Pop-ups

Since my visit to Ingrid Siliakus' studio, I have been obsessed with pop-ups. Here are some examples:

This was a graduation card for my cousin, my first original design! Pop up naturally lends itself to steps and pillars, which seems appropriate for graduation. My aunt loved it so much that she commissioned a card for a friend of theirs who was also graduating and going to Duke University on a baseball scholarship. It only took something ridiculous like three months to get 'er done, but finally, this resulted. Here is my original design sketch and the final product:

The magic of pop-ups is all on the inside, but if you make a card, you gotta have something on the outside that entices you to open it. So I put this on the front.

My favorite part of this card is actually the baseball player silhouette, which I made myself, starting from this drawing and using a little Photoshop magic:

This last one is simple, but was equally fun to make. I left lots of room on the base for everyone in the office to sign this card to our departing boss.

Takeoff!

Remember when I told you I wanted to jump in this balloon? (If you don't, click here and you can read all about it.) Well. After months (years?) of manifesting it, my day job has changed! I am now working just 20 hours a week, which is a huge blessing. I am humbled and grateful and hopeful that I can do this right.

What this means: more time in the studio, working to make money in the art world! This announcement seems appropriate considering this is my 200th blog post.

Let's see what this adventure brings! Thanks for being there with me as my support team. xo

Art in Europe, Part I: The Paintings

I have so much to tell you. So much, in fact, that I'm divvying up this post into three posts.

I just returned from a trip to Europe! I started in Vienna, Austria, where I met my mom for five days, who is traveling around the continent for 2½ months, viewing art, music, and literature related sights she's always dreamed of.  There we visited the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Belvedere Palace museum over three days. After we said goodbye, she headed south to Italy, and I flew north, to Amsterdam, Netherlands, where I spent a day at the Rijksmuseum, had a lesson with a local artist, and visited the former home of Rembrandt van Rijn.

In sum, I am a changed person. Humbled, inspired, excited, and so very grateful.  Let me show you what I saw.

We spent two full days at the Kunsthistorisches. It was huge, and full of famous things. All we did was look at the paintings. Here were my highlights:

Pieter Breugel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow, 1565

There was a whole room devoted to a significant collection of Breugel's work, and I remember liking this picture when I learned about it in my very first art history class in 2013. Breugel painted a series of "season" paintings, and this one represents winter. Winter landscapes were not a thing at that point. Breugel was the first to paint such a scene.  We spent two hours in this one room, as there were so many other great paintings in there. To get a better sense of this room, you can actually see it in a movie called Museum Hours, available to stream on Netflix. This movie was a great introduction to the museum before I saw it for myself. (Of course, it is no substitute for being there in person!)

This is the Breugel room.

This painting (below) caught us off guard in terms of how much it interested us: Ecce Homo, painted by Titian, 1543. It is huge (each person in the painting is at least the size of a real human), and there is so much going on that you don't even notice until you sit in front of it for 15 minutes at least. The audio guide helped us come to love this piece. 

We knew Vermeer's The Art of Painting (1665-1668) was somewhere in the museum. We found it tucked away in a dark and quiet corner, almost as the painting itself suggests. I was surprised to hear that Vermeer was not famous for a couple centuries! Now, only 35 pieces of his work are known, and very little is known about the artist himself. This painting is one of the earliest to depict an artist at work in his space.

A real highlight was seeing this beauty in person. I've known this painting for years while knowing nothing about it. There are so many interesting things to say about it! It's called Madonna in the Meadow, painted by Raphael in 1505-1506. Everything in that period of painting had to do with harmony: how the humans were depicted (round and healthy), composition (note the triangle of the three figures repeated in the triangle of the mountains behind them), etc. This is also one of the first times Mary was depicted outside rather than inside or enthroned. My favorite part, which you can hardly see in this picture here, are the gold highlights. Raphael signed the portrait in gold paint to look like embroidery in the edge of her collar. 

I believe that I looked at every painting on that floor of the museum, and in total I counted three paintings by women! I was so relieved to see them. Sofonisba Anguissola was one of the first renowned women painters documented in art history. She was born around 1532 and lived a very long life. This small self-portrait was done when she was quite young, in 1554. She is a painter worth knowing about. Here is a link to her Wikipedia page.

