real quick

Alright, I'm exhausted. Being engaged totally wipes you out. I've only been engaged for 2 weeks and I'm tired of looking at wedding stuff. It is time to make stuff happen!!
So, I would really love to chat with you guys but I'm tired.
 I have a crazy schedule this semester plus planning a wedding.
So here is a little bit of what I have been doing.

1. Another pallet project for a client of Erin Galloway.

2. And this is a pair of TOMS that my little sister got for Christmas so I could paint on them :) 

Sorry this is kinda boring. I'm just tired. I've got a lot going on but in a little over a week I will have my first 3 assignments from studio to share!

This is about to get personal...

I realized that I've never really shared anything to personal on here and I don't really know if that is bad or good. This blog is really about sharing my art but I also think that in order for many people to understand my art and why I create what I create they need to know a little more about me as a person not just an artist.
So, first things first:

I'M ENGAGED!!!!

Yes, this is new. And I thought it would be good to start out with the bling to build the anticipation for the proposal story :)

So, it started out like this. It was my first full day back in Clemson after the holidays and Reed really wanted to go on a motorcycle ride to our favorite little trout stream near Walhalla SC. I love riding his bike and had really missed it recently so I wanted to go but was a little apprehensive because it was foggy, looked like rain, and it was the beginning of January! I agreed to go under one condition: if I got cold, wet or miserable in ANY way he had to take me out on a real date like dress up nice and all. He promised I wouldn't get cold and I made sure I bundled up and wore as much waterproof clothing as possible. Packing for these rides is never a lite ordeal, Reed packed two fishing rods and fishing gear while I packed up my dinosaur film camera with all the accessories.  We finally got going around 10:30 in the morning and got to the stream about 11. Reed and I started off walking up stream, him fishing and me photographing him. (I have some images but they aren't processed yet so I'll upload them when I get them). He eventually said, "are you just gonna take pictures of me all day or of the stream too?". Obviously, I responded by ignoring him and focusing on the beautiful scenery around me. When I looked up Reed was no where in site. When I called out to him he casually responded with "I'm over her, come look at this cool frog!". Again, not expecting anything because Reed always finds random wildlife to show me. As I walked over he pointed out where the frog was and I immediately saw this beautiful bronze frog with a diamond ring around its neck!

So naturally I turn around to see Reed down on one knee then I turn back to him and say "What are you DOING?!". Reed graciously responded with "Will you marry me?" which was fallowed by more blank stares and then finally a  soft "yes! Of course!" and lots of hugs and kisses.
(Reed captured the entire thing on video which is kind of embarrassing for me but he loves it.)

These are both images taken with my film camera so they aren't the best quality but I love that we have them!

My favorite quote from Reed "Can you believe I asked you to marry me in waders?"
- and to answer his question, yes I can believe it. :)

Now for the story about the frog. This past June Reed and I got to spend about a week and a half in Charleston on family vacation. One day we were walking around window shopping when we saw these amazing sculptures of frogs. Naturallly we stopped because it peeked both of our interests in different ways. Reed wanted to see more frogs while I was interested in the beautiful craft. We stayed and talked to the woman in the store for a good while finding all sorts of information about Frogman, we found out that he is a sculptor from England living in California and creates each individual frog. No frog is a like and they are major collectors items. Obviously, we left the store empty handed but have mentioned the frogs to many people. Little did I know that Reed has been scheming about how to give me one since then.
 I can't believe that I got a ring and a frogman sculpture in one day. Reed put an unbelievable amount of time in to everything to make that day, January 10th 2012 perfect. I still can't believe it is real, I'M GOING TO MARRY MY BEST FRIEND!!!

A Pallet Project

This is my biggest project from the holiday season. A family that goes to my church is having their living room redecorated by Erin Galloway Interiors and I was picked to provide a piece of art! They wanted a textured, rustic piece that depicted their two young daughters and lyrics from "You Are My Sunshine". 

