Made It: Loring Park Preview

Loring Park Art Festival is this weekend!  I've been working on new and bigger clocks and here's a preview:

6 x 30 Aluminum with rainbow drops

12 x 12 Red with White Orzo Burst

12 x 12 Two-faced Orzo Burst

12 x 24 Sanded Aluminum with Anatomical Heart

12 x 24 Aluminum and Red Ombre with "Shasta" design

12 x 36 Sanded Aluminum with Multi-layered dots

12 x 36 Aluminum with Red Ovals

12 x 36 Aluminum and Pinks Stacked with
Black Orzo Bursts

IF I don't sell these in the beautiful city of Minneapolis, I'll be sure to add them to Eighty Acres Art Etsy shop.  For the weekend I'm going to deactivate most of my listings except for the table top clocks (since those aren't sold in my booth).  

Residents of this lovely city, stop by my booth--->number 71, just like last year.  I'd love to see you!

Completely Random Things

I've been neglectful, so here's some random stuff!

Been listening to a lot of The Beatles lately.

This illustration is ridiculous.  Poor Ringo.

Experimenting more.

Salvaged wood, acrylic paint, fabric paper, vinyl, gel medium

5 x 7 matboard, used tea bag paper, paint, vinyl

Dreaming about a larger studio so I can more fully realize all my artistic endeavors.

This would be an adorable little backyard studio if it was
in my price range and my backyard was bigger...
Not a lot of room here in the heart of the city.

Prepping for the Loring Park show in lovely Minneapolis.

From last year's show in this amazing park next to the Walker Art Center.

Making lots of table top clocks.

I love making these.  I'm going to try to have a huge back stock for the holidays.

Eating a lot of ice cream, especially when I'm on the road.

Sweet glorious bowl of heaven from Des Moines's (Pleasant Hill to be more accurate) Over the Top.
Go there.  Go there now.

The Year in Review

I have to say, 2013 was a great year for me, both personally and professionally.  I started a new business with The Retro Ranch, visited new cities and states while selling at art fairs with Eighty Acres Art, made a couple new lines of work, and experimented a lot with new materials and techniques.  I now proudly make clocks, art, stickers, candles, vases, and cards and sell old and rusty junk from Kansas.

How 'bout some photos!

First up, The Retro Ranch:

My first Retro Ranch sale on Etsy.  Sold to an artist in Florida.

 Springtime pickin'.  I sold the long lattice just this week at River Market Antiques.

The backside of several sheds that hold treasures great and small,
 and constantly make me wonder about my ancestors.  This IS the "Ranch."

I also seemed to be featured in many publications, both paper and digital.  This has been a real honor for me, and quite a surprise, as I don't actively seek this kind of publicity out.  It's a right place/right time kind of thing.  Big thanks to KC Magazine, mash handmade, BizBaz blog, The Scoop KC, InkKC/Kansas City Star, and the Travel Kansas blog!

Indulgence section of KC Magazine, early 2013.

Travel Kansas blog



Some behind-the-scenes goodies:

Photo shoot in my bedroom of table top clocks...Ginger isn't a very good assistant, honestly.



Found sheet music + small desk clock = happy customers!



This is the glamorous set up I have for product shots outside.



New frameables with a Kansas flair and found linens reproduced on fabric.
Wood and horseshoe provided by The Retro Ranch.

 
On the road: 

On my way to Oklahoma at a Flint Hills rest stop.

That's me!  In my booth in OKC.  Thanks to Laura Nugent for the great photo.
We got every kind of weather in Oklahoma: snow, hail, sun, rain, wind...this day was pretty nice.

The Devon Tower was ominous the night of the big storm in OKC.

We got outta there early and are SO glad we did!  The white circle is where the show was, the red circle is where we were staying.  We avoided most of the hail and scary conditions.

My first trip to Iowa City was great and I loved the college town feel.
Not the biting flies, however.

Post-Iowa City trip to Des Moines.  On the road a person often drives through
some crazy weather, and I could see it all from behind the wheel.

A cool thing! At Loring Park in Minneapolis.  This was my first trip to Minnesota;
 it was beautiful and lived up to its great reputation.

