Moth Screenprint

Last Wednesday I made use of my summer membership to Studio 2 3 and completed a 2-color screenprint! I really enjoyed using the studio, hanging out with other printmakers and seeing them create their artwork while I created mine. I am now inspired to make more screenprint editions. I enjoy the process because I can paint with ink directly onto a sheet of mylar or acetate and then create the screen using the drawing. I might post a little step-by-step to show you what I mean for further editions.

Here is the completed screenprint! I used gold and brown ink. I actually editioned two versions. The first version is on the left, and it shows my original intended image. Version #2 on the right shows a slightly off-register image - I printed the brown slightly to the left of the gold moth. You can see it a little better in the detail photo. I made an edition of 29 for Version #1, and then halfway through I decided I liked how it appeared off-register because it made the moth look more like it was fluttering in motion. Version #2 has 20 copies.

 

This past Saturday was The Golden Moth Release Party at the Blue Elephant. It went well! I was very nervous before the party, even though most people who came were friends who I had no reason to be nervous over. But it was the first time I publicly released the deck for other people to take home with them, so there is always some anxiety before presenting my artwork to an audience. I will post photos and write about the event in more detail very soon.

Today I went to the post office and sent off 24 packages! More will keep rolling through the postal system throughout this week and next. Whew! I can't believe that it's really going out into the world! I feel relieved, as if I am finally coming to the end of the road. But I know that putting this deck out into the world is just the beginning. It is a way of reaching out to others, and I don't know what other surprises await me. While the process has been difficult in some ways, it has taught me a LOT. I plan to write more about what I learned from it all, and also share some advice for people who want to start their own Kickstarter campaigns.

That's all for now. More soon, I promise.

love,
aijung

Getting Over the Hump

I just want to update people after that negative post I left the other day. I am feeling better. I am scheduled to receive my new corner-rounder today, so Moth Deck production should be in full swing again soon.

On Tuesday I had another freak-out and felt like crap again. I bicycled in the rain to a health-food store and bought some herbal and homeopathic supplements to help with anxiety, and I started to take my B-complex vitamin again. I am a vegetarian, and lately I wonder if I'm not getting the right kind of nutrition that my body needs. I think that my physical state is affecting my mental state, and vice versa. This project has been stressful, but so is most anything to me. I have been an anxious person all my life, and I need to find healthy ways to release anxiety. Usually, making art helps me to do that, but this time it actually contributes to my stress. As I get older, I notice that my metabolism is also slowing down more too. I need to work harder to maintain my health. I am trying to attend more yoga and exercise classes at the YMCA, and it does help. I also have to pay attention to my diet and make sure I'm getting enough protein, B-vitamins, and amino acids. I am even considering eating a little bit of meat until I can figure out how to best maintain my health on a vegetarian diet.

On the bright side, yesterday I ate as much good stuff as I could stuff in my system - bee pollen, a protein-shake, salad, eggs, and anti-stress supplements. I did feel better, and I went into the studio and finished the 2-color screenprint which is the last reward I needed to finish for the Golden Moth project! I bought a summer membership to Studio 2 3, and I really enjoy using the studio. It's nice to be around other printmakers to get artistic input, advice, and inspiration. I will post pics of the screenprint very soon.

Now I have a lot to do to get ready for the Release Party at Blue Elephant this Saturday. Time to get off the computer and start working!

One of those days...

***July 31st, 2012 - Afterthoughts:
I considered deleting this post because it is rather depressing and pessimistic. But I decided to keep it after talking with my boyfriend. He said, "Well, it is a chronicle, isn't it?" And I realized why I wanted to post about it in the first place. I did want to share my feelings of hopelessness at that moment. Because feelings like that are very normal for a struggling artist, and for any human being! Those kinds of thoughts drift in and out of my life, at times consuming me, at times feeling as far away as a mirage. So I'm keeping the post to attest that I don't always feel positive about what I'm doing. But I keep on going anyway, and eventually come out of it.***

It started last night. The feelings of anxiety and of being totally overwhelmed by the Golden Moth project. It gave me weird dreams last night. And then I woke up to find that I had problems with the corner-rounder. The blade seems to be getting dull and it doesn't cut the way it used to. Then it all spiralled out of control as I become engulfed in negativity and hysteria. My eyelids are all pink and raw from the tears. I haven't shared much about how hard this process has been for me. I know I should just feel lucky and excited to be working on this project and the fact that it was funded through Kickstarter, but it has been DIFFICULT the whole way through. Like a birthing process, the baby just ain't popping out without a hitch. There have been setbacks and things that I should've done better, ways I should've worked faster or harder. There have been many hours where I whiled away the hours aimlessly on the internet, procrastinating and filled with anxiety because I couldn't face this project head-on. Times sitting at my drawing table with pen in hand and feeling like art is the hardest thing in the world to do. There have been screams. And there have been tears.

