inspiration
Things I Fancy: August 10
- A few years back I heard Steve Martin play music at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Ever since then I’ve been impressed by his range of talent. I didn’t have much time to read for fun while studying for the bar exam, but I did manage to read Steve Martin’s new novel, Object of Beauty. It was a delightful book made even better by the full-color reproductions of the artwork discussed in the book.
- The week of the bar exam I wanted to read a book that was light and hopefully that would make me laugh out loud. Luckily, after being on the waiting list for months, the library informed me that it was my turn to check out Tina Fey’s new book, Bossypants. It was the perfect antidote to the stressful week and easily satisfied my goal of making me laugh out loud.
- This week I whipped up a batch of sour cherry bam and slathered it over this easy bread. Delish!
- I saw these photographs today and they made me giggle. What can be better than a juxtaposition of vintage, jello, and deadly weapons?
Did anything strike your fancy this week? Please share in the comments below, I’m always looking for new sources of inspiration.
Things I Fancy: February 28
Sorry for the lack of posts this past week, most of the week I was down and out with the flu. I managed however, to collect a couple of items that stuck out through the fog of my sickness. I hope they strike your fancy too.
- Growing up my mom always carried around a day planner and her “book” kept our family organized. Over the course of my adult life, I’ve attempted many different versions of a planner. At this point, I have a collection of apps in my iPhone that I attempt to use for the various functions I would like a day planner to accomplish, but it’s clunky, scattered, and doesn’t totally fit my needs. This tutorial from iHanna about repurposing objects to create a custom day planner might just be the next method I attempt. (via Craft)
- For some reason I’ve always wanted a staghorn fern mounted on a wall in my apartment. Now thanks to Apartment Therapy I have instructions on how to create one. These instructions combined with some Wally Pockets would a very cool living wall.
- Lately I’ve been seeing jewelry tutorials that appear easy enough for me to attempt. This week another one popped up, a cute little necklace made from an old t-shirt. I pulled an old t-shirt out of my Goodwill pile and am going to attempt to make one of these this week.
Have you discovered anything this week that jumped out at you? Let me know below. I’m always looking for new sources of inspiration!
Things I Fancy: February 21
For much of this week San Francisco finally had to confront “winter.” Here are a couple of items that struck my fancy this week and kept me happy during the past week of rain:
- I recently was introduced to The Jealous Curator and this introduction has lead to another lady blog crush. Her blog is a collection of work, that in her words makes you think “Damn, I wish I thought of that.” This week she featured Tara Donovan whose installations made of common objects like buttons, styrofoam cups, and paper plates makes me jealous.
- The last few months I’ve been collecting a little bit of handmade jewelry but I’ve not attempted to make anything. I think these little string and paperclip earrings might be the perfect first attempt. (via Craft).
- Another blog that I regularly visit for art inspiration is my love for you. This week, Meighan featured Uri Korn’s new website. I got lost in the images on the site.
- Of course, my week would not be complete without coveting some sweet treat. This weekend I whipped up a batch of whole wheat chocolate chip skillet cookies and they were fantastic. The skillet cookie is perfect for those days when you crave a cookie, but don’t want to deal with shaping individual cookies (i.e. really lazy days). I ate these all weekend while finishing up a lovely little novel, The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova.
Have you discovered anything this week that jumped out at you? Let me know below. I’m always looking for new sources of inspiration!
Things I Fancy: February 7
Just a couple of things that have stuck with me this week:
- This week I discovered the work of Pete Eckert, who appears to live in my hometown, Sacramento, CA. Pete began to lose his sight at 28, but still lives the life as a visual artist. Artists Wanted created a fantastic 4-minute documentary on Pete and his work.
- I haven’t canned anything in almost a month, but these preserved lemons sound like just the canning project for this week.
- As a law student, I’ve been intently following the lastest antics of Jeff Koons. If you are unaware, he attempted to sue a San Francisco gallery, Park Life, for selling ballon dog bookends, claiming that they infringed on his famous balloon dog sculpture. Well, this time the little guy won, as Koons is no longer pursuing the lawsuit.
- I know that I’ve been on a scoutiegirl kick as of late, but I must share her post about creativity is not a stop-gap with you all this week. This post really resonated with me, because it goes to the core of what I am trying to achieve this year, to be creative day in and day out. To make demands on myself (and my creative self) to create something daily, even if that creation is something small like an iPhone photo or dinner. (As a side note, I’d never heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer prior to her post. He seems fascinating and I’ve added a book about him to my to-read list.)
Hope you all had a great week. Is there anything that struck your fancy this week? I’d love to hear.