Tiny, but really great.

Two other paintings by women were this one, by Dutch painter Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), and there was a huge painting of Marie Antoinette, by French painter Louise Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun (1755-1842), and my photo of it is not worth showing!

Mom loved the Caravaggio room.

This was another painting I'd studied in art history, called Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery at Brussels, ca. 1651, by David Teniers. 

And here is one of the rooms at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

The museum itself is quite a beaut, built for the very purpose of housing the art within.

Can you believe that was all just one museum? Another day we visited the Belvedere Palace museum, where we spent at least a full hour looking at about ten paintings by Gustav Klimt. My mom is so well-read in the history of the humanities, plus she trained for a year to be an art museum docent, that this hour was possibly the best of the trip. We completed geeked out! We discussed subject, interpretation, style, context, and emotion of each painting. To learn that he finally found his style, the thing that made him famous, only in his 40s, was encouraging and inspiring. It was these later works that have made him a permanent fixture in the story of art history. I've never loved Klimt's work, but after this short but rich visit, I at least understand him better and appreciate his work all the more.

Gustav Klimt, The Kiss, 1907-1908

 Gustav Klimt, Fritza Riedler, 1906

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl (unfinished), 1917-18

My time in Amsterdam is elaborated on more in the next two posts, but during my visit to the Rijksmuseum, I got to see some moving pieces. Besides the Rembrandts, which you'll read about below, I saw Vermeer's The Milkmaid (ca. 1657-58), which was quite small. I loved the audio guide's description of why this painting is so special--much of it is to do with the attention to detail and its composition. Right above her upper hand, there is an actual pin hole in the canvas, which served as Vermeer's vanishing point. The details around the figure, such as the shadow under the nail in the wall, and the Delftware tiles that serve as a baseboard along the floor, add visual interest. Another cool thing is that X-ray pictures of this painting have shown that Vermeer originally painted a map on the wall behind the figure, but then painted over it to strengthen the composition. 

I visited this museum on a Saturday and it was very busy. Here is Rembrandt's The Night Watch (mentioned again in the post below), and the constant group that surrounded it:

I actually saw a Youtube video of President Obama getting to view this painting in 2014, which I found helped me be more patient with the fact that I didn't get to see it without the throngs of people in front.

To end this post, it seems appropriate to share my favorite piece in the Rijksmuseum. Winter Landscape with Skaters, painted circa 1608 by Dutch painter Hendrick Avercamp. 

One of the information sheets near the painting said this: "Avercamp specialized in winter landscapes. This scene on the ice is one of his earliest and most elaborate pictures. The artist chose a high vantage point overlooking a frozen river teeming with figures at play or work. With his panoramic views and anecdotal style, Avercamp was following the Flemish tradition, specifically that of Pieter Bruegel."

And we've come full circle!

(To read more and see more photos, see my mom's blog post about our time in Vienna.)

Art in Europe, Part II: Ingrid Siliakus

As I planned my trip to Vienna and Amsterdam, the fact quickly surfaced that it was going to be an "art trip."  As you know, I was planning to spend some significant time in art museums, but also I wanted to make art and talk about art-making. The idea solidified in March when my stepmom sent me this link:

https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/ingrid-siliakus

What????? I asked myself in wonderment. Before you read this blog any further, I implore you to click on that link and be amazed by Ingrid Siliakus' paper architecture work.  Even after seeing it in person and understanding how it works, I am no less amazed. Here is a sample:

Turns out, Ingrid is from Amsterdam. So, emboldened by my good luck contacting working artists for the paper I wrote for my art history class this spring, I emailed her. And she wrote back. In no time, we had arranged to get together when I would be in Amsterdam in late May.

Ingrid was a delightful host and teacher. It turns out we have a lot in common and we got along famously. She asked me what I wanted to learn, and I was able to articulate my love for design and detailed precision. She showed me not only how to cut, score, and fold 3-dimensional designs from just one sheet of paper, but how to design such a thing. Even with her tips, the process can get confusing, but I think it is just a matter of practice. Here are some photos from our time together:

Ingrid's in-home studio includes a flat file, two laser cutters, and an air filter/ventilator. This small space is where all the magic happens.

