Events this weekend in New Orleans

This weekend I’ll be doing a couple of holiday markets around town. Both events are free and open to the public, so please stop by, say hello and check out all of the amazing work created by artists and craftsfolk here in New Orleans.

On Saturday, from 11-6, find me at the Avant Garden at the Joan Mitchell Center, 2275 Bayou Road. I’ll be there with Miniature Baby Elephant and all of my paper goods. SIFT, the interdisciplinary arts organization I recently founded with artist Angela Driscoll, will also be at the Avant Garden. Stop by to say hello and make a pamphlet book from SIFT to take home.

On Sunday, you can find me at the Arts Market at Palmer Park, from 10:00 to 4:00. The market is Uptown, on the corner of S. Carrolton and S. Claiborne avenues.

From Kettle to Miniature Baby Elephant

It's been exciting to reprint Miniature Baby Elephant in an edition large enough to send out into the world.  I've always been so fond of the little guy and I'm pleased that his wee adventure across the breakfast table is making other people happy too.

I thought it'd be nice to share some of the early development of the story. It all came out of a sequence and narrative workshop led by Mandy Dunn Sampson. She had asked everyone to bring an object with them and I brought a blue kettle that I'd recently found in The Free Pile in our grad student lounge. I hadn't seen the elephant in it then, but now I can't look at it without spying pachyderm.

We started with a timed exercise, listing ideas our objects made us think of. The following was my list:

1. milk cow

2. manufacturing plant mishap

3. little mouse falls in milk pail/creamer jug

4. swan bite

5. cooking in NOLA kitchen

6. thrift store find that came to you from family (i.e. was in family, then not and found by descendant in shop, out of context of family)

7. haywire farm morning

8. shipwreck! Things encountered while floating in the ocean on makeshift raft...like hippos...non-ocean things

9. quiet morning, making tea and English muffin

10. magic soup

11. post war Japan

12. house where crazy lady keeps everything upside down

13. foray around rings of Saturn or Jupiter

14. miniature baby elephant mistakes upside-down kettle for mother

15. digging a hole (or many holes!)

16. infectious color...spreads onto everything like disease

17. searching for lid

There are a few things on here that I couldn't try to explain how my brain got to (Saturn? Jupiter?). Later it was entertaining to start putting some of the ideas together. In the photo below, you can see a quick sketch of the miniature baby elephant circling Jupiter on a flying rocket amusement park ride. 

After our list-making time was up, we developed three of our ideas into short narratives. I made a go at a little mouse falling into a creamer after a shipwreck and infectious color before trying miniature baby elephant. The sequence of sketches on the left page below are the first development of the story.

I liked the idea enough to keep developing it, sketching out the narrative and trying to decide what the miniature baby elephant encounters along the way. I really wanted to include a honey bear, but ultimately decided that it might introduce too strong of another character. I also tried a few different approaches to point of view and thinking about how heavy the little guy is.

One of my favorite little drawings didn't end up making it in the book at all. I can't actually recall why I left it out, but I think it had to do with maintaining pace in the sequence of images and balancing the front and back covers in their minimal simplicity. Part of that simple approach to the cover was a direct result of struggling for a title. Despite plenty of brainstorming sessions with friends and colleagues, I wasn't ever able to come up with a title I liked. So when it was time to go to press, I just left the title off and kept referring to the book as I had been: "Miniature Baby Elephant." 

Nevertheless, this sweet little sketch is just a teeny thing in a corner of a page of my sketchbook, no bigger than two inches. I love the little sugar cube he's standing on to reach up high enough to nuzzle the kettle's spout. Maybe I'll develop this into a postcard or small print. I'm so fond of it, I'd love for it to have a life outside the pages of my sketchbook.

Preparing for World Domination

I'm not sure how much longer I can hold grad school accountable for the scattered breakdowns that have appeared in my life, but it definitely got in the way of attempting any regular posts to this blog. Fortunately, we're all done with that chapter and can start picking up on some of the things that fell to the wayside, like this blog.

With so much to share, it's a little tough deciding what to start back up with. One of the most exciting new endeavors is SIFT, which is a new multidisciplinary arts organization that the ever talented Angela Driscoll and I have founded. Here's our mission:

SIFT explores the intersections where sequence, image, form, and text converge. Starting from the book arts and radiating outward, our aim is to facilitate exploration and dialogue of interdisciplinary arts. Our objective is to provide educational, technical, and creative resources, and to facilitate workshops, events, exhibitions, and opportunities for artists and writers that engage the diverse audiences and communities in New Orleans.

SIFT at the New Orleans Book Fair

Making pamphlet books

We rolled out at the New Orleans Book Fair, which was held the first weekend of November. We were offering a free bookmaking activity at our table, as well as some letterpress printed postcards and blank notebooks for sale to fundraise for future programming, which will include an evening of artist lectures and an exhibition in the early spring.

Lovely, lovely wood type

Printing on the Vandercook

Printed postcards, waiting to be cut down

I've been dreaming of starting a book arts organization in New Orleans since I was an undergrad, so at least ten years. It's very exciting to be at the point where we're nurturing our fledgeling organization. Although SIFT does not follow exactly in the mold of some of the more established centers for book arts, I'm super excited to carry on aspects of the established model, while embracing as wide a vision as possible of art that engages sequence, image, form, and text.