andy and i got married

In a pretty magical whirlwind, Andrew Joseph Menchal and I were married at my parent's house on August 6, 2011 in Portage, Wisconsin.  There were 180 people, 5 kegs of beer, 2 cases of champagne, 6 cases of liquor, 12 bottles of homemade syrup, seven cakes made by a lady in town (6 vegan cupcakes), a few flower bouquets from the local farmers market, a 120 year old barn and a pig.  There was a love chant that would not yield, my mom who pretty much made everything look like it fell out of a hollywood movie (take that martha), my dad who started a leg wrestling competition at midnight (thanks dad!) and I am pretty sure most guests were hoarse the next morning because we all laughed too long and too hard that night.  Everyone danced til my mom threw the breaker in the barn at about 2:30-- but since then the rumors of what happened in the field after the dance floor closed are slowly surfacing.  It was extremely fun.  Thank you everyone. 

Evan Ross Murphy on Printshop Forever

I am in love with this. 

Home Again.

I became a homeowner the same week I became a mother.  The biggest change, of course was the addition of my son, Abraham, to our little family.  The more subtle change that has occurred over time and compounded over and over is my insatiable love of nesting.  Where I live has changed from the place I crash between work and play and become a little haven where every detail big and small is a work in progress.  But every finished project is more satisfying than the last.  An old friend of mine, Ghazal Sheei, recently started blogging about homes through Home Again and here is the post she lovingly put together about ours. 

Abe turns 2

There comes a time in every man's life when he needs a teepee.  Abe's time came early.  I made him this one for his 2nd birthday and it's been up in our living room since.  It's been getting some use.  Right now he is watching videos on my phone of his dad-- I probably shouldn't have said that.  I bet it's top secret.

Stacey Rozich

{Goat Man and a Warning of Doom by Stacey Rozich}

{image courtesy of the artist and Sky High Gallery}

I am a huge fan o Seattle-based artist Stacey Rozich, whose work is currently showing in Milwaukee at the Union Art Gallery as a part of the show Cautionary Tales & a solo show at Sky High Gallery.  I was able to catch up with her a bit ago to interview her on her art and Milwaukee and the two shows.  Her art is a treat to be seen, I highly recommend getting out to look ::: the shows will not be up for much longer.  Make haste!  Here she sheds a little light on the mystery and obscure nature of her work.  She offers a few hints, but no spoiler alert needed.  Read and enjoy.

Question:  Of course your work has obvious themes of ritual, performance and costume – can you discuss your fascination with this and its continued reoccurrence?

Stacey Rozich:  I’m fascinated with how many cultures from around the world have the common thread of those three elements.  I will be looking at books of Bulgarian Kukeri festival monsters and then switch over to the brightly-colored textile suits of Ghana or Burkina Faso and see that both cultures have a deep history of personifying stories in costumes and ritual.  I’m also a big sucker for patterning and texture along with storytelling, so it was a natural progression for me to fuse these elements into something I’m proud of and put a lot of passion into.

Q:  Can you talk about your use of symbolism and the reoccurrence of birds, snakes, masks, tools, etc.

SR:  The symbolism is a byproduct of my research into the folklore of different cultures.  While I talk of the commonality of ritual and traditions from different indigenous groups, there are always minute details that set them apart so greatly.  A lot of Southwest Native American art has symbols that convey nature and animals in geometric shapes and lines that are so wonderful but also carry a deeper mysterious quality that you feel is larger than you. 

Q:  I read in an interview you gave to My Love for You that you are not of Native American decent, although growing up in the Pacific Northwest you were exposed to a lot of art form the native cultures there.  Can you talk a little about borrowing from other cultures and your fascination with it?  What cultures are you influenced by to produce the body of work now showing in Milwaukee?

SR:  It can be a touchy subject to borrow deep-rooted imagery from different cultures, but I always make sure to never out-right copy anything, to always re-imagine it through the lense of my current style.  I’m greatly influenced by Eastern European folklore, West African tribal costumes and Native American color palettes.  It’s a wide gamut that concocts a deep and sometimes bizarre narrative that I only see growing.

Q:  Costumes are an obscenely vast field – How much research goes into the planning of each piece or does most of it come from your head?

SR:  I keep my tabs on certain images that pique my curiosity, file them away for future reference and bring them out to take cues from when I’m ready to commit to a certain figure.  Although sometimes I can see common themes developing in patterns I use, which I try to shake myself out of if it becomes a nuisance. 

Q:  There is a lot of impending violence and a somewhat creepy quality that comes with masked faces and shadowed eyes.  Is this intentional or a byproduct of working with masks and ceremonial garb?  Because it is so repetitious in your work, can you talk about the feeling you are trying to evoke?

