Sometimes during the summer, the cool breeze come up from the river and carry their voices into my room cutting through the thickness of the heat. I can hear the creaking of the wooden rocking chairs on the porch; them, kissing their teeth, cracked lips curling and twisting, cleft tongues tricking every last drop of water over and into their mouths. Their feet tap the floorboards, going on like they're talking in code, but not so much talk today. I stop breathing for a moment and strain to lift my head to try to hear their voices. It's the only connection that I have with the outside now. Their stories lift me out of this room, out of this darkness. I close my eyes and listen hoping to hear one sentence, even a word that will break my mind to think of something else. I feel the roughness of the curtain as it brushes against my cheek. It carries with it a smoky sourness that rushes into my nostrils and stabs at my brain. That curtain was so pretty, so bright... so light. Whenever the summer breeze come into my room it would dance past these curtains and carry the scent of Jessamine with it. On some afternoons if I finished up early, I would take the long way home from the field, not too far from the willow that I seen since I was a little girl, to gather some more Jessanime to make my room smell pretty. Sometimes, I put a handful of them in a jar that was only for them, but if I collected a lot that day, I would take some down to the river with the curtains and rub some of it into the cloth . But it's been a long time since these curtains lit up the room. It's been months since I smelt the scent of that sweet Jessamine. I turn away and breathe into my pillow. The odor of my skin on the bed sheet that I lay on is one of the few things in this room that are familiar to me anymore. My body once stiff becomes tempered. It comforts me because it helps me remember us. I can smell his love. I feel the softness of his touch through his callused hands blackened by work, his skin hardened by the sun and soothed by my touch. My bones ache, my muscles are weak. My head falls back down to the pillow. One of the chairs on the porch scrapes against the wooden floor, and then I hear a shuffling of feet for a few steps.
Say something.
I open my eyes hoping that I will see his face again.
It's dark all the time now.

Above was my most recent homework assignment for my Fiction class. We had to create a written pastiche mimicking the voice of William Faulkner from his book, "As I Lay Dying." It was super challenging to say the least, but I enjoyed every bit of it. It's strange, but I'm beginning to apply my process of working on my drawings, and my illustrations towards my process of writing. And as I move forward, I believe the opposite will occur in which my writing and the stories and theories that I learn will influence my (visual) art and illustration. My instructor read a passage from Annie Dillard's, "The Writing Life," suggesting that,
"when you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner's pick, a wood-carver's gouge, a surgeon's probe. You weild it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year."1
What powerful words.
How awesome that this can be applied to other disciplines such as illustration and picture making. It's true, sometimes during my process of working it's important to truly let go and allow the act of drawing, the act of painting, the act of picture making to take over. It sounds very abstract, but it's possible. Consequently by doing this, I allow the piece to come to life, and I'm made aware of the kind of marks that I make, the colours that I use, the motifs that I design which are inherent to me, and to my work. This is one of the most important things that an illustrator can do which is to influence the way in which others see his/her work, by creating a oeuvre that stands apart from his or her peers; which when viewers look at it, they understand especially who created it, and how and why it is different from others in the same industry. The difficult thing is being patient and tenacious enough to make this happen.

1 Dillard, Annie. The Writing Life. Harper Perennial, 1989.

CUSTOM DESIGN Pro-KEDS

Here are the recent designs that I've completed for Pro Keds Royal Hi White Canvas Sneakers. They were done through Artsprojekt, which is an offshoot of Zazzle. This has been a mini dream of mine to work on a design for Pro-Keds specifically (I know that this might come off as an endorsement, but it's not meant to). The first time that I visited New York which was roughly about 10 years ago, I bought my first pair of Keds from a shop in Soho?... was it Soho?.. I can't remember, but I do recall that it was a pair of Pro-Keds (which I still have to this day and refuse to throw out), a white pair, hi-tops with some sort of custom designed motif on it that looked like the head of Marge Simpson repeated many times over.
'twas cool.
During that time I don't even think that I was even working steadily as a freelance illustrator, but just graduated from art college. I do remember thinking though, of how dope of an experience it would be to do something similar. Funny how 10 years literally flashed by - sheesh...
It's a bit of a challenge for me drawing images on sneakers primarily because I'm extremely picky about what I choose to wear. Sometimes I feel as though illustrations don't necessarily translate well onto T shirts.. and I feel that it's even more difficult to apply them onto footwear, which is why designing these sneakers were a challenge because I wanted to appease the illustrator part of me while still appealing to me as a consumer.