Things I Fancy: January 24
- I thought about participating in Jim Goldstein’s Best Photos of 2010, but didn’t have enough photographs from last year that I loved. However, I’ve really enjoyed looking through a couple of these each day. My three favorites so far: Pat Ulrich Photography, Sudheendra Kadri Photography, and John Fujimagari.
- Julie is a fantastic photographer and she lost her wallet last week. She wrote this lovely letter to the person who now has her wallet. I hope that if I ever loose my wallet I can have this kind of perspective on it.
- The throw that I currently have on my couch is a blanket that I got as a Christmas present when I was probably 10. It really needs to be replaced. This tutorial from Daisy Jane seems like a quick and easy way to make a new colorful throw for my couch.
- This semester I’ve been working at home two days a week. I’ve noticed that I’ll get distracted and forget to eat until I’m ravished at about 3:30 p.m. As of today, I’m setting an alert to remind me to eat, one of the great food suggestions in this article from the Bold Italic.
Things I Fancy: January 10
Image via the Guardian
Things that are striking my fancy this week:
- I always have about 10 projects laying around that I have abandoned because I think that they are “not good enough” (not counting the projects I’ve sketched out but am scared to try because they will not be perfect). This perfectionism streak is something that I have been trying to work on and Tara’s post on Scoutie Girl this week about Perfectionism is a Process is now in my rotation to read when I’m headed down the perfectionist path.
- A few years back I discovered salted caramels and they are delicious. My Baking Addiction posted these Vanilla Bean Caramels with Fleur de Sel this morning and the next dinner party I go to I’m offering to bring them as a thank you (hint, hint).
- These Pac-Man snow ghosts popped up a couple times this week in my RSS reader and each time they appeared they made me giggle.
- This YouTube piece about Scott Schumann, aka, The Sartorialist, came across my RSS reader this morning. I had not heard of him before, but he’s an ex-fashion industry guy turned street photographer. I popped over to his blog and poked around for about 20 minutes and was really impressed with the images I saw. However, the reason I am sharing this is for a quote that he said during the YouTube piece: ”I just started doing [photography]… The way I do it is just the way I do it.” This really resonated with me as someone who has no traditional training and just figures things out as I go along.
- Finally, the image posted above is one of many of the gorgeous images that are part of a new book “The Ruins of Detroit” by Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre. The Guardian posted a gallery of images from this book and the images are a powerful voice to show the decay that the city has undergone over the last decade.
Things I Fancy: January 3
Things that are striking my fancy this week:
- As soon as I finish the stirrup socks that I mentioned last time, I’m making this adorable aviator-style knitted cap.
- This petal origami skirt is so adorable, but I don’t know if my sewing skills is good enough to figure out how to make it.
- This image above is from April 2010, when Banksy fever hit SF after he visited here promoting his movie Exit through the Gift Shop. I finally got around to watching it this week. If you haven’t checked out this film, add it to your short list. My cynical side has concluded that this is all a long hoax perpetrated by Banksy, but the film makes you think about who is an artist, what is art, when is art legitimate, and what is street art. Regardless of whether Banksy created a documentary or a commentary on street art, it is worth watching.
- Speaking of street art, I love this photo collage project by Fabian David. The artist set up a photo booth on the street and then created a wheat paste collage of the images on a wall.
- Finally, my dear friends at Lightbox SF have launched a different kind of 365 photography project, entitled Creative Exposures Photo Project. It’s all about capturing the raw inspiration all around you on a daily basis, opening your eyes and seeing the things that catch your eye.
Last Thursday Food/Drink Inspiration
Image from Smitten Kitchen
Over the last few days I’ve been thinking about what my personal, artistic, and professional goals will be for 2011. About a month ago, I started a file of blog posts that I wanted to consider when creating my 2011 projects and goals for my website (including this journal). One of the blog posts I tagged was a post written by my friend Genevieve over on SF Bay Area Etsy Street Team about finding a theme for your blog. This is a topic that I had discussed with her and Shelly during one of my Lightbox SF consultations, but I feel like I’ve never really carried it out to the extent that I should (even though I somehow get mentioned in her post).
For those of you that know me well, you know that I am slightly obsessed with food. While I have always enjoyed cooking and baking, during law school this passion has reached a new level. Cooking has come to be a creative endeavor that I can accomplish everyday. While I may not be able to pick up my SLR for several days at a time, each day I can create something not only delicious and nutritious, but something that challenges me creatively. While I was pondering what my theme for my blog really should be, I was perusing several of the cooking blogs that I frequent thinking about what I was going to cook for dinner. I then decided that maybe this was a component that I should be including in my theme, since cooking is such a central part of my life.
To that end, I’m going to test out if this topic fits in with the theme that I have developed for this year. To start, I’d like to share some of the cooking blogs that I frequent, not only for the recipes but because they have fantastic food photography.
