our walls

Today Matt picked up my other birthday present--he bought me a Charley Harper lithograph and my mother-in-law had it framed for me. I've been leaving the area above our couch open for just the right print and I'm sure this mid-century nature illustration is it.

Vigilant Vireos by Charley Harper

While I'm posting wall hangings, I thought I'd include some pieces we've put up in the last six months around the house.

Our Living Room


It's so lovely to have our friends' artwork hanging in our home. One of the first pieces from a friend was this bright screen print by Kansas friend Justin Marable. How nice of the Marables to give us this piece before we moved north.


Our Kitchen

In May we picked up this piece from our friend Sarah's fantastic senior art show. It is a piece of handmade paper colored with Iowa soil and grass seed placed within the paper to create words. She watered and cultivated each of her pieces and luckily our grass dried with the pretty green color intact.

"dwell" from Sarah Henson

I picked up this beast of a kitchen gadget at our favorite local consignment store. It only holds plastic wrap and some ancient wax paper right now because it's proving difficult to find foil and paper towels that fit. I still think it's great.



Our Dining Room

A small collection of sketches done by comic artists at Comic Con '07.

clockwise from top: sketches by Sammy Harkham, Souther Salazar, Jordan Crane, and Anders Nilsen

Jordan Crane postcard

I did not include several other dining room hangings--it definitely has the most heavily-laden walls in the house.

Our little house is really feeling like a home.

melanie bilenker

Hand, 2007

Dinner, 2008

Overstuffed Chair, 2006

From Melanie Bilenker's collection of beautiful jewelry created by placing her own hair into resin. If only I could afford one!

all photos from Melanie's website

happy new year

One of my goals this year, an ongoing goal really, is to make some more art. Maybe stitch something like this, that I made in 2006 (I think?). I have lots of ideas floating around.

Merry Christmas!

The wrapping paper I bought on sale last year wasn't cutting it, so I decided to cut designs into brown paper bags and layer them over newspaper. I think my favorite is the one with the checkerboard-type pattern. It gave me some good practice for future cut-paper projects.

For cut-paper inspiration, see:

Marcus Walters

Nikki McClure

Saelee Oh

arts

A couple weeks ago, Matt and I had some artwork in a 50 x 50 show to support The Project Lodge in Madison. It's a show where anyone could put in work for less than $50, and 50% of the profit would go to the organization, 50% to the artist. We didn't sell anything, but we were mentioned on the Lodge's blog, here.

mine, untitled, far right

mine, untitled, far top left
Matt's, untitled, bottom 2nd from left

These are some pretty old pieces of mine. I have projects that I want to work on, but haven't made the time yet. Later, I'll post something more representative of what I want to do in the future.

We had a good time helping to set up for the show and it was nice that some of our friends stopped by the night of the show. By the way, these photos were snagged from The Project Lodge site. Thanks, guys.

success

Yesterday, we spent a good part of the afternoon thrifting at our favorite local consignment store, Carousel. I think this brooch makes my coat seem prettier and a bit more vintage.

circle brooch, $1

Ollie explores my new hatbox

hatbox, $4

I found myself suddenly wanting a hatbox this week and was fortunate enough to find this cute one. I was also fortunate enough to discover a reason to buy it: to hold my embroidery hoops and fabrics for projects.

Our main purpose for going to the store was to find new old frames for some sketches we had from artists at ComicCon back in 2006 and some postcards that Matt got for Christmas last year. We're finally getting them ready to hang.

frames, $1-$4 each
art (clockwise from top left): Anders Nilsen,
Jordan Crane (sketch and postcard),
Sammy Harkham, Souther Salazar