Sunday Wanderings

Today I was rifling through my many (so, so many - I think I have a bit of a problem) browser bookmarks, I found something I'd filed away ages ago, most likely soon after getting this computer (so almost two years back). The something was this thing, an application that lets one pop ordinary digital camera images into a magical little box, then play with a pile of controls to make said photos look like something out of a proper analog polaroid/lomo/toy camera. Needless to say, this little toy thrills me to no end and I have spent the last hour-ish dragging pictures from my photo library and prettifying 'em.

Cases in point:


Tiny Pacific Octopus, photo originally taken at Ucluelet Aquarium in BC.


Tentacles!


Jellyfish floating around inside the Vancouver Aquarium.


Gorgeous daylily from my dad's summer garden.


Whilhelm the merfox on display at my last show.


Watercolour palette.


Rocky Mountains as seen from airplane (on the way back from BC).


A pair of bears menace a poor, encapsulated merfox.

I fear this application may become quite addictive!

Ever So Soon

Sorry (again) for the extreme dropoff in blog-things - the past few weeks have been a leafy blur of hot glue fumes, paper cutting and workshop jaunts, which, when combined with my day job, made for little free time for keeping this sucker up to date.

I figured it'd be useful to drop in now, three (THREE?!?) days before the show opens to toss down (a) a reminder of the time/date/awesomeness of the opening, and (b) post a few shots of (hopefully) tantalizing trees!

First off, the deets on the show's opening (and tenure at the gallery):



Farther's Fascinating Freaks
New Paintings & Other Curiosities by Jessica Bartram


Please join me for the show’s opening
Friday, November 12, 2010, 8:00 p.m.
at
Freedom Clothing Collective
939 Bloor St. West, Toronto

Ph: 416.530.9946
www.freedomclothingcollective.com

Show runs November 12 - December 7

---

And, as an added bonus, you also get a visual essay (maybe more of a visual haiku, actually) documenting the last few weeks of work via sketchy cell-phone and photo booth photos:


The nearly-finished swan.


The swan's headshot - needs to find itself a better photographer.


First look at the facade of the peep show (pre-colour, post-primer).


Tibetan momos - one of my workshop-time staple foods.


This is my SAFETYFACE (preparing to make use of my friend the circular saw).


Starting the first tree...


...slightly mad at 2 a.m., post finishing the second tree...


...and completely done all three trees!


This is most likely the last proper post until the show opens on Friday - after that, I'll have a bunch of material (including a VIDEO of the peep show! Exciting!!), so make sure to check back sometime next week!

Chicken, Chicken, Swan

I've started working on the 3D curiosities that will accompany the watercolours for the show, starting with The Really Big One - a two-headed, "taxidermied" black swan (life-size - I actually looked up the average size of Cygnus atratus - 110-142cm long, for the curious - before starting to build).

To begin with, I had to wrangle some chicken wire, which is always a painful process. My arms and legs are still host to a myriad of little scratches doled out by the vicious stuff.



Oh look - six feet of aggressive, injury-causing swan-skeleton!



After much bending and wire-cutting and being stabbed, I ended up with a roughly swan-shaped conglomeration of wire:



I attempted to do the whole 'two swan necks making a heart' cliché. Ended up with a pathetic, wonky shape. Tragic.



After the creation of the base, it was time to add some substance to the bird. Since I'm not a fan of the mess (and drying time) inherent in the whole papier maché process, I opted for the easy way out - newspaper and LOTS of masking tape. After an evening of paper-ripping and tape-application, I ended up with a cream-coloured swan mummy. Spooky.



As much as I enjoy the ghostly visage of masking-tape swan, more steps lie in the future for this curiosity, as it will wind up covered in paper feathers, in the style of Sir Percival IV (a dapper raven-fellow I made a few months ago).




And yes, I do look forward to hours of cutting out feathers and battling the perils of the dreaded Hot Glue Gun. It's all worth it, I swear.

Poster'd

So I started working on the poster I blabbed about in this post - I was surprised to find that the huge expanse of paper hardly frightened me at all, and the layout of the thing progressed quite smoothly.

Here's the initial pencil sketch:



And a close-up of the mysterious Josiah Carp, an extremely fishy fellow:



Since I neglected to photograph the ink alone, we now skip to a couple of terrible phone-camera shots of the first layer of paint:





I'm pretty darn thrilled with this so far - it's crazy sometimes thinking about how far I've come since last summer, when an 8" x 10" piece scared the crap out of me.

Colours Galore!

This has been a colourful weekend - not only did I manage to make it to an absolutely lovely craft fair and a rollerderby match, I also found time to do some painting and purchase fabric with which to make a carnivalesque dress for my show's opening in a few months.



There's a peek at the fabric I have so far - mustard yellow for the main dress, a little gold tulle for the sassy underskirt. I'm aslo planning to have some red piping involved - the dress is either going to be insanely fantastic or just insane. Hopefully the former.

As for the painting, it's been a bit slow (I keep getting distracted by the ridiculousness that is True Blood), but my latest piece makes use of a myriad of exciting colours, as evidenced by my watercolour set:



And the piece on which I'm working? Well it involves auklets and bunting. Here's a snippet of the scene:



Please note her jaunty cap - she made it herself, y'know!