the challenge

I shared this photo with Tom for his 1st photo...It 's a family portrait 9/25/11

There are many challenges in everyday life.  One I find I come across more often than not is the constant struggle to create art in my everyday life.  I consider myself a working artist, however most days I feel I work more than I make personal art.  Last year I did give myself the "challenge" of entering and completing The Sketchbook Project.  I had a great time participating and welcomed the challenge...however I have to be honest and admit, a little part of me has been missing my sketchbook.  I will definitely have to go visit it now that the books have returned to the Brooklyn Art Library's permanent collection.  While on vacation last week, my husband Tom was showing me one of  the latest i Phone apps he had downloaded called Photo365.  We are both photographers, he is as a professional photographer and I have a degree in photography where it has now become a favorite hobby more than a profession, but never the less, we are both usually snapping away with some kind of camera, and many times, it is with our i Phones.  So there we were looking at our i Phone photos of the day and decided, wouldn't it be a great challenge to do Photo365 together!  We decided to make the official "start" date our 7 year anniversary, and then go for a year and see what we each come up with.  I even added it to our "shared" calendar so each day at noon an alarm goes off  on our i Phones to remind us to take our daily photo.  Last night Tom told me it is much harder to "do this" now that we are no longer on vacation...I do agree.  However I feel that makes it even more of a challenge.  Maybe some days will not have a photo, and that is ok too. What I see is most important is to at least try to find some time where you can look, feel or find some inspiration to help create art for yourself, then the rest can all fall into place.  Sometimes just making the commitment is the challenge in itself.

This is my 1st photo...9/25/11

Katie, over at Adventures of an Art Teacher talks about setting goals in art as well and about the Project 365 in 2010.  I "googled" Project 365 and found that there are many photographers and Flickr sites out there where photographers have been taking daily photos and recording them, some better than others.  I think it is often a great idea for recording a pregnancy, aging of your children, progress of a garden,  or even the growth of animals. I am definitely looking forward to Tom's and mine.  

Has anyone else started a new and interesting challenge? 

sketchbook in the mail!

My sketchbook is finished and in the mail (delivered in fact...I just checked my shipping confirmation)!  It was a very exciting and exhausting project, but I am so happy I decided to enter and see it through.  I didn't use all the materials I thought I would to create my book (not really all that surprising).  As it was coming together, I actually felt less was more and liked the simplicity of the book and composition of each page as I was designing them.  The photo transfers each took on their own life and no two were the same.  The photos also changed as they became transfers on fabric...which I really love.  Tom helped me photograph the book before I shipped it away so I would have a record of my work since it is now part of the permanent collection of the The Brooklyn Art Library.  Here are a few shots of the book, more can be seen here or if you visit one of the shows when all the sketchbooks are on tour!

Tom shooting my final book!

Can't wait to see all the creative books everyone made on tour!  

Did you enter? Well...there's always next year...OR next up

A Million Photographs...I'm still deciding :) 

sketchbook project...here i come!

Several people I know, including myself, entered The Sketchbook Project this year.  Sweet Dani B mentioned her sketchbook back in August on her blog and and our friend Dallas is also participating. It is an incredible project; over 28,000 artists are participating and making sketchbooks to be exhibited all around the country.  Check out the website, it's pretty cool, they have images of books from the previous year and give dates when the tour may be in a city near you.  So I entered, got my theme of "facing forward", and received my sketchbook months ago.  I have also had an idea of what I have wanted to do for months....and now those months have turned into weeks and now I am of course, down to less than two weeks before I need to send my book in...and I am just getting to create it.  The past few days I have been trying out what I have been "thinking" about, and I feel my ideas and concepts are really going to work.  I love photo transfers...and I have been reading about new ways to transfer onto fabric.  I want to make my book out of images and transfers, but I also want to incorporate fabrics and have the book be textural.  I had thought from the beginning I would have to "deconstruct" the book a bit.  One of the requirements is you have to have your pages fit inside the cover, but you can change out the pages if you'd like.  I have decided to make fabric pages for my book out of a thick muslin and use additional vintage fabrics throughout the book.

vintage fabrics for use throughout the sketchbook

transfer test on thin cotton muslin

transfer test on thicker cotton muslin

I kind of feel like I am back at RISD and will probably have to pull a few all-nighters to finish my book...however I am pretty excited with the results so far.  Anyone else participating and still working on your sketchbook?