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Art Day! 

2/11/2015

 
I have been working on a few projects in the studio and I thought I would share. Over the winter break I learned a new bookbinding technique and I have been making books for a variety of uses. (Mostly I have been making books to make books)  Up next I will be making small books (4"x 4") and then I'm going to try my hand at triangle books. TRIANGULAR BOOKS, people! I'm pretty jazzed about the whole thing.

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This is the book I made for my trip to the International Children's Book Fair in Bologna, Italy. I'm leaving in SIX WEEKS. 
I learned the technique through Mary Ann Moss' online class Ticket to Venice. It's totally worth the cost--her instructions are really clear and easy to follow. 

It took me a few days to wrap my head around how she builds books--she uses a variety of papers inside her signatures, and there are flaps and pockets...she doesn't build a book as much as she engineers it.

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I made this one to see if I could build a book that was in landscape format rather than portrait format. Plus I got to use some paper that had been a drop cloth for a different project. I love it when that happens! 
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And I have been working on lettering and flourishes in watercolor. 
In anticipation of Galentine's Day, I am making a few cards. 
You can check in later to see what I mean...(hint hint)
I'm not saying I'm the best friend, but I'm pretty good at being a good friend.

Let's talk about travel (part two)

8/11/2014

 
As promised, art and travel! 

I always start with the best of intentions, but they rarely pan out the way I want them to. It's quite possible that I'm not carving out time and space the way I should. It's also quite possible that planning to make art at the END of the day is the worst plan ever, because I am a morning person. 

I have one more trip this summer, and I'm planning to use this journey to figure out the best way to travel and make art. 
There are many people who travel and make art so well: 

Mary Ann Moss of Dispatch from L.A.
Jane LaFazio
Julie Fei Fan Balzer of Balzer Designs

I'm really great at making art before I leave. I'm not so good at making travel-inspired art when I get back. 

Before we left for Sicily, I took an old, beaten board book and gave it a new life as a recipe book.  The project took me the better part of a week, and I loved every minute of it. 

I wrote out the recipes on tags and then illustrated some of the ingredients on the pages. I prepared the pages by coating them with gesso and a small amount of paint for color. 
I'm not a huge fan of starting with a white background--so few things in nature are stark white. 

When I travel with the intention of making art, I pack supplies. I have gotten it down to things that will fit inside a gallon-sized ziploc bag.

A list of travelling art supplies:
1. Sketchbook
2. A pencil and eraser
3. Permanent pens (I like Sharpie fine point)
4. Watercolors
5. Brushes (Round 3, Round 8, 1/2 inch flat)
6. Tape
7. Camera (which doesn't fit in the bag)

I think what happens is that I get so wound up in being there that I let the camera capture the moment/composition. 
Then I go home and get waylaid by the unfinished projects in the studio. 

But like I said, I have one more trip this summer to see if I can work out a system that works for me. 
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Picture

Before the painting...

6/16/2014

 
Before I lay paint to canvas, I have a rough sketch to work from. Before the sketch, there is an idea. As I live in the world, I am bombarded with information and inspiration on a daily basis. There is no way I could take all of  these ideas and turn them into art as they happen--unless I give up on doing all the things that allow me to function. I tried that once in college. I stayed up for three days working on projects for my painting class and my scene design class. When I finally crashed I slept for 15 hours and woke up hungry enough to eat six hamburgers. While it was interesting enough to go through the process, I knew it wasn't a pace I could keep up. Enter the sketchbook. 
I have been keeping sketchbooks since 1995, and for a while I was at the pace of one to two books a year. Then I had children, and sleep deprivation and a full-up schedule of being a caregiver slowed me waaaay down. 
When I first started keeping sketchbooks, my high school art teacher told me that the books should be more than a place to record your ideas. He called sketchbooks "a reflection of you"--over time my sketchbooks have been both intensely personal and a place to record that bit of inspiration before it evaporates into the ether. I always kept one book at a time, but now I am starting to branch out. The explosion of art journaling has definitely increased the variety of pre-made books available which is great. I love being able to get my hands on a book with heavier weight paper. I like to have a sturdy substrate to build on. 
The most interesting thing to me, as an artist, is how many ideas go into the sketchbook and just stay there. If I never had another idea, I would have enough fodder to work for the rest of my life in my sketchbook collection. There are plenty of concepts that seem really promising at first, but wind up being too meh* to ever get to the point of becoming a stand-alone work. It's the ideas that follow you around all day, tapping you on the shoulder begging you to consider how to resolve their issues that even get to the point of serious consideration. I suspect this is much the same for anyone who creates--the world is full of ideas, inspiration is everywhere! But you only have 24 hours in a day. The work that you choose to shackle yourself  to and carry out to the end of it's creation has to be worthy of those precious hours. 
Which isn't to say that I haven't ever painted over a canvas, because I have. I have been moving around with the same 3 large canvases that I used for a final project in 1999--and every few years they get a facelift. If you have a piece from me I promise that I won't come to your house and paint over it. Unless you want me to--in which case, let me grab my paint and I'll be right over.

I've included a slide show of random pages out of the various books I have worked on for the past two decades.

*meh--bland, boring, mundane.

    Kara DeCarlo

    Visual artist & librarian. 

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Photos used under Creative Commons from Jim Larrison, beketchai, KathrynW1, Orin Zebest, gruntzooki