RAINY DAYS AND TUESDAYS...

The weather's ugly today, so I thought it would be fun to post this and inspire a different kind of attitude within myself and whoever reads this, before I begin my day.
Forecast: 35 degrees farenheit, or 2 degrees celsius, freezing rain.
Perfect.
said with sarcasm
I do a regular column for GQ Germany; this is the latest one called "Italo Style"... I sure wouldn't mind being in Italy right now. That said, strangely enough, the last time I went which was just over 2 years ago, the weather was much the same. We were in Rocchetta and drove in from Nice, France. We ate some pizza, pasta and wine, and then drove further into town to walk around (in the cold and rain). No pool, no sun, no bikinis or speedos, but it was gorgeous and romantically mediaeval.
Happy Tuesday!

THE SACRED IN THE MUNDANE

This is an appendix to the post that I wrote about 4 hours ago when the video beneath this paragraph was viewable from my studio. But now that I'm home, it's not playing. I don't get it, it's barely even 3 megs. The only thing that I can gather is that my connection speed is not so great. This is still new to me, working with video, but I'm having a slammin' time learning. Anyway, here's collage of some screen captures; it doesn't have the same impact, but hopefully it goes well with the post.

Here's a video that I took this morning on the way to my studio. It's a walk that I do quite frequently but oftentimes, I don't pay very much attention to what's around me.
It's interesting how newness can wane so quickly.
Nate Williams' lecture was last night at "The Society of Illustrators." It was a full house, standing room only, but worth the trek to the Upper East Side. He talked about his work, transitioning from an art director, in interactive design, to becoming a freelance illustrator, and his move from the west coast of the United States to Costa Rica and eventually settling in Argentina. One particular part of his talk that stayed with me (aside from the importance of integrating an RSS feed into one's website, and the spanish word cochina) was discovering newness within the mundane.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't necessarily attend lectures to gain cool tricks on how to improve upon my dexterity, or techniques with whatever artistic media. I feel like I can do that simply by researching it on my own, or enrolling in a workshop or class to teach me those skills. What I hope to gain instead is inspiration.
I'm not sure why, but I've always been the type of person who is encouraged and uplifted by others, particularly those of the underdog. Maybe it's because I come from a very modest upbringing, where my family never once lived beyond our means; my parents had to essentially compromise their own lives for the sake my brother, sister and mine (read Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, her fiction is based on real experiences, I'm sure...)
Although Nate included a lists of things to help us understand in a linear fashion, how he went about processing ideas for commissioned projects, I was more interested in those moments of when he spoke about the reasons which precipitated his move from the United States (to Argentina); those moments in between work, that he uses to apprise his artistic practice.
The sacred in the mundane.
The broken signs in my neigbourhood, the steam rising from the sidewalk grates, the dirty white teddy bear laying face down in the snow. Nate's right, if I just slow down a bit and open my eyes, I will see an entirely new world in front of me.

THE POND

Last night I took my first continuing education class in Fiction Writing 1. It was a pretty daunting experience, not because I was surrounded by a classroom of writers, but rather that I was trying something entirely different from what I have been used to. It's important for me as an illustrator, artist, and educator to continue to place myself in environments where I feel challenged (oftentimes it's very uncomfortable) both physically and mentally, because I believe that overall, these experiences will inform my visual work in various ways.
Having gone to art college and learned the vocabulary and some history assigned to a visual arts and design discipline, it's become almost second nature to me to be able to articulate my opinions about a certain drawing, painting, sculpture, video, or installation. But when it comes to creative writing, workshopping a piece, critiquing it feels very different.
I felt like I was on a game show with contestants who all understood the rules besides me.
The feeling was not so far off from performance anxiety.
Although I have not done much creative writing since I was 13 years old, it seems like a very different way of expressing myself. With visual art, I think the message can oftentimes be more convoluted, in that the images become symbols to which we as viewers must venture to recognize, or assign significance. The objects, colours, and/or the arrangement of both helps us to understand the message that is being communicated, whether linear, or experiential.
My main insecurity when it comes to sharing myself in the form of written or oral story (telling) spawns from the notion that more of myself will be revealed immediately because I am using a mode of expression which many of us use in our daily lives... words.
(which is contradictory since that's what I'm doing now... ala blogging... go figure...)
I'm sure that this is not necessarily the case, and that my perspective will certainly change along the way - I mean, it's only my first day of class, and so there's still a lot of learning to do.
Below is my first homework assignment. I chose to use the first two sentences from Amanda Davis' story "Fat Ladies Floated in the Sky Like Balloons" as a spring board for a free writing assignment.

