New Birds on Cradleboard

I created three new pieces recently for an exhibit at the gallery in the building where my studio is, NEST Arts Factory. One sold (and I didn't have a chance to take a photo), but I can show you photos of the other two.

These are collages of fabric, painted papers, and art paper, mounted on cradleboard. I really like the presentation of the cradleboard. It's sharp and clean, and easy to hang.

The pieces are 10" square and are named "raven" in various languages. The top piece is Corbeau, the bottom is Corvo. The piece that sold is Cuervo.

Cradleboard is a rigid surface with a wood frame (or cradle) on the back. The sides can be painted or left unfinished (you usually see solid wood or layers of plywood on the edges, either is pretty). It's available with different surfaces on the fronts, everything from canvas, gessoboard, board prepared for encaustics, clayboard, or unprimed, and in a wide variety of sizes and prices. Try it!

1 day + 100 artists + 100 patrons = $10,000 to fight cancer

I am delighted to be an invited artist for "The 100" to be held next Wednesday, February 4, 2015. The goal for this fiber fundraiser for the American Cancer Society is to raise $10,000 in one day. Just 100 people will have a chance to purchase a randomly selected artwork for only $100! 

See all the details on the Fiberart for a Cause website. See a selection of the artwork available on the FFAC Pinterest board.

I'm sure you will want to be one of the very exclusive 100 patrons who will be randomly assigned artwork from an extraordinary line-up of international fiber artists.

Fiberart For A Cause has already raised $240,000 through the generosity of fiber artists and patrons.

The artwork that I am contributing to this very worthy cause is one of my Bird:Houses - the Apostle Bird. As a patron, you have a chance of receiving this piece.

The FIberart for a Cause fundraiser is one that is near to my heart. I am asked to donate my work to a lot of causes over the course of a year and this is the only one that I say yes to instantly, without hesitation. Virginia Spiegel is a remarkable woman who has made a remarkable contribution to the fight against cancer with her imaginative and highly successful fundraisers.

In honor of my brother-in-law, Juan, who we lost way too early to leukemia.

Printmaking and more at Create Mixed Media retreat in Chicago!

I had such a great time teaching at the Create Mixed Media retreat in New Jersey in July that I'm doing it again in Chicago this month. I'd love for you to join me!

I'll be teaching four workshops. First up is the 4-color block printing class. You'll learn about design, registration for perfect prints, marketing and selling prints, and even cut your own mat. You can add some stitching by hand and/or machine. Everyone works on their own design and New Jersey's students came up with some stellar ones!

On Saturday I'll be teaching a class called Art Websites for Beginners. All you need is a laptop with wifi capability and some images of your work. There's no software to buy or download, no special knowledge needed. By the end of class you'll be well on your way to a beautiful website you can maintain and update yourself. We work on the websites in real time, one step at a time, until everyone is confident and ready to move onto the next step. In New Jersey we joked about having a hacker party with pizza and beer in the hotel lobby after class to keep working on our sites together. Fun!

Saturday night we jump into the Live Tweets class. This is a great introduction to soft sculpture and the results are delightful. Make a bird with fabric and paper that you've painted or printed yourself. What a fabulous way to show off your handiwork!

And on Sunday morning join me for a great inspirational exercise that ends up as a house with a bird on it in the Bird:House workshop. Randomly choose a "bird word" and create a collaged and stitched house to illustrate it. We talk about inspiration, the principles of design, and many construction techniques. The houses can either hang on the wall or sit in a wooden stand when complete.

The Create retreats are great fun, inspirational, educational, and a wonderful way to connect with our "tribe" while trying new things and meeting new people. I hope to see you there!

Back to the Studio

De las Lineas de Nasca, ink on fabric

Finally settling (sort of) into a new studio and I made some fabric postcards for a long overdue swap. The theme for the swap was Petroglyphs and while mine is technically inspired by geoglyphs, I think it's close enough. It feels good to be making again. Now if I could just find everything...

El Cotorro

Lotería Collage Project

24 - El Cotorro (the parrot)

El Pajaro

Lotería Collage Project

20 El Pajaro (the bird)

It feels good to get back into this project. The first 20 of the total 54 are done. I've collected 10 frames from various trips to Ikea and will start matting and framing some of these little blocks.

An update on La Garza from yesterday: I had not heat set the ink on the letters I had erroneously stamped and this morning I tried blotting them with a damp paper towel. Wouldn't you know, they came off, completely and totally! Project save.  I stamped some innocuous flower shapes where the letters were, as the space still needed something.

19 La Garza (the heron) revised

La Garza

Lotería Collage Project



19 La Garza (the heron)

I was all excited to get back to my loteria project and I laid out this block and stitched and stamped away and stepped back happily only to realize that La Garza means the heron in English, not Flamingo, like I stamped along the lower edge. So here's my conundrum: do I re-do the block because, although a flamingo is a type heron (I think), the translation of the Spanish word is not technically correct or do I leave it alone and risk looking silly? Oof.

Art in the Studio

I can't post anything that I've made lately (top secret and all that jazz), so I thought I'd show you some of the beautiful pieces I've been fortunate enough to acquire lately. I love how wonderful they look matted and framed, I love how well they work together, and I love how simpatico they all are with the string of birds Elin gave me years ago. A bright happy corner in my studio.