For some reason I just snapped this morning. I've been working on assembling the card decks for about two weeks straight. I've had lots of people come over to help, which has been a blessing and helped keep me in a good mood. But the assembly is simply tedious. When will it end? When will I ever finish? There have been little setbacks in almost every step of this process. Things I just couldn't have forseen. Things that take time to fix or figure out. I am tired from the hundreds of hours of working on this project.

I feel like it is all carving a place inside me, digging a depth of emotion and labor and questioning. The bigger question is: "Why do I make art at all? What has it brought me?" I guess you could say I'm treading into the zone of despair. I just turned 30 a few days ago. Three decades of life gone by, and here I am poor as ever and making things that 99.9999% of the population doesn't care about. For some reason, I care. I wish I was born with a head for math or computers or science. Subjects considered useful in our world and especially in our country, because the American government doesn't give a goddamn about arts or culture. Why am I toiling away at this? Why can't I just get a normal job and live a cushy life and eat out whenever I want to? Own a car and a house and go on vacations? And just do art as a hobby? Why do I feel that what I do is important in some way and actually contributes or uplifts anyone in this world?

To answer that last question - some people have told me it does. More than a handful. And to me it's the most fulfilling thing I can do with my time and my life. Because I do love it. I wanted to be an artist ever since I was old enough to draw. Also, I'm just not good at anything else. I'm hopelessly illogical and stubborn, even idiotic at times. It took me until my twenties to feel comfortable pumping gas and shopping for clothes. I have been so incredibly awkward and dreamy my entire life that I have had to work on life skills that most people were capable of in their teens. It doesn't help that I also look ten years younger than my actual age. Most people guess I am in my early twenties. Yes, I do look young physically. But the worst part is that I also act like I'm in my early twenties - wandering around with not a clue as to how I am going to make it in this world.

Sometimes I just feel like giving up. I'm not sure exactly what I'd do if I did. Right now I feel like Atreyu in The Never-Ending Story, a movie I used to love watching as a kid. I feel like I'm in the part where Atreyu is in the Swamp of Sadness. He's slogging through the mud and it's getting deeper and deeper and Artax, his beloved horse, doesn't want to go on anymore and gets swallowed up in the swamp. Atreyu keeps on going but he's getting overwhelmed by despair and mud until he thinks he can't make it anymore. And that's when Falcor the Luck Dragon swoops down and saves him.

I know I have a my boyfriend, family, friends, and even strangers who are there for me. But sometimes you just want a big, happy luck dragon to come down and take you up into the sky. You want to surrender and hold on and know that no matter what happens, things will be more than alright. That some have noticed and benefited from all the searching and wandering that you did. That you put something beautiful in the world that wasn't there before. That it was worth it.

Golden Moth Assembly Party and Notecard Illustrations

This past Sunday I held a Golden Moth Assembly Party for people to come and help assemble the card decks. It was a lot of fun! Everyone was so helpful, encouraging, enthusiastic, and full of ideas. It was great to share the deck with other people. So much of this project has been created in near-solitude, and in the past month or so I've come to realize that I need to establish and maintain stronger friendships with others for my own happiness and mental health. My default mode tends to be hermitude, so it's a push for me to reach out to others. I'm glad I did :)

Since all the counter space was taken up with cards, I had to set food on top of the washing machine and stove. I have lots of leftovers to eat this week.

The energy of a group of people with different ideas and perspectives can be so uplifting. Their help and good company allowed me get over the near-paralyzing magnitude of this project for me into something much more manageable. Thank you Cate, Leila, Betsy, Nina, Jacob, Emily, and Greg!

***

Lately, I have been working in watercolor. I took an Intro to Watercolor class with Susan Quinnild at The Visual Arts Center of Richmond last month and I loved it! Although I've used watercolor for most of my life, I've never been formally trained in how to use it. Turns out there is a lot to be learned! I'll be posting some of my work and process in a future post.

One of the rewards for The Golden Moth Illumination Deck are notecards. I finally finished the designs for those today. I don't know what took me so long, since when i actually sat down to paint it took only about 8 hours combined to complete them. I think what holds me back is not feeling clear about my ideas for the finished product and feeling overly ambitious about what sort of image to create. I find that if I sit back and allow myself to simplify, I usually arrive at a happy result.

Here are the two illustrations. They are based on images in the card deck.

Golden Moth Sneak Peeks!

In terms of The Golden Moth Illumination Deck project, the past few weeks have been a time of waiting and recuperation. But now it's time to get busy again! Here is the latest progress:

A couple weeks ago, I visited the Archaic Mess studio to do a press check. Taylor Ball (right) of Parcell Press and Travis Robertson (left) are the duo behind the Mess. Taylor mostly handles the printing and Travis mostly handles the finishing (paper trimming, stapling, etc), though I'm sure both help out in either realm.

