I have begun doing some research for a new suite of pieces. I am using a formal commercial design cycle to make this work as it is all within the Monstress Productions vein of my work. The first stage is research, wherein I am doing a lot of reading and gathering of data. If you have a moment or two, please fill out the questionnaire below: Loading…
My daughter loves to paint and so we have been exploring watercolor for a few weeks. A few days in, I started seeing things in her work and decided to draw out a few. Rules: I must preserve M’s chosen orientation of the paper I get one shot, so I don’t use up all of her paintings and send her the message that her work is no good I get 3 minutes, although I think I can keep it at 2 30 seconds, maybe 1 minute My work cannot overshadow hers: it must be equal in terms of effort and coverage (I did that a couple times and it made me sad) For her third birthday, I will give her the option of drawing on my paintings so we both have the same opportunities We plan some of the images, depending on M’s interest. If she does not have a preference, I get to do whatever I want. I have upgraded us to watercolor paper and better paints and have started scanning these for a later collection …
I have been getting a lot of questions about bringing the arts back into classrooms of all sorts, so I have begun a series of articles I hope to compile into an eBook for instructors. As an ardent S.T.E.A.M. proponent, an artist, and an interaction designer, I feel we must be able to give our students a wide gamut of experiences in our classrooms in order for them to succeed. Printmaking is a huge part of my personal approach. Printing $500 Bills I still remember when I pulled my first print: I was 22, working on my BFA, and I had no idea what printmaking actually was. I knew I couldn’t afford the supplies for the painting classes and that my allergies had cut short my ceramics career (darned clay dust), so here I sat in a musty basement studio chipping away on some linoleum. It was a simple one-color linocut: I created a composition, transferred it to my block, and carved it out as best I could. I inked it up, ran it through the press, …
First, here are 20 key pieces to understanding my body of work: If you care to dive deeper, I have a full collection of work below. Monstress Products Printmaking Drawing/Illustration Photography: Polaroid Work Performance and Installations
In writing these articles, I have swiftly come to realize that I have a lot of work to do to get my practice back in shape. Much of my effort can benefit if I approach my online presence the right way. Having a web site is very nice and all, but being an online citizen is quite another. I try to use this platform as a means for establishing and maintaining credibility, finding peers and support, and generally recording my efforts so I might help others. The following is a wide-ranging examination which will help me hone in on what I need to do. My clarified goals I want to focus in on my art making in a way that helps me get closer to being the cultural producer I know I can be. I want to make work that changes lives while it pushes me beyond comfort levels and presuppositions that I hold dear. I also need it to pay more for itself or I cannot keep it up. It can’t just be a hobby: this is my personal research, and …
I have helped others get their cultural producing practices back in shape, now I am trying to apply all I have learned over the years to my own. I had to take a long hard look at Monstress Productions, which represents my longest running art project. This meant looking at Monstress.com as well, which was actually my very first website and online portfolio. What I do with others is sit down for some conversations about history, mindset, and workable goals. I try to get people to see what would really fit their lives, which does involve some delving questions. My goal is to get people to see the value and patterns in what they have already so they don’t feel helpless–amazing how I did not do this for my own art practice until now! Current state of my art practice (and online presence) I have been very busy the last several years and for a variety of reasons, my art practice has gotten shoved into the background again and again. Motherhood, switching careers, recessions? I’ve weathered them all, but …
I am leading a workshop in July at the Women’s Studio Workshop: Artists Online: Marketing, Promotion, and Documentation It runs July 13-17 at WSW in Rosendale, New York. Tuition $750 ($675 members), with a class limit of 8 During this 5-day workshop, I will be walking artists through all the steps they need to take in order to build a constructive online strategy for their practices. I will spend April and May documenting the process of revamping Monstress so that I may have a sturdy case study. The topics of the workshop will include: What should your online strategy be? How do you best present your work? Taking/processing photos of physical work Presenting virtual work What social media tools and techniques are most effective Finding design help or doing it on your own Possible free platforms Possible paid platforms Putting it all together: your portfolio is born! Promoting your work in a manageable way Handling emails, tweets, texts, and such Looking for opportunities Exploring options for selling your work online This is all wonderful and I …
This is the vision I originally developed for the City Tech Printmaking Club, and now that we have officers, it is starting to become a reality! Of course, I am just an advisor–what the students make of all of this is up to them. Every student at City Tech should know we exist. Events, demos, classes, shows…the whole community needs to know us as a force for good. Printmaking is about generosity, democracy, opportunity, and making something with what seems tone nothing. Let’s make our own equipment, be scrappy, fight the good fight! This club is about empowerment through personal visual communication. Printmaking taught me problem solving, gave me a history of protest, propaganda, and commerce to draw from as I made my art. Let’s get excited about the potential involved in a few simple items, some ingenuity, and a lot of elbow grease. Let’s build presses, screens, tools! Let’s find all we need on the cheap, or from stuff being thrown away! No dependence upon others! Let’s make some art. Yes, we are in a design program, and we have plenty to learn in …
Every year, I head to City Tech on or as close to Valentine’s Day as I can with at least 50 pounds of potatoes and some tempera paint. I set up tables with supplies in the Atrium and invite any takers to make handmade cards for their honeys. This year, I’m bringing 100 pounds as we ran out way too soon last time. All photos: Mandy Mei
I create work that bridges the haptic and the virtual in order to change the world, one person at a time. In order to clarify this statement, I’d like to give you some context: I became a printmaker in college and it electrified me with the inks, the substrates, and the collaboration with the materials. Then there was the phenomenon of print as a social force: the legitimacy of the printed word and the power of the poster. I dove into all the processes I could, experimented with voice and began to find my way. The work I produced was diaristic and figurative but I could feel a centrifugal pull outwards, beyond my own needs. I pursued an MFA in Printmaking, only to find the department at my school in painful flux: the department head chose to shed a lot of equipment in order to make room for a proposed radio station and additional computers. It was a hard lesson: we as printmakers are the keepers of seemingly outdated technologies and sometimes struggle to prove …