Edison Jack

While still small, this sketch is a bit larger than the last one I did of Bram. My next sketch is going to be substantially larger than both of these. Time to work big again for a change, just to mix it up a bit. I've also been collecting photos of friends' dogs for me to use for additional studies, also to keep things interesting. I'm contemplating selling custom dog portraits. I know this is a really weird concept and not something I would normally do, but I love to draw dogs and on a few of the occasions I've done a drawing for someone simply because I thought they'd like to have one of their best-friend-with-a-tail, they've gone nuts and insisted I need to do be paid for my work and should never just give it away. While it's nice to make money while making art, it isn't the driving force behind anything I do. Still, if I'm going to draw dogs (which I will) and people want to buy drawings of their dogs (which apparently they do), it would make sense for me to be the one getting paid, right? Until I make the final decision on this, or even find the time to make this a regular part of my already busy schedule, I'll just keep on drawing my own two boys and making my friends happy with surprise portraits of their own beloved animals.

Study of Edison Jack Looking Over His Shoulder, graphite on paper, 2009

A Tiny Mixed Media Collage

This is another of those hand painted photo collages I've dug up. This one is quite tiny at just a few inches square and is another piece from that period where I was using day glow pink spray paint on everything in sight. Go figure. I seem to have some very patient birds, as like Trixie Bee before her, Zelda Pearl is also a top-notch little model.

You Were Saying?, mixed media on paper, 2007, from the series Things With Wings

Dresses From Nature

I've always been someone who makes clothing for myself and I've even on occasion made clothes from unusual items: a skirt made entirely of flattened bottle caps for instance, or a dress made from the used wrappers of a thousand York Peppermint Patties, but that's nothing that hasn't been done to death. This artist, however, completely blows me away and on so many levels too. Utterly.

These dresses appeal to my driving obsession with Marie Antoinette and the fashion of 18th century France. They feed my need for the spiritual in that they are very much like the sand mandalas made by Buddhist monks and nuns in that they embody the idea of impermanence. Spend a great deal of time and effort to create a truly breathtaking piece of art but know that in the end it will ultimately be destroyed. Clothing from leaves and flowers has a very short shelf life and I'm not sure I could bring myself to create something so exquisite knowing before I even begin that it will be gone in little more than the blink of an eye.

Everything about these dresses is a joy to behold: their construction, their materials, their artistry. I would have loved to have seen them in person.

Dresses from the Weedrobes series made by Nicole Dextras, nicoledextras.com