They smelled of moss in your hand...

 

 

I'm working--I promise! And I also promise that there *will* be a shop update soonish (I know I keep saying that--it'll happen, guys!). I somehow got slammed these past two weeks with midterms, lab practicals, presentations, and deadlines for research symposium applications. But there's definitely a light at the end of the tunnel, and I can see it. Whew! School and sciencey stuff aside, I really just have to do the nitty gritty scanning and photo session and then I can finally list the goods in the shop. That's always my least favorite thing to do.

I thought I'd share some more pages from my small art journal with you. These were done towards the end of last year (kinda behind in posting them on the bloggity blog). From top to bottom: a brief review of a book I read at the time on the geoduck poaching trade (Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature's Bounty), plans for my contribution to a handmade ornament swap (I made peanut shell gnomes with spun cotton mushrooms), and a couple quotes that really stuck with me from another book (The Road, by Cormac McCarthy--I can't believe I waited so long to read it--so good!).

"The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them as silently as eyes."

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains...They smelled of moss in your hand...In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

The Incoming Tide

 

Goodness, this summer has completely flown by. I was hoping to get so much more down, but lots of projects (some related, some not) have dropped into my lap. But I'm really excited about them! One is an album cover design for a local Seattle rock band named Service Animal. This will be their first EP and all (band mates and myself included) are stoked to get the album released to the public. It's been a while since I've tackled a design project--and never have I done an album--but this has been an utter joy to work on. The release date will be later in the year, and I'll link to it for you to check out (their music is really good!).

Second up, I was notified last month that I was accepted into a very well-known marine research program with a scholarship up at the UW's Friday Harbor Laboratories in the San Juan Islands. It's one quarter long and I'll be living in the blissful idyllic environs of Friday Harbor on San Juan Island  for 2.5 months until December. Part of my time will be spent conducting intertidal marine research and part will be spent in a class/lab setting with courses on fish (which will be a nice change in between my studies on marine invertebrates) and also ocean physics. Needless to say, I am very, very excited. And nervous. But mostly excited. I'm frantically packing things away and getting ready to move there in less than two weeks.

What this also means is that I'll need to put the shop on "vacation mode" while I'm away, as I won't have easy post office access. The shop will close Sept. 23rd won't reopen until mid-December, so if there's something in there that you've had an eye on for Christmas, now's the time to get it!

Up above are some more spreads of paintings and souvenirs from my art journal. Included are: a favorite quote by Rachel Carson from her book "Edge of the Sea" (which I read and loved); a painted crab wallpaper design; lichen I collected while snowshoeing earlier in the year; a ticket stub for Moonrise Kingdom (saw it twice in July and was completely smitten); a polaroid I took on top of my unfinished 2nd quilt; and a painting of a cedar waxwing I came across while on a walk over the summer (first time seeing one in the wild!).

While these next couple of months will likely see more marine science material on the blog while I'm away doing research,  I hope you'll stick around! Learning about and researching our salty sea friends is my biggest artistic inspiration.

Cheers!

Art Journal Part IV: Ice World

Some day, I'd really like to visit Antarctica (preferably to do research). I realized a month or two ago that my "list of places I most want to see" is dominated by cold-climate locales. Antarctica, Iceland, Northern Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands... Then again, my closet is also dominated by sweaters and coats (I don't even own a pair of shorts). Guess that says a lot.

I hope to have a finished painting or two to share with you soon--just need to do the final layers. Happy weekend, gang!

Art Journal Part III: Polychaetes

While working in the lab with WA Dept. of Ecology's marine sediment monitoring team, I spend hours sorting through sediment samples under a microscope to sort/identify the invertebrates. We do a "broad sort" first into 4 phyla (Mollusca, Arthropoda, Echinodermata, and Polychaeta) and then these get further broken down into family and/or species level. There's a crazy amount of variety with the polychaetes ("tube dwelling" marine worms), and a good chunk of my time is spent disentangling them from one another for identification. I've become pretty good at immediately recognizing some polychaete species!

My favorites are always the little arthropods, however. In the marine world, these are the crabs, shrimps, ostracods, etc. The little hairy legs! The teeny black eyes! I die every time.

Art Journal Part II: Raven Song

A spread from the art journal on 2012 "firsts". There's a mated pair of ravens that live in a tree near my apartment and I hear/see them every morning, so naturally, the first bird I heard on New Year's was a raven. They are amazing birds and I've been honored to actually help rehabilitate a young one at the wildlife shelter a year ago.

Have a fabulous weekend, folks!

Art Journal Part I: Bird List

A spread from my art journal that was done back in January. I was so excited to have seen a golden eagle in the wild that I immediately came home and jotted it down in my book. Wish I had been able to snap a picture of him.

There are quite a few pages in my art journal and sketchbook that I'll be posting to the blog in the coming days, so stay tuned for more!

A Robin's Requiem

Hello, gang! I finally listed the painting I was hinting at before...

"A Robin's Requiem"

acrylic on cradled hardboard

6x6"

I'm really happy with the outcome! This piece originally started out as something entirely different (in fact, it was going to be a painting/commentary on the disappearance of bees...go figure), but I soon realized that I was trying to fit way too much detail into such a small painting. Fast-forward over a year later when I rediscovered the half-finished piece and tack on some extra days and voila! This painting is born.

Two separate, and rather unfortunate bird patients at the shelter inspired this one. The first being a sick juvenile robin that was with us for a week before choking to death in my hands. It was sad, and there was nothing I could do to help. The second patient was a baby junco who had the misfortune of being born without eyes. Not even eye sockets. He came to the shelter because he was apparently abandoned by his parents in the wild (likely due to his birth defect). Needles to say, a bird without eyes is a lost cause in Nature. We ended up having to put him down.

While sad, I also couldn't help but feel a little relief for these two birds who were suffering while alive and are thankfully now in a better place.Moving on, I have some pages to show you from a new art journal I've been keeping! I picked up this square spiral bound sketchbook last month and recovered it because I hate spiral bound sketchbooks. Which begs the question: why did I get one to begin with? Well, the paper was perfect for paint washes and I was too impatient to order a book bound one. So far it seems to be working out quite nicely though...I used to be an avid journal-er, but over the years that gave way. I wanted to pick it back up--but instead of meticulously writing about my day, I wanted it to be a sort of look into what I'm currently thinking about. A mishmash of watercolor paintings and words...Also, as if I weren't already busy enough, I started another quilt. I have about 1/4 of the quilt top stitched together and I'm really happy with the outcome thus far. Unlike my last one, I'm doing the new quilt in a helter-skelter improv fashion. There's no pattern and a lot of warped edges which gives it a carefree look and feel like the early American work quilts of yonder days. You can see some of the fabrics in the below journal pages:I'm also hand-stitching and hand-quilting the entire thing again. I must be crazy...