It’s all Andy Warhol’s fault that I’m hooked on soupy pop art stuff. The iconic Campbell’s soup cans continue to appear on jewelry, accessories, even fishing lures, and they just keep calling my name. (Click on each image for more info at Etsy.)
Today I’m pleased and excited to welcome three very bossy artists to help launch my new Indie Artist Spotlight series!
Three is a good number, I think — three times the talent, beauty, spunk, ingenuity, and brilliance. Three times the luck, three times the inspiration for us all, and yes, three times the bossy craftiness. 🙂
Kari, Mandy, and Amy work together as a needle felting cooperative called Bossy’s Feltworks on Orcas Island, a 57-square mile creative Eden north of Seattle in Washington state.
If, like me, you love and appreciate the handmade and heartmade — you’ll enjoy hearing from this enterprising threesome who, back in 2006, took piles of fleece sheared from the sheep on Amy’s farm, gathered around the kitchen table with their five young daughters underfoot, and began fashioning colorful balls and adorable little white sheep.
In no time at all, they set off on regular flights of fancy, fueled by endless cups of tea and snacks (!), a shared love of children’s books, inspiration from a menagerie of pets and farm animals, and steadily built an enthusiastic customer base via Etsy and a local farmer’s market. Their felted critters are irresistible — not only well made, but infused with the good feelings of friendship, family, and the joy of maximizing what each is uniquely qualified to bring to the table. Thanks so much for visiting today, Bossy Ladies!
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Now you can eat your breakfast and draw it too! Enjoy this video about author and journal illustrator, Danny Gregory. I love to watch artists work. Never has a cup of PG Tips and an onion seed bagel been so yummy!
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Learn more about Danny’s work at his Official Website. See his gallery of illustrated journals here, and check out his blog for even more.
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Copyright © 2013 Jama Rattigan of Jama’s Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.
For award-winning cut-paper artist Nikki McClure, the perfect day would likely start off with one of her husband Jay T’s homemade waffles. It would be topped with fresh fruit — foraged or farm market blackberries or neat slices of late summer nectarines. Or he might make his giant blueberry pancakes — pancakes that fill the whole pan, flipped with a giant spatula. Mmmm!
These nourishing, homemade mornings are an important part of Nikki’s inspiring, free-spirited lifestyle that’s marked by weekly visits to the farmers market, cooking, eating and playing outdoors with her son Finn, foraging for fruit, afternoon swims, astute observations of her rural environment, and hours of meditative work in her studio, where she captures the essence of bird, leaf, branch, sky, the turning of the seasons, and a myriad of other everyday wonders in her amazingly beautiful, intricate papercuts.
Happy Monday!
Let’s start the week off in the best possible way by looking at several of the gorgeous paintings from FEAST, an art exhibit at the Grover Thurston Gallery in Seattle featuring the work of award-winning children’s author/illustrator Julie Paschkis and her husband Joe Max Emminger.
The September show includes separate paintings by Julie and Joe Max, as well as a number of collaborative pieces, most of which are related to the theme of food and feasting.
I’ve been a big fan of Julie’s work for years — she’s illustrated several of Janet Wong’s and Julie Larios’s poetry collections, as well as a number of folktales and picture book biographies. She’s known for her love of folk art and pattern (she also designs fabrics), and she likes to make bread and SOUP! 🙂
It’s such a treat to see Joe Max’s work; though I knew Julie was married to another artist, I hadn’t seen any of his paintings before. You lucky Seattle area peeps can sashay on over to see this wonderful exhibit in person. The rest of us can focus our appreciative gazes at the FEAST blog and the Grover Thurston Gallery website (whom you should contact directly if you’re interested in purchasing).
Julie’s gouache paintings are of various sizes. Joe Max’s paintings were rendered in acrylic and are 30″ by 44″. Collaborative pieces are all ink and gouache.
Enjoy this mini feast from FEAST!
Amazing, right? I’d like to steal that piece of cake in “Crunch” right off the table. Love love love their work! I should also mention that if you attend the Closing Potluck Celebration on Saturday, September 29 (1-3 p.m.), you get to take home one of the bread pieces! (Click here if you’d like to make your own bread sculptures.)
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♥ GOOD NEWS! ♥
Julie will be visiting Alphabet Soup soon to talk about her tasty new picture book, APPLE CAKE (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012)!! Stay tuned ☺.
Have a fabulous week!
♥ Visit the FEAST blog.
♥ More about the exhibit at the Grover Thurston Gallery. Show runs through September 29, 2012.
♥ Julie’s official website is here. She blogs at Books Around the Table.
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*FEAST images reproduced with permission, copyright © 2012 Joe Max Emminger and Julie Paschkis. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2012 Jama Rattigan of Jama’s Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.
Jama's Alphabet Soup 