Ingrid teaches at the local school for art and design, so she shared one of the designs with me that she uses there:

The pen-like tool on the right is what Ingrid called a stylus. I was so excited to learn about it--it will change my life in terms of scoring. Up till now, I've been using only a bone-folder, which is a wonderous tool in itself, but not quite right for this task. That's a little like using a butter knife when really you need a flat-head screwdriver. Upon my return to the States, I immediately purchased two, and discovered that they're also called scribers. They're a print-making tool.

Then we looked at (scrutinized!) some of her other prototypes and I was able to ask all the questions I could think of. 

Spending this time with Ingrid made my visit to Amsterdam so rich! I am so thankful for the opportunity I had to learn from her.

Art in Europe, Part III: Rembrandt

When my mom and I visited the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, there were three self-portraits by Rembrandt van Rijn, displayed on the same wall, all in a row. The first one I ever saw was in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh two years ago, and another just last week in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.  Rembrandt is famous for these portraits because he painted (or etched) so many over his lifetime, representing the various stages of human life and showing his ability to paint all different types of facial expressions and skin. Painting skin is something that takes skill, let me tell you. I have yet to be successful in such an endeavor. 

Here is the self-portrait I saw in Amsterdam, entitled Self-Portrait As Apostle Paul, painted in 1661 (or you can click here to see a sampling of his other self-portraits):

The Rijksmuseum has a large collection of other famous works by this artist. Before I went there, I never really felt that connected to Rembrandt. I understood that he did things that were special and important in terms of art-making, but he was just one of many. But now that I've seen so many works of his, and visited his house, now a museum, I am newly in awe.

The three Rembrandt paintings I spent the most time with in the Rijksmuseum were:

The Jewish Bride, ca. 1667

The Syndics of the Amsterdam Drapers' Guild, known as the ‘Sampling Officials,’ 1662

The Night Watch, 1664

Rather than go on an on about my personal experience with these paintings, I want to tell you that the Rijksmuseum experience was really great. Technology is being utilized to make museum visits all the better. The audio guide or (free) app that accompanies these paintings and many more of the works in the museum is what made my time with them so rich and meaningful. You've probably heard this before, not only from me about my own work, but from others: seeing an artwork in person is no comparison to the pictures of it, whether in books or online. Like I said, it is the experience of seeing these pieces in person that makes me feel like I have a relationship with them. I understand them and the artist so much better now.

At the risk of writing a (too?) lengthy post, let me tell you about a few more things, Rembrandt-related. 

After seeing these paintings, I visited Rembrandthuis, where Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam during the height of his career as a sought-after artist. 

The house was completed devoted to art. Sure, there was a kitchen and a place for him to sleep, but otherwise, here were the rooms: 

• an entry room and a separate gallery for his patrons and buyers to come view/buy art
• a small office in order to keep his papers in order
• a beautiful, large, north-facing studio
• a room of curiosities where he kept things like busts or statues of feet or hands, or stuffed alligators or skeletons of fish or coins or feathers or costumes or armor
• a separate studio where he taught his students, and 
• a room for etching or print-making

During my visit, I got to see a demonstration on etching/print-making, and another about how he would have made paint. (Rembrandt achieved all he did with just 13 paint colors!)

Finally, as I stepped onto the top floor, where the teaching studio was, a woman invited me to participate in a free art workshop in which we would study light and dark. I didn't hesitate! For the next hour and a half, I and 6 other "students" used one of three mediums (graphite, a red drawing medium similar to conti, and something completely new to me, bistre) to copy the forms and shapes of an upside down image she provided. She encouraged me to try the new medium, which I thought would be a great challenge.

At some point, the profound fact occurred to me that I was spending time in the studio of a great 17th century artist, painting, doing an exercise he himself might have had his students do. Was this real?

Here's how my piece stood by the end, before we presented them to the rest of the class:

Then, the reveal! Flip them over and all of a sudden, there's a scene!  All of ours were laid out, and the teacher talked us through what we had learned.

I got so much more than I'd bargained for at the Rembrandthuis. Thanks to that, to the museum, and to these two videos, I now feel a strong connection to Rembrandt van Rijn.

1. Flash Mob acts out Rembrandt's The Night Watch in a mall (1½ minutes)

2. Simon Schama's documentary about Rembrandt's late works (1 hour)