WitchgerProjects Make-A-Day Lent 2011

I created and emailed out the survey for my master’s paper research. Building it was fairly easy in this program I get to use via UNC but it was so hard to email it out. This is my first time doing a survey, so I have felt uncertain of myself throughout most of the process and therefore much less inclined to email my work out to several hundred people. A bit because of this reason and a lot because of day-to-day classwork that was due, I have been trying to take this step for the last several weeks.

BOY, does it feel great to have it out now and to see the responses starting to trickle in. I am excited now to see what the results might reveal.

Plenty of other work to to do in the meantime while they are coming in

I’d say my take away from this is to try to remember this is a learning process. The master’s paper is about learning to conduct research in our field and the only way to get better is to take one step forward.

It was day 1 of make-a-day, I was exhausted after two assignments being due and it was getting late. I started to make a pillowcase but, believe it or not, that seemed too involved so I turned to these little chunks of pink eraser material for making stamps that I’d been meaning to try out for about a year or so. I really love woodcuts and thought working with this might feel similar to that process.

A bit sleepy, I sat down at my desk, borrowed bobby’s speedball cutter and with Pride & Prejudice & Zombies blaring away I made this first attempt.

When I finished I was really glad I had had that extra little push to make time for it, even if it was just a small thing.

Things have gone horribly wrong with my day-to-day posting. I almost don’t want to post now that I’ve let it slip & slide so much. But here is a bit about one of the things I have been working on.

Designed a poster, digital images for the eboards, & a bookmark for Image Awareness Week in the Design Library. This week the library is taking time to direct attention to all our wonderful image databases. There is ARTstor, The Design Library Image Collection, & many more.

I enjoyed this process alot. We did everything in house, including me and one other staff member cutting out all the color copies of the bookmarks. I love the sense of accomplishment that comes from doing things like this the “long hand” way. When you have your end results in hand you really feel a direct connection between it and your work along the way. I also made oatmeal cookies. Each of us made a kind of cookie to contribute. After all, you cant get people’s attention without food, right?!

Whats with this picture you ask? Well, first off none of my images of the poster seem to be loading. So I tried to find something else to use and this caught my eye. I am like Lilly in this picture and the bowl of cereal is like all the projects that I want to do but won’t get to because of school over the next few weeks. Note the longing in the eyes.

This is Project #2 for my Textiles Class.

We had to use free motion machine embroidery to “draw”. I decided to try to replicate with fabric what I do with paper.

It was a very exciting process to try something familiar in new materials. This one is still in progress as I try to decide what it needs to be finished. Overall, the collage is not 100% what I wanted but I am very pleased with the results for a first try. I adore the machine embroidery results in the face but would like to work more on the building drawings. I was tired when I attempted those so I think I might have been slacking in my efforts.

I pray to have the self-discipline to try to tackle some more of these on my own time.

Hello Team.

This is me trying to make time to return to the lent project. After the first wonderfully fun week I was derailed by school and a trip to London (also wonderful). But today I attempt to right myself! I may have to do some backlog posts. While I’ve not been posting I really appreciate the efforts of you who have continued on.

This is a flyer I just made for an AMLISS (the art + museum library + information student society at UNC) event. I used Microsoft Word for the layout and a copyright free image from an awesome book from the Design Library. I admit that I picked the image to act as a “pretty” place holder. I’d like to think I was giving it more time and thought but in this case, for something that I will print off and hang up only 10 of, for about 2 days, I think that this is OK.

I had a lot of fun with the type. I have no type training and this is the only style of typography I do. Tonight I decided to call this “mash-up” style. I try to think of the text as visual elements that I move around till it pleases me (like a collage) while still keeping things readable. Doing one of these once in a while is fun but I do not think I would be very good at doing it often. – In the end everything would just look like a variation on this.

Please let me know if you see any typos. I have a mortal fear of putting something like this up with a misspelling.

Bob & I leave on Friday to go to London. I have things to do for school, around the house, and for work before we go. – So naturally I turn to avoiding all of these things. This will probably lead to panic before the week is up.

Knowing that might be coming, I took a few minutes before class started this morning to check out some picture books from the SILS library. Spending 15 minutes with one of these books is a great way to step away from it all without being gone too long. I highly recommend it.

If anyone feels up for sharing, I’d like to hear what titles you enjoyed staring at as a kid (or now). My current favorites are anything in the Toot & Puddle series and works by Mitsumasa Anno. I like both of these because the illustrations are richly detailed, making it even easier to get lost to that other place for a while.