gallery opening success!

better late than never: to everyone who came out to the gallery opening last week, mega thank you from the top of my heart for coming out and supporting my graduating class!

this was technically my first gallery showing and although at first it didn't quite feel like a real gallery opening, when i got to the gallery and saw how packed it was with all sorts of faces i didn't know it finally hit me: this is a gallery show.
i'm glad that everything came together in the end to make a fantastic night and could not thank the lovely true hearts that have supported the last three years of my life in this pretty great and exciting new career path.

everyone's pieces looked wonderful and some of us even had some pieces sold by the end of the night. I couldn't put my quilt for sale just yet, i have to hang onto it partly 'cause it'll be in a show later in the summer with some of my ladyfaces and also 'cause of how tight that heart string is tied to it. i'll learn to sell off some other pieces i've made but this one will be mine for a few years at most. working on it for almost three months was kind of struggle but in the end i'm proud to call that piece mine. i folded it up in so many different ways to work on it that i never actually knew the size of it until i walked to the back of the gallery and saw that it had its own wall...woops?
maybe i should probably also learn how to not put SO much heart into the art pieces i make so i can let them go a little easier.

sunday was the take down of the show, which only took about two hours with the help of about 10 hands. it was kind of fun to help out in that, seeing a few friends and helping them out with their pieces. it made me think i may volunteer with gallery take downs in the future perhaps with the OCC.
check out my flickr to see more shots of the wonderful pieces that were shown.

His Twinkling Perch

about a week before our grad show opening, i officially completed my ultimate tribute to my Spaceboy!

for our critique day, we had to some how install our final pieces the way we would have liked to see it shown in the gallery. the mere size of this quilt had me display it on the tables instead of taking up an entire wall in the studio which was good for both the other ladyfaces to hang up their pieces and to make my quilt look completed. when i had no luck to lay out the backing and batting to sew it all together before the crit day, i almost cried and continually asked myself what had me make this quilt a queen size!

now that it's completely basted with lots of new stars, suggested by the class, i can't complain for the size. the fact that outer space is so vast kind of plays well with the black space of my quilt. i guess in this case, my brain knew what it was doing...though i hope it'll tell me why next time i'm near tears out of frustration.

at the beginning of the semester i wanted to make an entire collection of accessories in the theme of spaceboy but was pushed to concentrate on just this quilt. one of my ideas was to make a set of scarves originally with a running wolf pack kind of design and have random lines from spaceboy letters. it's still something i'd like to do but i guess i'll have to leave that for later. with everything coming to an end basically by next week, i went ahead and made scarves anyhow and squeezed in a few natural dying sessions in the studio. i bought some tight weave cotton gauze from the studio and used pomegranate with iron mordant and lac with alum mordant.

the pink was a little too pink for me so i dipped it literally for a second in the pomegranate bath and it gave me this way yummy smokey rose color.

a moon just for me

so today i realized that i hadn't posted a blog is nearly a month...or maybe it has been a month but regardless, it's been far too long. tisk tisk on my part 'cause a number of really awesome little things has happened since then.

i mentioned in the last real post of how my brains decided to make my very first quilt based on my love letters to an imaginary boy who lives on the moon. i wanted to cram in a little collection of clutches, scarves and maybe some brooches to go with the Spaceboy theme but after my first critique with my very knowledgeable teachers, all that over the moon crafty nuttiness (see what i did there?) was more or less thrown out the window for me to fully concentrate on making this pretty neat quilt.

last week was my break week and it was filled with finishing up with the embroidering portion i had for the moon and finally finally sewing it all together, something that felt like would never have happened.
I've been thinking a lot of how people will be seeing my work at the grad show in toronto and wanted to show my strengths, one being my mega heart on for needlework, texture and a dash of sappy sentiment.
i think this quilt touches on all of those including my love of natural materials, using all cotton materials and natural dying. i had to (sadly) use a pinch of pigment to darken the final two shades of gray as well as the silk screening of the letters but over all i'm happy to have kept the materials sweet and natural.

