic washi tape.

It will be moderately NSFW.

How Do You Like to Go up in a Spring Bulletin Board?

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cut paper little girl swinging on a swing with Robert Louis Stevenson quote
I like it!

COVID knocked me down, but I am slowly getting up again. It took me a lot of weeks to make this bulletin board, because I got the long COVID and it slows me down. One week I cut out all the flowers, but it was a while before I got to the lettering, which took 2 days, and then the girl also took 2 days. And I still forgot to give her a second leg. In this picture I also forgot to glue her hair down. If it was, you would see that her hair beads are rainbow.I know I’ve done 2 Robert Louis Stevenson poems in a row, but they spoke to me.

Another Sonoran Switchplate

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I’m painting a lot lately, and I am working on a bigger canvas all week: it’s about 4 feet high and 18 inches wide. Making a lot of progress and wasn’t done painting for the day, but I needed to let that project rest/dry, so I did another switchplate. I’ve been wanting to do this design for a while. Honestly part of the problem was that I couldn’t find a screwdriver. However, I persevered.

It started out pretty good but then some of the paint pens exploded, and some of the pens weren’t flowing so all. I cleaned it up as best I could but some bits of it were better before. Paint pens are less versatile than actual paints. Still, it’s about what I wanted. I meant to put it by my front door, and put the zentangle that’s there now in my studio, but in fact they’re different plates. The one in the front has 3 switches.

Only 2 blank switchplates left in this house. Gonna have to start painting the walls soon.

A Cozy Pretend Fire

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I was asked to create a cardboard “fireplace” for an event that will involve children drinking hot chocolate before school. While it usually isn’t cool enough for daytime fires in Arizona, lately it kind of has been, but I guess you can’t have a real fire at an elementary school, so they still will have to sit around the pretend fire.

This piece took a little extra time because it had to fold flat, meaning that I couldn’t just wrap the whole thing up, but had to keep each panel separate. There’s one piece of tape on the back and the whole thing collapses if it’s removed. The fire itself comes out: the grate isn’t attached to anything, and the flames and the wood are stuck into grooves cut into the grate and can also be removed.

Currently, the cozy pretend fire is sitting in the front office next to an artificial Christmas tree. Maybe I should make a pretend Hanukkiah to go along with it. There probably aren’t that many Jewish kids at this school—guessing we have more indigenous kids than Jewish kids—but not everyone is cool with Christmas stuff. I never do overtly religious designs, although I’ve done culturally relevant adjacent imagery, like luminarias.

She Tortoise Well

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All’s shell that ends shell

My mom was recently admiring my fishy switch plate so I thought I’d make her something in a similar style for a birthday card, but I decided on a turtle, because she also likes those little folksy Mexican bobble head turtle things. I don’t know what they’re called.

The turtle’s body is cut from a single image of a hibiscus and the shell is an ad for fiber or something like that. I love how hexagons tesselate, even though these ones are imperfect.

I brought this card to the library, where my parents were presenting a science program about electricity for little kids on my mom’s birthday, because that is how my parents roll.

Spooky Season Bonus: The Monster Box of Monsters!

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He’s so cute I would give him all my candy 😍

I honestly cannot tell you what the Monster Box is all about. The front office staff just asked me to make this for the PTA. They wanted a large box that looked like a monster and you could put candy in the mouth. They did not explain anything beyond that. I gather someone saw a similar project on Pinterest or something. I will have to go to the Fall Festival to divine the true meaning of the Monster Box.

Getting the box was a bit of a chore, and then I had to rebuild it because it didn’t have a bottom, and the top was kind of weird. After I cut the mouth I realized that they wouldn’t have any good way to get the candy OUT of the box, so I cut another access panel in the back. Then I made it look like the monster was wearing novelty underpants.

If I had to do it again, I would do a lot of this differently. I’m not use to working in 3 dimensions or with cardboard.

This project took about 7 hours, and used 1 1/2 bottles of Elmer’s glue. There was also a lot of tape involved and a little of my special bookbinding plastic adhesive. I might go back and hit the horns with the hot glue gun just to be sure. They are the number one thing I would do differently if I did this again. I’m not sure they’re stable.