A glimpse of the workspace where the magic happens.

Taylor wrote a detailed printing task list!

Out of the contraption and into the stacks - hundreds of golden moths!

Keeping in mind that we are but human individuals with varying schedules working on this project, Travis delivered most of the cards to me a few days ago. "Most" - meaning that there are still some cards that need to be trimmed due to the fact that he needs to get the guillotine blade re-sharpened, but it shouldn't be too long before he can deliver the rest. Check it out some of the cards!
May 21st Update: Everything is now trimmed and ready for me to get crackin' on it!

 

Some of you may notice that I changed the design of the border slightly. I was going to use blue in the border, but decided that it looked too busy.

In the meantime, there is still some work for me to do to get these cards into the hands of my Kickstarter backers, and then to the general public. I have to corner-round the cards:

And I have to hand-cut the boxes and assemble them - this is the step that I think will be the most time-consuming!

Then the cards need to be collated into numbered order for each deck. All of this goes into a package with the Arrow Spread Sheet:

and Handbook!

The Handbook looks really cute, don't you think? For some reason, I was almost more excited about seeing the Handbook than I was with the actual card deck, maybe because I still have to work on the deck but the Handbook was delivered all finished and pretty by Archaic Mess.

I was so worried about writing the book, but once I finally got into it everything flowed well. My aunt and older sister helped a lot with editing. I hope that the Handbook will be helpful and informative to others.

Oh, almost forgot - I also have been working on the mini-art that goes to Kickstarter backers who pledged $30 or more. Here is a sampling of some of the art I have finished:

So now I need to get back to the drawing board and chug away at all the details. I also need to finish the notecard and poster designs, and I will hand screenprint the poster. I am hoping to start sending packages near the end of this month, with the goal of having everything delivered by June. Thanks everyone for your patience! And if anyone in Richmond is interested in helping me out with some of these finishing touches, give me a holler. I can compensate your time with food and artwork!

With the extra money I raised from my Kickstarter campaign (I raised $4,800 when the original goal was $4,000) I decided to up the quantity of decks, spread sheets, and handbook from 250 to 300. I was also able to order a larger variety of postcards.

Thanks everyone who cast their vote on the postcard and bookplate designs. If you are a Kickstarter backer, here is the choice you will get if you ordered postcards:

 And here are the bookplate designs:

For those of you who weren't able to get in on the Kickstarter campaign but would like to order a deck or related products, I will be listing them for sale in my etsy shop, Sprout Head, after I have shipped out orders to my Kickstarter backers.

Until then, you'll just have to wait a little longer!

love,
aijung

Getting Domestic

Upon returning from New York City a couple of weeks ago, I was pretty tired out. I had been working intensely on finishing up the artwork for The Golden Moth Illumination Deck (see the Kickstarter campaign for the project here) in order to get the artwork files to the printer right before I left for NYC, and didn't realize what an effect it would have on me. It was hard to fully enjoy New York - it just felt fast and full of too many people. Not to say I didn't enjoy elements of being in the city, but it made me realize for the first time that maybe I'm getting too old for it! Years ago I used to live in New York City while attending Pratt Institute and for a couple years post-graduation, and I do love Brooklyn - the brownstones, wrought-iron fences, and local character.

But I was happy to return home to Richmond. I've been taking a bit of a break from working on the Moth Deck project in order to get myself recharged. There is still more artwork that I need to complete, but the bulk of it is finished and the cards are printed! There's some finishing work to be done before I receive the cards and other products, and then I need to do some further finishing before they're ready to be packaged and shipped off.

In the meantime, I've been getting domestic - cleaning and decorating the house and working on the garden. It feels nice to put some energy into my home - a place I spend probably 80% or more of my time in. I've been framing artwork, some that I've kept stashed for a long time, and have finally started decorating the apartment more. The apartment is by no means perfect, but it's got its own charm. And it looks much more homey with artwork hanging on the walls. Here is one of my favorites called "Strawberry Kids," a linocut print by Amanda Kindregan.

Her work has a retro feel to it like old children's book illustrations and I love her colors. Next to the print is the curtain I sewed for the door window. It's not perfect, but looks much better than the oversized sheer purple curtain that was tacked onto the door before. And it was the first chance I had to use my old table-top White sewing machine.

I also decided to make a French Memory Board. I've seen them around before, and the idea appealed to me because I have a lot of postcards and little bitty art that I'd like to display, but I don't like to damage the artwork by taping them to the wall, pushing tacks through, or squeezing them with clips. The beauty of the memory board is that tightly-stretched ribbons are the only things holding the artwork to it, so there is no damage and artwork is easily interchangeable.