First up is Deb of Smitten Kitchen. She combines beautiful images taken in her small NYC apartment with delicious recipes. While I hardly ever follow a recipe, I usually stick to 95% of Deb’s recipes and I’ve never been disappointed.
Image from The Pioneer Woman Cooks
Of course, no list of food photography blogs would be complete without mentioning Ree from The Pioneer Woman Cooks. To me, this woman’s life is crazy, she lives on a ranch in the middle of Oklahoma, gets up at the crack of dawn, teaches her kids at home, and somehow finds time to cook and create fantastic photo tutorials for all of her recipes. I’m not sure how she does it, but she’s a rock star. If that’s not enough street cred, she went head to head against Bobby Flay cooking Thanksgiving dinner and won.
Finally for baking, I regularly get ideas from Buns in My Oven and My Baking Addiction. Both of these sites I utilize not only as a jumping board for my own creations, but will often utilize their recipes almost in their entirety.
I hope you enjoy this new idea I’m testing out and as always please let me know what you think via comments below or via email.
Finals Week Inspiration
I just wanted to post a couple things that have helped keep me motivated as finals week approaches.
I’m loving these iPhone/iPad wallpapers available from Poolga, of course my two favorites involve an owl and a bike.
Speaking of owls, I keep trying to decide how to mix-and-match this 2011 Owl Calendar from My Owl Barn.
These stirrup socks that fit under boots are on my knitting list as soon as I’m done with finals and making Christmas presents, of course.
After reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer I’ve been wanting to send more letters and these cards are so dang cute.
Finally, I’ve been getting lots of photography inspiration from the Fraction Magazine Holiday Print Sale.
Hope you have a fantastic week!
Joni Sternbach
©Joni Sternbach
This week my inspiration post features Joni Sternbach. I first learned of Joni’s work via the 500 Photographers project. What makes Joni’s work unique to me, is the fact that she focuses on methods less commonly used in the digital age. All of the photographs I’ve chosen to feature with this post are part of her SurfLand series and are one-of-a-kind tintypes (thus the reverse lettering). All of the tintypes are made on location with a portable darkroom. To me these methods have a textural component that is impossible to create in the digital darkroom and creates an added layer of interest.
©Joni Sternbach
Joni currently lives in Brooklyn, NY and primarily photographs in areas close to her home. In addition to being a photographer Joni has been an Adjunct Instructor in Photography for more than 20 years and currently teaches wet collodion photography workshops with ICP and the Center for Alternative Photography in New York City.
Joni entered art school as a fine art major, but after dabbling in photography for a year and a half decided to change her major and has been working in the field of photography ever since. After art school she worked as a professional black and white printer and was able to print for Mary Ellen Mark, Dennis Stock, and Danny Lyon.
Joni’s work has evolved over the years. The past ten years Joni has been making landscape-based photographs, capturing landscapes, seascapes, and the human imprint on these areas. She uses both large format film and wet collodion, either as a tintype, ambrotype, or glass negative. Joni works in an intituve way, and doesn’t aim for a specific style. She has found that her more successful photographs have a minimal amount of information, with plenty of space for the eye to travel through the photograph.
The ocean is a huge inspiration for Joni. She has returned regularly to the same locations which has lead her to examine the land and sea juncture, a subject matter in a constant state of transition, with surfers playing a pivotal role. Joni is facinated by both the physical and poetic way that they reside on the seascape. She is inspired by the people that she meets on the beach and photographs and the lifestyle that they choose to live. As a city dweller, the idea of coming to the beach several times a day, sometimes just to look, seems impossible to Joni.
©Joni Sternbach
©Joni Sternbach
I hope that you are also inspired by Joni’s work. Please scoot over to her website to see all of her amazing photographs.
Shelly Kerry
Before meeting Shelly Kerry, of Em’s Studio, I don’t think I wore earrings for more than 10 years. But I love Shelly’s style (and it doesn’t hurt that she is a fantastic person) and over the course of getting to know her, I’ve learned more about her craft. This knowledge has made me appreciate the art of jewelry making and has translated into the beginnings of a handmade jewelry collection based on pieces by Shelly and other local artists.
©Shelly Kerry
Shelly grew up with really crafty women in her family and she can recall making projects with them during the summer months and vacations. Some of Shelly’s earliest memories are of spending days entertaining herself with a pencil and crayon, drawing and doodling on the floor of her living room.
She dabbled in many art forms before she fell in love with jewelry making. This love affair started when she realized that she could make jewelry better than a lot of the cheap pieces she was purchasing in chain stores. She learned by deconstructing pieces, taking them apart and figuring out how they were made. She then took questions to her jewelry maker friends and after taking a few classes, began selling pieces at local shows. For Shelly jewelry making satisfies her love of manipulating little things – twisting wires and playing with delicate pieces. Her style often leans towards big and raw, but there are always small, precious parts to each of her pieces. Her pieces often contain the juxtaposition of a raw, rough stone with a glitzy chain.
