polyhedrons

So I am back in Toronto, and finally making things again.

This is a thing I made today. Plenty more in this series to come...

(copper etching with chine-collé)

'don't touch my chicken stone'

'don't touch my chicken stone'
a recent sketchbook page with pen and oil pastel, giving my gemstone legs

model chairs

I'm carrying my little point and shoot digital canon camera everywhere with me here in Paris, not necessarily to get touristy shots, I carry it in Toronto just as much, but this is my way of journaling. Instead of writing everything down I just go snap happy and keep a kind of visual record of the things around me. 

Here are some amusing things from the other day, the first being a window filled with models wearing garbage bags - too timely since I had just been in a couple churches that up until easter, cover any Jesus statuettes with a purple cloth - they look eerily similar to these mannequins. 

The second photo is taken from the roof of the Grande Mosquée de Paris, it's a beautiful mosque filled with wonderful gardens and mosaic tile work. I don't know if it's the season or if they generally don't tend this one area of this rooftop garden, but I enjoyed the contrast of the industrial view in the middle of such a lovely oasis...

laser hands and head waves

This is what I make when I try to trick my brain into thinking I'm in a creative mood. I'm not. 

But it does help a little. Also it's not done.

As per usual here, my collection of collage material is fairly sparse, so for this one I resorted to a picture from the right wing newspaper that's given out for free at my school. It's an art school, and they give out the religious and the right wing newspapers. Backwards?

My studio has a serious lack in terms of any kind of table/surface to work on, so this is my set-up: 

a muskoka chair for me, a school chair for my pens, a stool for my laptop and a typically green 

parisian portfolio as a lap-desk. Seems to work juuuust fine.

Postcards from Paris

Some more postcards from the early 1900's that I altered and sent home to Toronto, these two feature the Gare St. Lazare and la Grande Roue set up in the 15th arrondissment. 

house blocks

These are some house woodcuts I used to do a varied edition of prints last year, I ended up liking them much more as individual objects than as woodblocks. Also I didn't think things through and they were incredibly hard to print as they have edges that tear through paper in a press, and none of them are the same height....

Siamese Twins

"Well!" He cried. "I can't tell which is Jack and which is Joe!"

Earlier this year before I left for Paris I made this little shadow box piece for my dearest friend and detached siamese twin Niomi. The twin image and two lines of text float on some foam-core, the rest is collaged with old graph paper, dictionary clippings and other odd scraps. The siamese twins are inflicted with bacocortical hyper brain content syndrome (details of which can be seen in an older blog post). 

Siamese Twins (detail)
Mixed Media, 2011