I decided to make my memory board different than other ones I had seen by using translucent ribbon. In some memory boards I looked at, the diamond pattern of the ribbon was jarring as it cut across a picture, and obviously you lose some of the image behind the ribbon. 

There are many online tutorials on how to make your own Memory Board. Here's a simple one. I used a pre-stretched 22" x 28" canvas. For mine, I also added 2 layers of cotton batting behind the cloth as I'd seen in other tutorials. This allows you to get the ribbon nice and tight against the cloth so it holds pictures better. I sewed my buttons right onto the board instead of using brads, which took longer than I'd anticipated, but definitely helps the ribbon tension so that the pictures stay put underneath.

 The drawing of the two creatures (foxes?) on the telephone was given to me by my sweet friend Katy O'Brien who I used to live with in Portland, Oregon. Visit her blog to see comic-versions of her adventures in Sweden last summer. She also sent me the postcard of a Moomin character in a flower field to the right of it. To the right of that postcard and underneath it are some pretty collaged cards that my sister Linjung made for me. She makes the best cards and writes amazing messages and poetry to go with them. And on the bottom left is a postcard of artwork by Irene Olivieri.

 Here is a "Happy Animal" doodle and an artist trading card by my friend Rina Drescher. I love the spontaneity and lively colors in her art and paintings.

 

 The March calendar page is by Chris Milk Hulbert and is from the 2010 Art 180 Calendar. The quote comes from 12 3/4 year-old Shaiheim Durham: "Art makes me feel regular" - a sentiment that speaks to me only too well. Art 180 is an organization in Richmond that provides at-risk youth with free art programs. I led a writing and illustration program last year, I keep meaning to post about it. I'll just say for now that it was tough in many ways, but it changed my life - no lie! The sweet fairy is by my friend (and fellow teacher at The Visual Arts Center of Richmond) Sarah Hand. Sarah illustrated the 2012 Art 180 Calendar for this year. Last year I illustrated the calendar, also using quotes from kids in the art programs. I just got a package in the mail last week from Art 180 - the calendar images I illustrated were made into notecard sets!

True that.

Adventures in New York

In March, I visited my hometown of Rochester, NY and traveled to nearby Buffalo to table at the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair. Here are some pics from the Book Fair:

Me and my friend Rina Drescher  who helped me at my table. She has sold her own poetry chapbooks and art at past fairs but was taking a little break this time.

 

Some cool stuff by Jamie Schilling of Little Beast Press. I bought the screenprinted notebook on the left. Her handmade books were really lovely. I also bought and traded with some other vendors. "The Year of the Bear" by Chad Grohman was a beautifully illustrated fable-like story. Got some nice comics from One Percent Press and a neat mini-comic called "Simple Stuff" by Emily Churco. 

*

In Rochester, I visited my sister Olivia's studio (for the first time!)

 Olivia holding an unfinished "sketch" of a figure that she will eventually cast in plaster.

Olivia is an artist who works primarily in figurative sculpture. Her boyfriend Dario Tazzioli is visiting from Italy to have a sculpture show in Rochester in June, and Olivia will be part of a group show at Nazareth College! I'll be sure to post about it when I visit again this summer. For now, see more of Olivia's art here.

*

In April I headed up to New York City to take in the museums and table at the Brooklyn Zine Fest.

The breathtaking Hall of Diversity at the Natural History Museum.

The Brooklyn Zine Fest was great - packed with people and full of some great talent. Here is a picture of my friend Katie Haegele of The La-La Theory at the Brooklyn Zine Fest. As an artist and zinester, I think it's amazing that I can meet so many great people through their art. I had ordered some of Katie's zines from Etsy some years ago, and then we met in person when she tabled at the Richmond Zine Fest. I also met Matt and Kseniya, the co-creators of the fest and the zine "I Love Bad Movies," at the Richmond Zine Fest a couple of years ago.

At the Brooklyn Fest, I met many cool people and zine-makers. I picked up a lot of great comics, many by awesome female artists I'd never heard of before. I hope to do a post about comics sometime.

Now some pictures of lovely plants from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Such a peaceful place. I enjoyed sitting on the Cherry Esplanade while watching mothers and children play. I also love the conservatory.

And a shot of the Keith Haring exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. I had been inspired by Keith Haring when I was in high school and college in particular. His bold, symbolic language spoke strongly to me. I read his "Diaries" during that time, but had forgotten until now how prodigious his output and exploration was, especially for someone of his age. While he was still in school at SVA, he would fill his notebooks with art "research," studying the visual and psychological impact of lines and shapes. Also, in contrast to certain street art I find to be annoying and gratuitous, he posted pictures in the subway that had their own symbolic language. His images, while simple, seemed to communicate in a more mysterious way - sometimes joyful, sometimes political, but always full of life and energy.