I'll just give you guys an overview of how I did it :)

This was just some wood we had at the house so I got my brother, JB, to help by cutting the boards in to 40 inch pieces.  I then placed them the way I wanted and screwed them all together. 

I then sketched out and painted the two girls and lyrics. This was fun because I wanted to keep it wispy and rustic so I was able to use a quick dry brush effect.

I just delivered the pallet this evening and they LOVED IT! I was so excited because we honestly didn't do much talking about what they wanted which left lots of wiggle room. Wiggle room is great, but is also kind of nerve racking because it lets me create what I personally want but not necessarily what they want. Luckily I  nailed it and they already have it up in their house! 

I have been unbelievably blessed with friends and family who continuously support me in my art endeavors. Erin has taught me so much about how to price my work and she has gotten me numerous jobs that I would have never gotten with out her. It is so exciting to feel like I am really getting my work out there! I can't wait to get this going and possibly grow it in to a real business.  

I'm heading up to Clemson tomorrow! I can't wait to get back and start my classes on Wednesday!!! 

Savvy?

I don't really have anything "fun" to talk about today.
Buttttt I am pretty proud of myself. Today I began to concur one of my worst enemies. TECHNOLOGY.
I don't know what is wrong with me but I always have issues figuring out how to use the latest and greatest gadget. I know, it doesn't make since that I'm attempting to be a blogger when I don't enjoy working with technology. However, I have taught myself that Google is my friend and I can find help to get my blog to look exactly the way I want.

IT. JUST. TAKES. TIME.

I hope you've noticed I have made a few changes to the blog recently. I have started a Facebook page and linked it here so you guys can fallow me all the time!
I've also started an ETSY shop! It makes me so nervous and so I haven't really posted much in the store but I have also connected that for you guys down on the the right side of the blog. I'm thinking that once I get the store going I may give it a permanent home by creating a separate page. But we will see.

All this to say, I'm trying to upgrade for you guys! And if you have any advice I would LOVE IT :)


PS. Sorry there are no pictures, but I didn't think screen shots would be very interesting. Its boring but this weekend I'm finishing up a pallet project so there will be plenty of pictures later!

Closing out 2011

I was just going through the blog and realized I never finished posting about sculpture. Sculpture has been my favorite class and is going to be my concentration/focus in school. I shared with you in a previous post my first two projects back in October. I can't believe I forgot to update you on my final 2 projects so I'm just going to give a quick over view of them before I start the second level of sculpture in about a week.

As mentioned in the previous post the 3rd project was about water. Our only guidelines was that we had to use water in some form or fashion. This project I had a lot of fun with and honestly didn't come up with a deep concept like I usually do. I enjoy making art that has a meaning and a purpose and so I usually work starting with a concept and building an idea around that. However, for this piece I wanted to just have fun with it so I started brainstorming. Literally. Storming.
In Clemson it tends to flood when it rains, everything turns to mush and the only appropriate shoes are rain boots. At the time of this project we had a view rainy days then a good dry spell. I am someone that tries to ignore the rain. If its not a torrential down pour I'm usually ok with just my jacket not even necessarily my rain jacket. I hate umbrellas I try my hardest to avoid them.

All that to say, I made my 3rd sculpture rain.

The video isn't very good quality so I've also added a view stills that a good friend took during my critique.

I'm not going to go in to how I made it but you can tell a little bit of the mechanics from the picture above.
This project was a lot of fun. I walked around campus with it on an abnormally warm and sunny day and got some pretty fabulous looks from people. Sadly, because of the poor quality of the video (and my lack of technology skills) I couldn't share the video with you, but I'll keep working on it. Lets just say I got lots of "I'm so confused" and double takes while walking.  (Another plus to this project was that my professor told me this was one of the best beginning sculptures he had ever seen!! I knew I was meant to be a sculptron!)