A super fun thing about setting up my tent is the occasional
disrespectful critter (in this case, I think it was a pterodactyl) leaving
a huge surprise for me to deal with. 

This is literally one of the only things between Minneapolis and Des Moines on I-35.

I also liked the wind farm somewhere north of Des Moines.

Custom Orders:

I had so many custom orders this year, but one of my favorites now lives with
my niece in Texas.  This has her favorite things: her seahorse (named Happy),
pink, and a rainbow.

8 x 8 Giraffe clock with numbers

8 x 8 I Love You American Sign Language clock

8 x 8 Glittery purple Dachshund clock

And a very big part of my life is my cats.  Here's the full family:

Ginger (male): age 8ish; FIV+; great at spooning; originally a porch cat.

Gracie: age 10; looks like a coffee bean when she sleeps; loves boxes,;
came to the family as a kitten (Sean's side).

Elsie: age 7; followed us home on a walk in '07; disappeared for two months this fall and
was given back to us; very tiny and my best frenemy.

Clover: age 10; found in a barn in Kansas as a wee babe; blogging and studio assistant;
very good at jumping after cat toys like a goalie.

Zevon: 2003-2013; brilliant biscuit maker, sleeper-onner, purr factory;
 medical mystery, and missed horribly every single day.

I feel I've grown this year, and even if it might not look that way on paper, I know my business and artwork has, too.  Thanks to one and all! 

2014 is going to be great.

Made It: State Pride

Growing up in Kansas means you get the full gamut of state history from day one.  Kansas Day, January 29th, is a big deal--dressing up in prairie garb, making your own soap, taking a bite out of the upper right corner of a Graham cracker (the inventor is a native Kansan) and smearing honey (made by the Kansas state insect!) on the Kansas-shaped treat.  The older you get, the more you delve into the rich and sometimes bloody history of the Sunflower State.  John Brown! Bison! The Wizard of Oz! Brown v. Board of Education!

One of the most important things we learned was the state motto:
Ad Astra Per Aspera -- To the Stars Through Difficulty

As it turns out, only Kansans understand this, and it is quite perplexing to outsiders why we even care.  I'm not sure why it's so precious to us, but it is, SO LAY OFF.

 Vinyl on reproduced found fabric.

So...if Kansans love their state, Missourians probably do, too?  Well, most other states don't require intense state history in their public school curriculum, but natives still get the warms and the fuzzies when they see their state elevated to art!  (Not everyone's motto is as awesome as ours.)

Vinyl on reproduced apron fabric. 

 Often, I have sold these pieces as gifts for people who have relocated.  An artist friend told me once that everyone wants to be homesick, and there might be something to that.

Hey, there, Iowa!

Iowans don't just live in the state that has MIMAL's* nose, but they also love a good, super long party that involves biking across the whole damn state.  Ragbrai just ended in Iowa and the addition of cycling to state pride is not only a great thing to learn about, but it lends itself to some fun visuals as well.

I'm not hardcore enough to be an Iowa cyclist.

Tomorrow I travel to Minnesota for the first time ever (!), and I took the opportunity to make some Minn-centric frameables.  This uff da business will be fun to hear from a native, unless my northern friends have all lied to me and this is a big joke. 

Vinyl on reproduced found upholstery fabric.

Today is the first day for marriage equality in Minnesota, and I'm pretty happy about it.  (Shout out to Rhode Island, too!)  At first I didn't know if making some celebratory pieces was pandering, or if it would be appreciated.  Survey says: do it.  So I did it.

Hand cut vinyl scraps on a book page, 4 x 5 inches.
Minnesota in all its rainbow glory!

I love being able to learn about the new places I visit and pass on knowledge to my browsers about other states in their region (I've had to explain Ad Astra Per Aspera a dozen times at least).  I'm looking forward to hitting the road for The Star of the North (Minnesota) and learning even more!

Just incase you were wondering, see me at Booth 71 in Loring Park, across the from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Saturday and Sunday.

*MIMAL: Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Lousiana
Our social studies teacher gave us this trick for learning the states bordering the west side of the Mississippi River...he's the dude who helps us learn!