Holla at a Balla

So after my show at UC Riverside's Spring Splash, I was in a bit of a rut art-wise. I went from racing to get my magazine sloths finished in a van headed for campus to twiddling my thumbs in my messy studio. Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego sent me an email (no, not personally, but as part of their mailing list) about a showcase of artists under 25. I figured this was up my alley because I am an artist and under 25 (duh). I also figured strategically speaking I had a good shot at placing since I make large scale sculptures that tend to make a big statement even if they are kinda shoddy. Not that I intended to make a shoddy sculpture, but a large clumsy sculpture will be more interesting to look at than a 2-D clumsy drawing. (Not that I intended to make a clumsy sculpture.) I'm really not getting myself anywhere, am I?

Flyer for the Greedy Organ Contest

So the theme of the contest was "The Greedy Organ", which according to MCASD is our eye. Being Lori, I decided to make a cute, but creepy character out of garbage and call it good. Here's my entry in action at the showcase.

So I left out a major part of this story - Eeerrrrr REWIND. In order to be one of the final finalists, I needed to be in the top three as determined by voting on Facebook. I'm not one to ask people to do things for me. I'm not one to really like talking about my art (it makes me sweaty). My name on Facebook certainly isn't my real name to minimize how many bozos I'm friends with. You get the drift, voting on FB wasn't really up my alley, but when you want something, you want something. I campaigned via FB, text, email, twitter and in person arm twisting. I campaigned like a fiend. I got my mom involved and she got her MK ladies involved. I have to say, I actually can't believe how much support I got. I really can't. It was overwhelming how hard everyone rooted for me and I don't even know how to properly say thank you. So if you're reading this- thank you. For reals and from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

With the help from everyone I am within four degrees of knowing, I made it to the top three finalists. From there, a panel within MCASD placed the final three. And holla at a balla because I was named the

Spring Splashed

To dream the dream

Herro,

So I've been working a lot on my trees for Spring Splash. Here's a look at one of my trees in progress:

My tree as an adolescent.

It's been nice to get back into "work mode". I feel like I'm working on my senior thesis again especially when I bring Kapu and he assumes this position:

My constant companion at his finest.

I brought his old bed to my new studio so he spends most of his time sleeping under the desk while I work away. I forget he's there until I hear him sigh out of boredom. Such a cheeky little one.

In other news, all I can think about is having a booth at the North Park Farmer's Market and Ray at Night so I've been working on stuff to sell on my Etsy. Here's a peak at some of the prints I just pulled.

"Woodland Teaparty" and "Owl and the Pussycat"

what's new pussy cat

It's been a while. I have a book full excuses as to why I've been AWOL and I just typed all of them out, reread them, and deleted about 600 paragraphs of whining.

Here's what's good kitty:

-I am going to be showing my polar bear, dodo and to be made tree of sloths at the big UC Riverside Spring music festival.
-Allie and I started a craft club. "Club" might be a misleading term as there are only two members, but whatever.


When I was working on my thesis show "Disposable" I'd get really stressed about how much stuff I had to do and would draw out maps of my show to calm myself down. Bill saw one of the maps and really liked it and told me to save all the maps. I never really thought of the shitty drawings and notes scribbled down as having any type of value aside from settling me down, but I generally think Bill knows what he's talking about so I'll share my most current map.

General plan for Spring Splash

Getting ready for Spring Splash, as you may be able to read, means repairing the polar bear. His arm has been basically hanging on by a thread of hot glue since his last move from school to our living room. So two nights ago I did some major surgery.

No, the polar bear is not walking like an Egyptian; his arm fell off completely on the way to the O.R. Clearly Kapu is concerned.

Good as new and back to his perch next to the couch.

As I mentioned earlier, aside from working on my sculptures, I've also been crafting with Allie. Here's the most recent project we worked on.

Hint: the craft is the pillow with words on it.

I guess Craft Club is easier to say than "shit I pinned on my pinterest months ago and finally got around to making". Here's the tutorial we got the idea from. The words are from Gravy Train's song "Sippin' 40z"

Sore legs and marketing experiments

I started my dog walking job this week and I have to say, I really really like it. Yesterday, I walked about 15 miles (including my walks with Kapu) and boy I was beat. My legs are a little sore today, but it feels good to get paid to exercise and hang out with pooches all day. I haven't been too crafty as I've been pretty fucking tired this week. But I did post two friends today on my Etsy:

and

All this Valentine's Day crafting has put the holiday on my radar more than it typically would be. I think that it's been a good thing so far as I'm seeing Valentine's Day as a marketing occasion not an excuse to spend a day in February eating and boozing. (Well okay I probably will spend February 14 snacking on ice cream and sipping wine from the bottle, but only because that's how I spend most my evenings, not because I'm single and probably will be for a long ass time and it's likely that I will go to my grave alone and if I'm really lucky I'll be such a bad hoarder that TLC will call me to schedule taping.) So clearly Valentine's Day is no big deal. 

On an unrelated note, I purchased a showcase on Etsy and got the first sale in my new shop. Which is encouraging as it was exactly one week after I opened my shop and I read somewhere that the average amount of time it takes for a shops first item to sell is 23 days. I'll go ahead and give myself a gold star on that one. 

My final order of business is that I am going to make 12 V-day dinos each a different color and post them every hour for 12 hours as an experiment. I'll post findings shortly.

Almost at the ten item mark!

Today I posted these little guys:

I've got some good stuff brewing that I will share later, but for now I have to go walk some pooches!

So I posted two new pals on my Etsy:

 

and

Pretty cute, huh? I also started my new job as a dog walker (WAHOO! EMPLOYMENT!!) which was pretty awesome despite the poopy weather and eating shit on the wet pavement. The dogs were cute, my boss is nice, and I got to work on my projects before and after walking. Oh yeah and I got mad exercise. So much good stuff. Here's a peak at one of my projects:

He's a little kitty picking up buttons!