i've mentioned before i've never quilted anything before this so i wanted to give myself the easy little shortcuts to make this moon madness of mine work and work well for the deadline. after enlarging a photoshopped design of the moon, i traced that enlargement onto tissue paper and literally sewed that pattern onto the layered fabrics. it was kind of tricky at first to sew it all down but when i got the hang of it i was rolling through it no problem. also it helped that my little ed gein machine is such a trooper, the little guy can tackle just about anything i put it through...have i ever mentioned that i love this little machine?

the rustic owl buzz

thought i'd share with you guys this lovely little article on the Rustic Owl cafe where i had (until recently) my embroidery piece hugging the wall.

before picking it up yesterday, i was told it was moved to behind the bar for everyone to see and it was commented on quite a bit, yay! it can be seen in the background in some of the pictures of the article, also yay!

they're always looking for new artist to showcase so if you make eye candy for walls, get in touch with her through the tumblr. it's great to hear that things are coming around for the place and i wish all the luck to stacey!
now go read the article already, yeesh!

internally yours,
sister valentine

boy on the moon

 since 2001, i've been writing love letters to an imaginary boy who lives on the moon. we meet in dream, we have little adventures on his moonlit perch where we turn into wolves, lay still like piano keys and become royalty. it's all quite saptastic really.

last year when i heard we  call all the shots in our final semester, my Spaceboy came back to spook me all over again. I have a number of sketchbooks filled with all these letters and one day hope to publish a small collection of them, but i'm glad to have my graduating collection in the theme of our mega old and twinkling love.
i've mentioned before in other posts that i'm kind of a nut when it comes to making and crafting but i think i may have topped myself off this year with my first piece of the collection being a quilt. yep, that's right.
i've never in my maker life have made a quilt but like the story of my life, i didn't want to use traditional patterns. i wanted to make up a picture with pieces of fabric like you'd see in paint-by-number kits, after running into the fantastic space quilts of Jimmy McBride, i knew exactly what my own quilt would be like.

along with the Spaceboy theme, i knew i wanted to use more natural based materials and processes. at first i wanted to use reclaimed materials from old shirts to make  up the picture of the moon but thought that could take much more time than i really had. i scored a wicked discount on a medium weight cotton from Fabric By Designers on queen street and began my hunt for grays in the natural dye world.

 

pomegranate is maybe my new favorite. an iron mordant will "sadden" dye stuffs and give great dark and deep shades, with pomegranate it gives this wonderful gray color which was perfection for my Spaceboy's moon. after pot dying all the cotton, i wrote out selected letters (written between 2003 and 2005) and silk screened them onto the fabric. i've always loved the look of handwriting on fabric but to see my own and the subject being so dear to my old bum ticker, i just had to print on a cotton blend i found in the scrap bin for a new scarf...'cause i don't have a gazillion scarves or anything.

SASS show afterness

these last few days have been pretty packed with a whole lot of awesome.
last saturday i was part of an opening for a new cafe gallery in toronto called the Rustic Owl on bloor st. just west of dovercourt.

i was pretty excited to have one of my favorite piece i made in my second year to be a part of over 10 local and mega talented artists, also majority from Sheridan which is twice the neat!
when i went to drop off my piece, the place had just the bar assembled and nothing much more than a table and a real fancy looking couch. i don't quite remember what the back room/gallery space looked like then but the place looked great for the opening, surprising what some good working friends can pull off in two short weeks.

they hung christmas lights and white material from the ceiling which gave this cozy feel to the gallery space, the pieces on the wall were all in their own way a lot of amazing.
a few pieces really stood out for me like Steven Glanville's simple black and white print of a spooky kind of world that reminded me of Kirsten Lepore's "song of north america"
i was kind of happily surprised to see that my piece was just about the only one that wasn't 2D and kind of maybe smiled pretty hard when i'd glance over to see someone taking a good hard look at it.
there was an option to sell the pieces but i want to hang onto this piece till at least after i graduate, i think it'd make my simple heart happy to give it a bit of a circulation in the arts field.