Fat ladies floated in the sky like balloons.
That was the year we forgot our dreams and work, bewildered, muttering. (1) It had been years since either or them had gone back to the pond. Too much time had passed without having exchanged even a word, or a text, an email, or a phone call that it had become too awkward to be the first one to reach out through this silence. What could be said? They were kids back then; kids talk about stupid things... kids do stupid things... kids hope for stupid things.

The days at the pond were always magical. They would search for tadpoles, bare-footed, along the pond's edge; the large ones with malformed and bulbous heads where you could barely make out a face, not the tiny black ones that looked like dirty shadows in the water. The mud that squished out between their toes felt cool and gritty underneath the hot sun. They searched for twigs and branches to usher some of these tadpoles closer to them. It was fascinating to think that these creatures would transform into something completely different in just a matter of days.

Cam picked up the empty glass jar that they brought with them, filled it with some of the pond water, rocks, and mud and handed it over to Glen.
"Is this enough? They still need to swim around. How many can we put in there?" Cam asked.
"This stick's not working. They just keep on swimming away."
Glen grabbed the jar and poured out its contents and plunged it quickly beneath the surface of the pond. The tadpoles near his feet scattered, all except for one, which swam directly into the jar.
"Here, put some of this inside of it. We have to make it think that it's still in the pond, or else it's going to die." Cam scooped up some mud, rocks, and water and dumped it into the jar.
They both looked at the tadpole moving lazily in the water; back and forth and around as though it had always know this space
"Can I keep it tonight?" Glen asked. "Then maybe I can give it to you tomorrow. We should find stuff for it to eat... what do tadpoles eat?"
A few water striders glided along the surface of the water. Cam nodded and point to them. The boys entered further into the pond, Glen cupping one hand and skimming it along the surface.

* The above illustration is not pertinent to this entry - I just felt like posting it. It's a piece about autism that I did for MIT's Technology Review. Initially, I wanted the woods that the boy was facing towards to be dense and blurry, but then during the process of working on the final, that part of the image began to appear too heavy. Consequently, I decided to separate the trees and arrange them such that they still suggested a dense environment. The image following that rough sketch shows how the figure was rendered. I partially rendered him digitally and then added some shadow and pattern with watercolour and gouache. My attempt was to combine a graphic quality with an organic one. Finally, I scanned that the figure in and placed it onto the picture as a separate layer.

1 Davis, Amanda. "Fat Ladies Floated in the Sky Like Balloons." Circling The Drain. Harper Collins, 2009.

As of yesterday, Tutormill.com is up and running. It's an website where individuals from anywhere (in the world!) can log on and enroll in a course taught by various illustrators, such as Yuko Shimizu, Nathan Fox, Thomas Fuchs, Gary Taxali, and myself to name only a few. It's super cool because you can have access to illustrators who do not teach in whatever city you're living in. Check out. Props to these brain children Taxali, Fuchs, and Zimm.

11:23pm and this was my last scan which was layered onto an illustration that I finished for GQ Germany. I can't share it until it's published, but I definitely will later, either here or on my website.
Most likely the latter.
It was a funny piece.
Anyway, I'm signing off; fully exhausted. Although I did take a gym and dinner break today, I ploughed through most of the day and night.
If it was summertime I would probably step out and get a night cap. But with all the snow and more work lined up for tomorrow (a Monday deadline with sketch revisions and some finals due) it would be best that I stay in.
Enjoy your weekend... happy valentine's day... president's day... and lunar new year!