Yoga, anyone?

If you're into yoga and you live on Long Island, New York, you might want to check out the Long Island Yoga Association. I re-designed their website and boy, do I wish I lived closer! I'd love to take some of their workshops.

Text as design and inspiration

Artist Trading Card with a background of newspaper from India and a Chinese fortune cookie fortune

I love the use of text as a design element. I know that a lot of other artists are also inspired by and incorporate text into their work. I adore the way Karen Stiehl Osborn uses text, Rayna Gillman does beautiful things with letters, and Virginia Spiegel has a way with words, just to name a few. I don't know whether my affinity for the use of all things alphabetical is linked to my colored-grapheme synesthesia or not but I do know that I find it a very satisfying inspiration.

Sometimes the forms of the letters are pure design elements for their shapes, used as background noise, as in this piece from my Climate series.

Sometimes the letters or numbers are large and central to the piece but don't "say" anything.

Sometimes the letters spell something relevant.

I can't get enough letters and numbers. I have over 600 fonts installed on my computer and subscribe to a bunch of font newsletters. You might say that I'm a font junkie. I'm such a letter nerd in fact that I print out and collect the Type Trading Cards from ITC (International Typeface Corporation) each month. They're like ATCs, but with font history and fun facts.

I also collect lots of things that have text on them to use in my work. I have scores of fortune cookie fortunes -

Maps -



Old music scores -



Pages from falling-apart books -



Reproductions of old money or letters -



Postage stamps -



And of course, paper and stamps with other languages.

Handmade paper with Korean characters -



A newspaper from India -



And more alphabet stamp sets than you can shake a stick at - in every size from 1/4" to 3" high, and several character sets.



I've been playing with layering text of different scales, different languages, different colors, to say something and just for the forms. I can think of so many more directions to explore.





I found some really neat letters made of recycled tin cans in a catalog recently. The letters are about 8" high and 1.5" deep. Because they were on sale, the company was out of a lot of letters and only had two vowels left (u and o). It made spelling something out a little challenging, but I did think of a great word for my studio, as you can see!



My husband walked in right after I hung them up (probably attracted by the hammering) and wanted to know why the wall said "spout". Silly boy...

Nearly there

The living room is nearly done. I couldn't stand the chaos one more second and put most of it back together even though there are odds and ends to finish up. The new bookcase that Carlos built is gorgeous and so much more our style than the old one. The books that I know we're keeping went back up on the shelves. There is a delightful, gaping hole (with appropriate wiring!) ready and waiting for a new tv (someday, hopefully not too far in the distant future, - you know, I should prop up some framed pieces in there in the meantime...), and I got out a few of my Oaxacan carvings for the top shelves. I'm not sure that they'll stay there as they're looking a little busy visually in a group like that and it's hard to appreciate their finely-painted detail so high up.



The Eames chair is very well-loved. Carlos bought it from a showroom on Park Avenue in Manhattan in 1970 for a then-princely sum and it's the one and only piece of furniture that we've continuously had our entire married life. I adore that chair - not only is it exceedingly good-looking but it's really comfortable too.

We still need a mantel on the fireplace and we had an inspiration yesterday that we're going to try out tomorrow to see if it works (fingers crossed).

There are supposed to be three small paintings hanging above the fireplace but two of them didn't have frames so I didn't hang them back up yet. Hopefully the frames will be done by the weekend and all of that white space will be a memory.



I placed a few things temporarily on the top of the fireplace. Among them are two pieces of mate burilado, examples of the traditional Peruvian craft of gourd carving, which dates back over 5,000 years. These are obviously more recent.



I matted and framed another of Carlos' old intaglios, Red Light, to hang beside the fireplace. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the lighting really shows off the relief.



A small painting that Carlos keeps insisting isn't finished yet (is an oil painting ever finished??) that I won't let him touch because I love it just the way it is. It's waiting for its two companions to return from the studio with new frames.



And everything that didn't make it back into the living room is now residing in my studio, which as a result, is an ungodly mess with not a clean flat surface (and very little floor space) in sight. Makes it hard to get anything done, but the view into the living room is sublime.

Recycled theme postcard

With this postcard I am officially Caught Up. For one don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it minute. I'm going to bask in the glow of current-ness and then look for something else to get into...

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.