New Collage Project

CIMG0253.JPG, originally uploaded by synaptic.happenings.

Here are two books I made last semester.

concept

This is a digital sketch that describes the direction I want to take the rest of my life. Or at least my artwork for awhile.

i have no ideas!!

Art and books and prints and love

I read an article in print about Audrey Niffenegger's illustrated book The Three Incestuous Sisters. I had seen the book before, but I didn't know that originally it was an edition of handmade books with intaglio prints and letter press printed text. She also recently wrote a novel called The Time Traveler's Wife. It always excites me to see printmakers in general, but to see a printmaker who is also a book artist and a writer thrills me to no end. I love when the edges of different disciplines blur to create something no single medium could accomplish on its own. Her style is very similiar to my aesthetic tastes with a bit of macabre that I very much appreciate. I hope I am her someday :)

My job at the boys and girls club ends this week which means:
**time for art**
***focusing on my concepts for my artwork***
****pounding out my zine, Letters to Roark #1
*****writing*****

yay! hopefully I will have things to show here very soon! love to all.

Well, I fell out on color week, but tonight I am venturing out to downtown kalamazoo. I will document my color findings here in retribution.

I have been selected to be a coke pioneer. As of right now, this entails completing a number of challenges on their website. I am a little stumped for ideas on the second one, so suggestions are much welcomed! I only have iMovie to edit anything I might come up with, so tips are much loved too. Feel free to take on the challenges too. They promise much fun!

1) Something From Nothing

Turn an ordinary object into a work of art and document your process.

2) The Essence of You

Create a short film that captures the essence of you. Something you've done or want to do, a moment that changed you, or something that's just YOU.

I find myself most often at the edges of things. In the places where shapes blur and converge. I exist peripherally, absorbing and observing, recording and collecting. Someday my mind may spring a leak.

p.s. my new url is nikkitawishes.blogspot.com. I decided I shouldn't fling my last name about so much. I don't much like stalkers unless I am doing the stalking.

white (w)hen

Today I started training for my summer job at Boys and Girls Club of America as a digital arts instructor. I'm excited to integrate traditional hands on art techniques with the digital and to get creative with the kids. I don't know the curriculum or anything yet, but I'm sure it will be fun and challenging.

Most Shadows Easily Marked

Summer is here and with it a burst of new energy and desire to CREATE! I'm starting a new daily painting project which I'm going to be updating here as well as some other artwork, sketches, photos, lists, and anything else I find inspiring. Keep a lookout.



This is a two color reduction linocut on stonehenge grey.

Thought Collector

These are my active journals. I have a few more but...the one with the birds has a twin that belongs to my sister, Alicia. We keep random thoughts. I keep lists and dreams in it. The red one is an old typewriter manual i am converting into a sketch book. I am not living up to its full potential. The open one is an exercise book I found at the Found store in Ann Arbor. It's in German or something. The one with the picture is an italian journal I use for my poetry class. I love collecting thoughts and ideas and one notebook is never enough!



My handmade book entitled "Reverie."



souls/ seeking collison/ reaching for/ a trace

"YOUR FRIENDSHIP IS LIKE A KOOL-AID STAIN ON MY FAVORITE KEDS. YOU ARE ALWAYS THERE TO REMIND ME THAT I AM A FUCK-UP"

Ty Ennis, mixed media on paper, 2005 (tyennis.com)

Simulacrum

The space around me
Oozing thick marmalade
A pungent stain you claimed for yourself

Looming white bigger than you then
How did you win?

You overcame it—me
Seeping sharply like always
Just
Sliding
Past.

If you fill me, Why
Am I empty?

Though you mar me
I tell you
I feel nothing.

You said if I tipped it
I would see everything better
But I can’t make anything of



This positive void—



The glass is cloudy,
The liquid tepid.

There are no maps
You left only a blotch and
These arginine vessels
Too hollow for comfort.

I find that my shadow becomes me. I am more the shadow than my shadow self.



words i like:
meloncholy
buoyed
unquiet
unnacountable
distinguish
slumbers
temporal
convivial
slender
awake
stillness
interplanetary
cortlandt
immediacy
finality
subserviance
eloquent
conspicuous
unfinished
pugnacious
metallic
seclusion
seeking
paralell
vanished
fastidious
submission
allude
sacred
transgressive
ridges
divinity
obsequious
sanguine
bones
mordant