Frogtown Art Walk 2013

Next month, on September 28th, from 4-10pm, I will be showing new paintings, etchings and mono prints at TAS Gallery (Tracy A. Stone Architects) in Frogtown.  For the past year, between baby's bedtime and my bedtime, I've been working on a series of rooftop landscapes.


This is a hand-pressed etching from an aluminum can plate.

Shell Towers
2013
tall boy etching

Domestic Arts- Mei Tai

There is fine art, and then there are domestic arts.  This is about sewing an apparatus that allows one to wear a heavy baby or toddler on their back.  

Question:  How do you sew the most comfortable Mei Tai carrier for a larger/older baby?

Answer:

Body Shape: Plain ol' Square.  The simplest is the best.

Shoulder straps: 

Pleated wrap conversion straps are best for fanning out and adjusting the weight load.  Angled.  One contributor cuts a 20" wide strap, folds it in half, and pleats a little.  I cut 17" straps, and pleated without folding the material in half first.  This is more comfortable than my 5" padded straps on a previous model.

Waist staps: 

"My baby is 30 lbs and the padded waists do nothing for us really anymore because her weight pushes them out so I don't like wearing non apron style. So I do Unpadded and do a tall body so I can wear apron style."  

"I tried a padded waist, just because. It seems less diggy into my fat though (I'm a little fluffy)"

3rd Layer of Canvas or Twill:  

Use a 3rd layer for safety.  That being said, some of us who were confident that our cotton/linen tablecloths were heavy bottom-weight material, decided to skip the 3rd layer at our own risk because we live in sweltering climates.

The links:  

Best link for the answers given:  http://wrapmeitai.blogspot.com/

Good for Pleat visuals: http://www.sleepingbaby.net/jan/Baby/FrankenKozy.htm

Also a good link for a toddler MT: http://youre-sew-crafty.blogspot.com/2012/12/table-cloth-mei-tai-tcmt.html

http://scanditute.blogspot.com/?m=1

http://www.sleepingbaby.net/jan/Baby/bbo.html

My Blueprint using one 60" x 84" tablecloth.

                                    

 

    

I decided on a 16" x 21"  finished body... I recommend going wider and longer.  The width does not go knee to knee.  Maybe the best thing to do is to measure the kid from knee to knee.  

 Pleated straps pinned to the inside of the body before sewing X boxes (3x).

Frogtown Art Walk 2012

A year ago I wrote a blog about the Frogtown Art Walk, my favorite area art walk.  (http://dianakohne.blogspot.com/2011/09/frog-town-art-walk-is-my-favorite.html)

This year, Tracy A. Stone Architects has invited me to be a participating artist in the Frogtown Art Walk.  I will be showing paintings and hand-pressed etchings.  I will be there, with my one month old.

Frogtown Artwalk on Saturday, September 22nd, from 4pm-9pm.  Frogtown houses serious artist studios, and is a great, walkable fine art experience.  More information can be found here: http://www.frogtownarts.com

Keystone Art Space on the Echo Park Art Walk

Keystone Art Space opened its doors for the Echo Park Art Walk.  Artists welcomed the public into their studios and put together a pop up gallery of their work as well as work by other area artists.

Pop up gallery in the foundry

Video projection by Melanie Mandl

Mixed media by Karen Kang

Luc Bernard painting Zone 7 & studio

Matt Jones Shape of Something Moving

Jesse Vogel

Dean Styers work and studio

Matt Jones proposal for the Santa Monica Pier found outside Santa Monica City Council Meeting

My painting, Centrifugal Blowers, and the cel phone tower outside, which I might paint.

Tracing Lines at Ohio State University Urban Arts Space (Infrastructure Exhibition)

The next show is in Ohio.  The show has united a group of artists with an interest in (or obsession about) infrastructure.  Click the image for a better look at the beautiful images on the card, or stop by the OSU Urban Arts Space before March 24th.