SR:  I think working with bright colors and benign-looking animal masks compel me to explore the deeper, darker side of my spirits.  There are two sides to every story and I see this in my work.  I want to evoke mystery in these figures – perhaps it’s not always friendly animal faces that are looking at you, rather a bringer of bad omens. 

Q: The use of proportion is especially jarring because a lot of your figures look like either children in costume or small demons – obviously the scenes evoke a sort of fantasy land, but can you discuss your choice to play with scale as well as the fantasy they are acting out?

SR:  The scale of my figures is something I’m very conscious of portraying.  You are right – the smaller figures are often the demon, the bogie, the creature that causes mischief to the humans they cohabitate with.

Q:  Can you talk a little about your color pallet?

SR:  It’s ever changing to this day, but I consistently use deep red and black.  There is something about those two colors that read so deeply to me.  They show depth and darkness, confidence and strength.  I do take a lot of inspiration from fashion collections, most notably Spring 2011 Jonathan Saunders that featured vivid orange, white, beige, bright minty-green and deep aqua.  I like to keep my textiles fresh with research into current fashion lines that I feel hold a timelessness and can translate into folklore. 

Q:  Your work has definitely caught the eye of the creative community in Milwaukee – I have noticed a lot of your pieces have sold, not to mention the great coverage in local press.  Can you discuss what advantages & disadvantages you have in smaller art markets like Milwaukee?

SR:  I was surprised and ecstatic my pieces have sold so well in a city I had no real experience with.  It’s always a gamble when I ship work out to a new city.  There is always the question if it will be successful as it is in the Northwest or the West Coast.  One of the best things about showing in a place like Milwaukee is that it’s a small art community, but it seems close knit and supportive and thing spread by word-of-mouth, which is an obvious advantage for lesser-known artists like myself.  One of the disadvantages is that while its size is good for me to get my feet wet, it doesn’t lend the most exposure.  But, in this case it isn’t much of a concern because the feedback from Milwaukeeans has been wonderful that it has only strengthened my work ethic. 

Q:  Can you talk about the internet and the advantages you have as an artist today?

SR:  Oh boy, where would I be without the Internet?  I gave a talk to a couple of art classes at Seattle Pacific University and I made sure to stress the importance of marketing yourself as an artist, illustrator or designer via the internet because it’s been very good to me and many artists I know.  It is such an amazing, uncontrollable beast.  If you have a platform to expose your work to the masses like a blog or website or Flickr, then it is bound to reach someone, somewhere in the world.  Maybe its one person who enjoys a post so they’ll repost it and before you know it’s showing up on a massive creative forum like FFFFFound.com or ButDoesItFloat.com, which a lot of creative directors and curators check.  It’s the blind snowball effect that you really don’t know about until you find your work floating around some 6 months after you put it up.  It’s a strange and gratifying feeling, one that I couldn’t imagine having if I was trying to do the same thing 10 years ago.  I would have to hustle a lot more to get my work seen: sending out physical mailers, going to meet-and-greets, being as social as possible to make sure my work is known.  Not to say I’m a complete hermit now; on the contrary I am a very social person, but I do enjoy relative anonymity with the success of my work on the Internet.  It leaves more time for eating party subs in bed while watching 30 rock.

Q:  I hear you just quit your day job – congratulations!  Are you stoked, nervous, confident?

SR:  It’s been about two and a half months and I haven’t even thought about that job once.  Well, maybe a couple of times to think back on all of the crazy demands I put up with as a restaurant server.  It’s been wonderful, working for myself.  I’m forced to be better with my money because I don’t have a guaranteed paycheck coming every two weeks.  I am confident, but sometimes I am stricken with suffocating anxiety about my future, but it’s tempered by self-discipline and the ability to quiet my negative thoughts.  I think I learned that from taking my fears to my parents and my father always calming me down by saying, “You know it will work out, it always does.  This too shall pass.”  And it always does!  Thanks, pops.

Read the review I wrote on Printshop Forever.  Click!

Wait, what?

Two of my favorite things that are often mentioned together, but rarely discussed in terms of scholarly research--Feminism and Embroidery--  I cannot believe I do not own this yet.  Originally published in 1989, The Subversive Stitch was just updated and re-issued by I.B. Tauris publishing:  Rozsika Parker's now classic  re-evaluation of the reciprocal relationship between women and  embroidery has brought stitchery out from the private world of female domesticity into the fine arts, created a major breakthrough in art history and criticism, and fostered the emergence of today's dynamic and expanding crafts movements.

This is at the tippy top of my very short Christmas wish list.  Hey Andy!  Do you read my blog??

I found this book by reading this book----  

Which I highly recommend as well. 

HoverCraft up-to-date

The Bay View Brew Haus has been secured.

Bands have been booked.

Craft Vendors have been accepted.

Food Vendors have been found.

