i guess i have a thing for birds... and poems by ee cummings. (i first learned of him in graduate school when i was studying book arts + printmaking at the university of the arts, in philadelphia.)
the thing I love about creating art is you never know where its going to take you...
Hello! I've been pulling some late nights recently for the MATS Home Decor class I am taking, which is taught by two amazing ladies... Margo Tantau (vp of creative at midwest-cbk) & Lilla Rogers (art agent extraordinaire). The class teaches us about creating collections using 5 of the main substrates used for the Home Decor market. (They are metal, fabric, wood, ceramic & glass.) We were also given some excellent trend boards to choose from for the duration of the class. I chose one with a more muted palette for a change + a challenge. :)
For our first week we were to focus on metal and "birds" were to be our inspiration / assignment. Initially, I started sketching offline and digitally...
and then i made a big giant mess of painting and monoprints... this one is one of my favoritess...
And then I sought to combine my drawings and prints... And i quickly realized that i had 2 styles going on. One which skewed towards kids/adult kids and another which was quieter, moodier and so I ended up splitting it into 2 collections.
The funkier one...
BarbChotiner.TakeFlightFunky.jpg
and then a more subtle upscale / adult collection...
BarbChotiner.TakeFlightMuted.jpg
I was really torn which way to finish. (Since in the end, i could only finish up one to submit for a "final.") In the class/community facebook group (another bonus with the class!) each board had its "fans" so to speak but i felt like the adult one was getting more comments.
I ended up working quite a bit more on the wall art and creating a horizontal scene of majestic herons and flying swallows. I used metallic bronze ink and scanned in some branched from my home which had been blown down by a harsh rain storm the night before.
Below is my final piece. In the end, i loved some of my quirky birds - especially the guy on the clock - so I included them as a smaller, perhaps secondary collection.
My (now) 4 year old daughter loves to shout "LOVE IT" whenever she's excited about something. Well, I'm excited about a few things and made this little diddy to share. I feel like my art is going in exciting directions and its just one of those days when i love my job.
I also added a new mounted on wood prints to my buyStuff shop. Ive been making a bunch of these wood panels for the flower show but wanted to add them to my 'lil shop as well.
Good things are a happening! I have another exciting and awesome announcement to make.
A few pieces of mine are now available for purchase on DENY Designs. Have you seen their products? Their motto is "cool decor for the creative type." They sell a ton of home goods, from wall clocks to pillows to jewelry boxes to sheets.
Stay tuned as I will be adding more pieces in the coming weeks. Click HERE to go to my artist page.
Working on a new series with some fresh colors... Here's No. 1 - Sweet Tweet!
for the first time - i entered an art challenge on the minted.com website.
If you like my pieces, and would like to see it (or them) available for purchase, please be so kind as to rate & vote for my submission here. (there are 1169 other submissions to view as well. yowzers!)
art submission by Barb Chotiner
thank you in advance for supporting my work! :)
I did some more printmaking and created these "succulent array" plate designs this week. I tried to envision what the plates would look like in my dream company home decor catalog.
Look what arrived in the mail yesterday. So cool! Thank you Uppercase Magazine for including me in the top 100 artists chosen for the Surface Pattern Design Annual. (page 87!) Happy dance time.
Uppercase Magazine - Surface Pattern Design - Issue 21