The gallery reception is January 28th from 6-9pm.  Before the reception, I will be teaching 2 workshops on printmaking without a press.  I will be teaching students how my etchings in the exhibit are made.

If you can't make it to Ohio, take a virtual tour of the exhibition here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/104348319445840075376/albums/5695520146029023809

New Monoprint Process for Anaheim Show

For the upcoming show at the Promenade Gallery in Downtown Anaheim,  I've been working non-stop developing a new approach to printmaking.  I've finally settled on mono-printing over ink drawing onto wood. I paint the image in reverse onto clear plastic and press it onto the wood using my palm press.

I am using this process to create a series about the streetlighting yard in East Hollywood.  This piece was printed on wood that has a tire track on it.  I like it because it references the street and printmaking.    

detail:

Streetlamp Yard 1.  Same technique on paper:

Non Traditional el Dia de los Muertos show in Dallas

My most recent painting, Motor de la Ciudad Muerta is on display at Mountain View College in Dallas.  Stop by.  This is going to be a great show.  Leticia Gomez and Serg Saenz are a couple of my favorite Texas artists.  

This is a non-traditional Dia de los Muertos show.  Artists were encouraged to maintain their personal styles and themes.  I stayed with my machine theme, and painted my first dead machine.  This is my first machine painting to depict a machine that is no longer in use.  It is called Motor de la Ciudad Muerta, which means engine of the ghost town.  The painting depicts a portable engine from the mid to late 1800s.  

Dead Machine

I am preparing for a Dia de los Muertos show in Dallas.  The curators have encouraged artists to maintain their aesthetic approach and create something non traditional.

I've decided to portray a dead machine.  I began to seek out machines no longer in use; machines used only by people who are now dead.  It's difficult to find them.

The nice thing about loving machinery is that people send me pictures when they find a machine they like. On facebook, I am tagged in a photo of a backflow prevention device.  A few months ago, Gabriela Knutson sent me a portable engine in a ghost town she was passing through.

This is what it looked like while still in use:

Frog Town Art Walk is my favorite

Frogtown Art Walk doesn't look like much from the outside, but that's not what counts.  Now in its 6th year, this Elysian Valley walk manages to keep it's focus on the art, and attract a crowd that cares about it, too.  

This art walk is great because visitors really get to see artist studios, and experience more (good) art per block than most L.A. Art walks provide.   So far, it hasn't become a giant red cup party.  Hopefully, the good art continues to grow, and remain the backbone of the experience.  Next year?  The music needs to be a little softer, and signage a little brighter. 

I like industrial means I like Lewis Mauk's past 5 toothbrushes.

Alisa Yang and her coloring book collage about Batman on a night off at Tracy A. Stone Architect.

Mary-Austin Klein's hip studio space and great landscape paintings that anyone from the area will love.  Photorealistic, yet painterly.  Excellent price points and lots of red dots.

Bill Lagattuta's impressive arrows

NOMAD's musical animal screen prints.  A Rhinoccordian?

other works.

Paper lamps above the children's hula hoop contest.

Processes

Compositions and shapes that I like.

Color combinations.

Painting.

                                                

Frame making.

Practice.

Sunday in Pasadena: Norton Simon & Lucky Baldwin's

Today, we visited the Norton Simon Museum.  The selection of Degas paintings and pastels mixed with a few Lautrecs were my favorites.  I had not thought of Degas as an exciting painter.  His use of color was at least as interesting as Lautrec's.  Both artists had a similar technique of combining rough and fast brush/pastel intermingled with well placed smooth and blended sections.  The color and the brushstrokes cannot be experienced as well in the pictures below, but they're still nice.

Edgar Degas Woman at her Toilette 1876

At the Circus Fernando, Rider on a White Horse 1888 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 

Dancers in the Wings 1880 Edgar Degas

After the Norton Simon, we went to Lucky Baldwin's bar and I drew some people with my blue glitter gel pen.