We will have a fortune teller, a laugh collector, pictures with Santa, a killer make and take table, and a whole bunch of crafty ladies and gents peddling their wares.  Some of them seasoned pros, and many of them selling for the first time ever.  One month to go.  I can't wait.

Miss Amazing: Neon Danger

 

Alyssa Schulte, in her never-ending ability to make really amazing things, created this collection of baby clothes about two years ago for my son, Abraham.  He loves them, although he definitely grows way too fast.  I just stumbled upon a flickr collection that documents her creations.  Click here to see the rest!  Click here, here, here to see more amazing stuff by Alyssa, aka: Neon Danger.

Momma Totem

 I do not deny that I get every speck of my artistic drive to create from my mom.  Here is her latest project:  A totem pole she carved out of a dead tree outside of Portage, Wisconsin.  More photos here! 

Hover Craft : MORE INFO!!

 

CLICK to visit the HoverCraft blog!

Chicken Big!

Keith Graves may have won the title of my new favorite children's author with this book, Chicken Big.  It is a tale of crowd mentality and mistaken identity in an itty-bitty chicken coop on a teeny little farm.  The story begins with an enormous egg that begins to hatch.  With the many chicken opinions clucking around the flock, an unfortunately large chick becomes an outcast as they attempt to figure out what exactly he is because he is obviously too big to be a chicken! The flock is comprised of ridiculously opinionated characters and as the giant chicken continues to save them time after time, their guess of what he could be changes from an elephant to a sweater in a hilarious spiral.  

The illustrations are beautifully hand-drawn with a loose, comic book design complete with exclamatory bubbles exclaimed by the chickens - RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!  Basically, this book is fun to look at, fun to read and a funny, lovely story for anyone with an affinity for a fantastically odd parable.  

HoverCraft is coming!

Facebook.  Blog. 

Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database

For anyone who loves Wisconsin and handmade click here!  This website is amazing!!

I read this.

This book is amazing.  Focusing on only Wisconsin plants, weather, soil and pests it walks you through the specifics of creating an epic home garden emphasizing the importance of organics and natural fertilizers.  It also outlines specific vegetables and flowers, and profiles how best to grow them.   Whether flower or veggie, in doors or out, containers or raised bed, it makes me so excited for next spring I can barely contain myself.  The only problem is that my little patch 'o' backyard that the last book I read, Urban Homesteader, made me so excited for is obviously and sadly way to small to accomplish all the nice ideas presented in this book.  But as a resource, I couldn't imagine a more useful guide. 

I read this.

Growing up on a little farm, I didn't actually think that my childhood was very unique until I could look back in retrospect- That being 20/20 as the saying goes, I understand how lucky I was and I hope someday I can make my son that lucky.  To have a seemingly infinite amount of space is a luxury that most can barely imagine and although many yearn for it, few actually get to live the experience.  Kelly Coyne and Eric Knutzen, authors of The Urban Homstead,  understand that and aren't willing to make excuses for their lack of space to create their own little farm, even if it is in the middle of LA.  They describe and picture ways to utilize even the smallest of green spaces to grow food, raise animals, tiny kitchens that can be big enough to bake bread, ferment beer or create home-made cleaning products. Although at times brief, they always have a recommendation on where you can learn more.  I liked this book a lot- mostly because I like reading about more ways I can insert creativity into my daily life, be more green and pretend that my little patch of grass is an acre or two. 

Besides this book, they also BLOG!

my newest postcard!

 

Amory and Public Library.  Portage, WI.

There's something about finding a new postcard from Portage that is strangely satisfying.

Portage, Wisconsin

Portage, Wisconsin is where I grew up. The first white explorers cruised through in the mid 1600s, but native Americans have been living here since the beginning of time, I am sure. It is a quiet little river town that no longer uses the river and the canal, which was once one of the most important waterways in the nation, has been shut down for decades. The people who live here are amazing, there is still a soda fountain (my first job!), a drive-in theatre and a wonderful furniture store on the main drag where you can pop in and say hello to my folks. Perfect.

Sill interested.

I know one of my last posts was about Miss Vanessa Andrew of Madam Chino and Penny Spencer Press. I was still taken by her YOU-torials when she started updating them in bulk. Here is an article I wrote about them for Venus Zine. Read it here.

aka: Madamchino, aka: Penny Spencer, aka: The Talented Vanessa Devaki Andrew

Vanessa is absolutely amazing. These little hand-drawn gems pop up every once and awhile and if you are not checking, you could miss them. If you happened to miss one, however, wait a couple seconds and she will put out another. Her mind is always spinning out new ideas and her hands are always, always busy. I just found this when poking around on flickr. Her latest: an instructional book on sewing. (This is just the front cover!) Check it out here. If you want to see more of her stuff, a limited amount is available in her Etsy store or you can pop on down to Fasten (a design collective she used to co-direct, but where she still sells her wares).