The piece on the top is an ACEO by Lisa Call - you have to see one of these in person, the detail and workmanship are astonishing. The middle piece is by the delightful and lovely Mati McDonough, I adore its positive, fresh, fun and bubbly vibe. And the bottom piece is by the incomparable Liz Berg. I've been hankering after one of hers for eons and was fortunate enough to get this during the recent Collage Mania.

Back to work, and as soon as I can, I'll show you what I've been up to!

Illustration Friday - resolve

cotton fabric, cotton batting, cotton thread, metallic foil and acrylic ink on 6" x 6" stretched canvas

This little guy is full of steely resolve. The bigger birds had better not mess with him.

It's hard to tell from the photo, but the three small dark squares on the upper left are metallic foil -- steel colored. I don't know where all of these birds are coming from. Every week when I read the IF word, a bird pops into my head.

A bright, shiny new year

I love New Year's Day - the whole bright, shiny new year is stretched out ahead of me. It holds only possibility and potential in it - no mistakes, no problems, no disappoint, no disillusion. This is going to be a good year, a year full of hope and of change. My only resolution is to make time to create more art. I do have a formidable list of goals and will be working hard to realize them.

Last year I started off with the best of intentions to create one small piece of art each week. I got waylaid in the early part of the year when deadlines, working full time, business trips and life in general got in the way and I missed a number of weeks. This year I will continue that project (6" square work mounted on canvas using the prompts from Illustration Friday) and strive to do better. I really enjoy the format of IF and love the community.



I also decided the new year needed a new project and I cast about for inspiration in early December. I remembered that I had bought a few packs of Lotería cards from Judy Gula in Houston this year and thought they would made a good basis for a journaling project. The Lotería cards are used to play a game like Bingo and each of the 54 have different pictures and labels on them. I'm going to make 5" square fabric collages with them, using either the card itself or something about the card as inspiration. The iconic Mexican nature of the images and their overall kitschiness appeal to me.



The first card is El Gallo (the rooster). I have trouble with the Every Day thing, so I'm shooting for Nearly Every Day. I also need rules (well, self-imposed rules anyway, -- outside rules, not so much) so each piece will start with a square of wool felt and have some hand stitching on it.

So, who else is journaling on a regular or semi-regular basis in 2009?

Illustration Friday - clandestine

cotton fabric, cotton batting, cotton thread, found object paper and acrylic ink on 6" x 6" stretched canvas

Clandestine is such a fun word! This is my sub rosa raven, sneaking furtively along on his surreptitious business.

Illustration Friday - voices

cotton fabric, bamboo batting, cotton thread, found object papers, mulberry paper and acrylic ink on 6" x 6" stretched canvas

Not actually sure if a bird song counts as a voice (and I *know* they don't follow sheet music), but that was the first thing that came to mind.

Now open - come on in!

I've been talking about an Etsy store for just about three years now. I've finished some cool new jewelry and posted it here.



I'll be adding more items to the store as I finish them. I have plans for a variety of categories, including more jewelry, small mixed-media art and collages on paper. Stay tuned!



Another goal on my list for the year ticked off, woohoo.

A birdie followed me home

Actually several birdies...



I found this amazing beaded head-dress tucked in the far back corner of a little booth at Quilt Festival in Houston. It was hand made in Nigeria of thousands (tens of thousands?) of white glass beads over wire framework and stands about 24" tall. I saw it the second day of the show, looked at it closely, asked about it's price and reluctantly walked away, knowing it would be difficult to get home.



But I couldn't stop thinking about it. There was a second one, slightly smaller and in full color, but this one just spoke to me. It's covered with beaded birds and has a face on either side.



Just before the opening of the last day of the show I went to check to see if it was gone or if it was waiting for me.



I decided that if it was still there, then it was meant to come home with me.



Of course, I did get stopped at security in the airport - I can't imagine what it looked like on the x-ray machine. And I ended up with two laptops in my briefcase so I could fit the birds in my carry-on, you should see the blisters on my hands.

It was worth it.

Illustration Friday - strings

cotton fabric, bamboo batting, cotton thread, found object paper, acrylic ink and acrylic paint on 6" x 6" stretched canvas

The starling picked up a bundle of string somewhere on his travels. Perhaps he was hanging around my studio?

Another collage necklace

I'm having a blast making these. The latest is 1" by 3" and incorporates a watch gear on the bird for a steampunk vibe.

Up close with the Crow

A number of people asked where they could get their very own Jim Mullan bird, so here's the scoop. The Left Bank Gallery in Massachusetts and the Christopher Park Gallery in South Carolina were both a pleasure to deal with over the internet and provided phenomenal service.



If you end up succumbing to the lure of the bird, remember that it's all Sandy's fault, she's the reason I got started on this new bird kick. Thank you Sandy!





Just to give you an idea of scale, this is the crow with the jay that I posted about in August.

Collage necklace

And now for something completely different...



A tiny bird collage to wear. The little frame is only 1.5" square and it hangs from a length of hand-dyed silk ribbon. The scrap of printing is from an Indian newspaper I tinted with ink. The mah-jongg tile is from a neat store in Oregon (that I dearly wish had a website - I got the most unusual shoes there but the brand name is Pretty - try googling "pretty shoes" and see how far you get... argh).

My friend Natalya sent me a link to a talk on Ted by Sir Ken Robinson. Sir Ken addresses creativity in the education environment. It's a really interesting speech and here are a few quotes from it that just jumped out at me.

If you are not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.