Our final project for the class was a very long process. We focused more on the process than on our concepts which was something very new for me. This last project was about architecture, we could take any thing to do with architecture and then cast it in bronze. I thought it would be cool to take textures from architecture and put it in a place that it isn't normally in.
I chose the texture of asphalt. And for the first part of the project we used wax to create a positive of our object. Obviously, asphalt is flat and wouldn't have made a terribly interesting casting so I poured hot wax on specific pieces of asphalt and then peeled it up and formed them in to different size balls. This process took the texture of the asphalt and gave me the negative. We then made containers to place our wax positives in and covered them with plaster. Once they were vented and covered we then burnt out the wax in a kiln so that we would then have the negative impression of our object. (In my case I had the positive texture of the asphalt).
After the kiln cooled we could start making our bronze! Yes, MAKING BRONZE!

We each purchased enough copper for our individual projects and then were assigned to different jobs on the day we were forging the bronze. We heated up the copper added a view pieces of a different metal and then were able to pour the molten bronze in to each plaster mold.

It is a tradition to have a "Disco" party on the day we start off the forgery so I wanted to share some of our festive decorations with you guys :) We also had great dance music blasting the entire day! I'm sure the architecture students didn't like us by that point.

My final product isn't nearly as exciting as the process making it was. I set up my copper asphalt in a place that people would be able to interact with them. I wanted them to feel, see, and play with the objects.

I pressed out some wet clay so that as you rolled the ball around it would leave an impression. This is what it looked like after my critique was over.

Alright, this wasn't much of a "quick over view" but I just love sculpture so much I didn't want to sell it short. 

In just under a week I get to start making sculpture AGAIN!! 

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!

I know I haven't done as many posts as promised but I have a good reason. This holiday season wasn't too terribly hectic so I was focusing on having good time at home. What I qualify as good time is quality time with the people I love, it doesn't have to be full of exciting parties or really anything at all it's just uninterrupted time. I got back to Columbia the third week of December and got to spend a lot of time with my family. My original goal was to finally catch back up on my blogging and to even do some revisions for you guys; however, I was enjoying my good time with the fam.

So, I'm just gonna give a quick over view of all of my projects from the holiday season.

The Holidays are great because I get lots of fun projects! This project was for a friend from Clemson who is engaged to a pretty big Gamecock fan.

I also got to do another pair of TOMS for a friend while I was home over break. I really enjoyed this pair because she gave me free rein and just gave me a few things that she thought could inspire me. Her only requirement was that she wanted 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 ("Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus").

Even though I love the free time over the holidays to do projects on my own schedule, I do think that my friends and family get a little tired of my gifts... This year I did better and didn't give EVERYONE a homemade gift. But Reed will get one every year...

This year I knew that he really wanted a large cooler. He talked non-stop about his buddy Cody's cooler that he could fit all of his deer meat in when taking it to the processor. So I decided to make a Reed a meat locker for Christmas. I was attempting to make the top of it look like the cooler was open and full of meat ready to be grilled. Sadly, I think the cup holders messed up the illusion. This was a new techinque that I had never tried before, I think it was pretty successfull for a first try.

-Funny story- I got the pictures printed at Wal-mart and when I went to pick them up the lady asked what my pictures where of so she could find them quicker. I tried to avoid saying raw meat so I just told her the size and number of prints I was picking up. Sadly, this did not suffice and she asked for the content. Once I said raw meat she didn't talk to me again. I guess it would be kind of creepy for some random person to print 16 pictures of raw meat...

Now I'm back at school and ready to start the Spring semester. I can't wait to get back in the studio I'm taking nothing but studio classes which is WAYYYY exciting! Be looking out for new sculptures, photographs, and prints from printmaking!! All of these classes are going to be very tedious and time consuming but I can't wait to get my hands dirty again! 

-Also, I have made a Facebook page for the blog and am working on an Etsy store, if you have any advice pleeeeeaaassssseeee share. I am most definitely not tech. savvy.