if you didn't get a chance to come out last weekend, absolutely don't worry your heads 'cause my piece along with the others will be up till the end of january for your eyes to eat 'em up over a good drink.

school started this week and it feels awesome to get back to it. i may have a few things more i would've liked to get done over the break but there is nothing like feeling that panicky goodness from having too many ideas to make in a certain (and sometimes dauntingly short) period of time.
i'll try and post soon enough with more info on what i'll be working on but for now just know that i already have the next four weeks or so of my life snatched away from me because of school, and i'm ok with it. don't forget to peek on my twitter to see what i've been up to until then!

internally yours,
sister valentine

blushing treasury

these upcycled jersey bracelets never give up!

internally yours,

sister valentine

artsy surprise

i have some pretty awesome news and i'm nice enough to share it with all you true hearts:
this saturday, i'll be part of a pretty wonderful collection of art on the walls of The Rustic Owl, a new gallery and cafe in Toronto!

i'm pretty happy to have my first art piece displayed amongst some of these mega talented local artists and in a pretty exciting neighborhood of le city.

i had complete choice of which piece to hand in for this event and decided to go with my embroidery piece i did last year for my material investigations class, based on a book (i have yet to finish) written by the kind of a hippie for his time Robert Louis Stevenson. pop over to the Rustic Owl tumblr and you'll get more info about this piece.
so if you have nothing to do this weekend, come on out for a drink and free eye candy! there'll even be some prints to buy to support the awesome skills of some of these artists.
on a side note, how amazing is that poster! *insert heart flutter here*

internally yours,
sister valentine

upcycled treasury

these little upcycled jersey bracelets just won't let up and i'm ok with that.

internally yours,
sister valentine

there were wolves

first off i should apologize for the lack of posting. i'm about to go into my final week of holiday breaktimes and only now am i updating this funny little blog, horrible aren't i...

the last couple of days of the semester were a whirlwind of buzyness and making plus writing a 3000 word paper on the DIY culture of today. getting everything done seemed impossible somedays but i'm glad to say i may have totally conquered the semester! 

i am pretty happy with my own pack of wolves i made for the dye and print class (yet to be titled). the textures of their coats were made with both machine and hand embroidery with different types of yarns. i wanted to make one wolf be on it's back with it's paws up in a submissive posture but that meant i'd have to tweak the pattern and do a few samples which i completely didn't have time for. in the end i made five wolves, all with wire armatures so they can be somewhat in different positions. because their faces didn't have much detailing, i tried to show emotions through their tails for my critique day. i also made a few small grounds of tree branches wrapped in gauze to sort of copy the fotoshoot i did with them in the near by forest. i've been thinking of maybe playing around with the pattern more after school is out and try and make a larger pack and to stylizing the wolf shape a little more; make the body longer, legs skinnier and the wolf in general, a little larger. oh did i ever tell you that i'm kind of bonkers? no? oh ok.

it was different to have only two major projects in my main course  but with all the time spent on the moons and wolves, i'm glad for the time we got for each.

for my material investigations class we had to make a self directed project that involved two processes we worked with in class. i decided to go with paper making and felting, possibly the two favourite materials that have entered my crafting life. 

i made a diorama picture which i haven't done in about 7 years and after playing with branches wrapped in handmade paper, i went for a forest scene. one of required samples for the paper portion of the class was using chicken wire with handmade paper. i ended up making a deer head and wanted to make a little felted deer for the forest scene. when it came time to drawing up a picture for the proposal, my brains were so taken over  by wolves that the deer kept morphing into one. i finally gave into my brains and decided to felt a mini two inch wolf. i totally wanted to dunk in my tea and eat it, it's that adorable.