©Shelly Kerry
Shelly draws her inspiration from color and textures. Something as simple as the pattern on a dress or the color of an unknown plant are examples of items that have inspired a new line of pieces. She also takes 30 to 45 minutes each day to look through art and design blogs and magazines in order to get external inspiration. From personal experience, I am inspired regularly on Shelly’s ability to draw inspiration from the most unlikely places. She has the ability to keep her eyes and mind open to the possibility that anything could be inspirational. Another important aspect of being creative to Shelly is to live each day creatively, not tucking away things at 5 pm, but living every second of life as an opportunity to express yourself. She fosters this by surrounding herself with creative and supportive people and maintaining her home/studio in a visually and mentally stimulating way.
In addition to making beautiful jewelry she is one of the owners of Lightbox SF. Lightbox SF is designed to be a support system for emerging artists. They offer consulting services to these artists to assist them with things like marketing, public relations, social media, or line sheets. Their eventual goal is to create a workspace and gallery that will create a creative community for the resident artists. They also organize two art event series, The Crafty Hour and 200 Yards. The Crafty Hour is a combination of a craft show and happy hour, that features about a dozen artists who sale their wares right in the bar. While 200 Yards is a gallery show where all pieces have been created within 200 yards of the host location (yes, this is the upcoming show I am in).
Shelly is another fantastic creative person that I feel lucky to know and I hope you will take the time to investigate out her work.
Jill Allyn Stafford
I was really honored when Jill Allyn Stafford said that I could write a post about her art. I’ve known Jill for several years now and am lucky enough to have one of her pieces in my house (plus a little ATC card that sits in the corner of my mirror). Jill somehow has the time to be the artistic director of Vox Sacramento in addition to being a mom, an artist, and working full time as a legal assistant. What I admire most about Jill’s work is the way she utilizes negative space, which is something that I struggle with.
Jill began creating art in her mid-30′s. She started realizing that she had images in her head that she wanted to place on paper. Claiming that she had no natural talent for drawing or painting. Jill started by cutting images out of magazines using them to create a new story. Jill’s work has now evolved from using recognizable images, to tearing up paper and creating a piece based on colors and textures, to creating everything by hand and using images from photographs she’s taken.
Traditionally, Jill has focused on one image and using that created a piece that worked around that image. However, Jill’s latest work is inspired by her friend Jennifer Hoffmann, who died of breast cancer last year. From Jill’s description of Jennifer it sounds like she was an amazing woman and I can see why she has been the driving force in Jill’s work the past year. Jill describes Jennifer this way:
She found the strength to leave an unhappy marriage, met and married the man she was supposed to be with, and almost immediately discovered she had stage IV breast cancer. Her diagnosis didn’t deter her from living life completely and fully and with all the deepest love and affection she could have possibly wanted.
Lisa Congdon
Welcome to the last *new* feature on the re-designed journal. In this feature I will introduce you to artists whose work inspires me, makes me happy, and makes me want to be a better artist.
I first learned of Lisa Congdon through her A Collection a Day project. For the Collection a Day project, Lisa either draws, paints, or photographs a collection that exists in her home, studio, or mind. After stalking her Collection a Day project for a few weeks, I made the leap and checked out her art and illustration website.
Lisa got into illustration by accident. Before being approached by Chronicle Books to design stationary, her primary source of income was making art for shops and galleries. While she still makes art for these venues, she now has an agent to handle her illustration needs.
I totally adore Lisa’s style. She too was partially raised in Northern California and I was drawn to that fact that her work combines whimsy with natural elements, particularly animals and trees. Plus, she draws fantastic owls. Lisa’s has two primary styles: a more painterly style of animals and nature, and a colorful, graphic, flat style. She attempts to create a mood with her pieces, aiming for a balance of color and boldness with negative space. Lisa told me that when working on animal subjects, she attempts to paint their eyes perfectly, because that is where she connects with living things.
Like me, Lisa is a resident of the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco and draws much of her inspiration from the places that surround her. Lisa says “San Francisco is really bright and beautiful and filled with amazing art and creative people from cultures all over the world.” Like her I feel lucky to live in a city that provides abundant inspiration. She also is attracted to the nature that is present both right here in San Francisco and for miles surrounding the city.
After contacting Lisa I learned that in addition to being an awesome artist and illustrator she co-owns the cutest little shop and gallery in my neighborhood, Rare Device. They sell jewelry, design objects, housewares, books, and art. If you ever are in the ‘hood, you should check it out. I always leave the store wishing that I had more disposable income, because I want to own half the items in the store.
