Nest Hair & The Weekend so far

These beauties are now for sale in the Black Apple shop, here. They're
hand-cut silhouettes of my bird's nest hair girl, and they very nearly gave
me carpal tunnel syndrome yesterday! But they're lovely and definently worth it.
The green gal has sold, but the rest are available (for the time being!)
Whew! All four sold today. Maybe another batch will turn up soon :)

I've had a very blissful weekend so far, which started with a fun movie date with
my friend Jenny on Friday. We went to see "American Dreamz", which was pretty funny. Anyone who has ever seen even one set of preliminary auditions for American Idol would appreciate the satire. Not great, but kinda fun entertainment.
I find it hilarious, personally, how my standards for movies I'd like to see tend to plummet the closer we get to summer, and the further we are from the "golden months" of movies (october-december).
This weekend, I truly was up for going to see "Friends With Money" (featuring all of the aging, quirky looking ladies of hollywood...Catherine Keener, Francis Mcdormand, Joan Cusack and (the exception, I suppose) Jennifer Aniston). I was also up for "Silent Hill" (cough of embarrassment). I cannot wait until Art School Confidential & The Notorious Bettie Page come out...then I won't have to be embarrassed (for about a weekend)!
I also went to Borders for my monthly magazine binge (it's my only real vice). Holy Smokes, has anyone seen the newest issue of Selvedge? It is so incredible. So incredible in fact, it deserves a blog of it's own.
I did buy the new Giant Robot, though, and I am a little smitten with the work of the cover artist, Jeana Sohn. You can see the great cover here , and her website proper is here .

The interview is kind of a bore, but the work is great. The low point is the uninspired way in which she tells of how she "got her style/aesthetic" so to speak, which was that she went to see a show  at Giant Robot (ironic) 2 years ago and liked that (dare I say trendy?) superflat-illustrationy-Mary Blairish stuff (ie, Seonna Hong who I love) that so many folks do these days, and decided to parrot it. This girl's visual sources are her contemporaries, other "flat" painters, not the actual 40's, 50's and 60's children's book illustrations and films that really created & popularized this look. As someone who has always been inspired more by fashion/textiles, music and film than by painters, illustrators, or photographers (my own mediums), I don't really understand people who take all of their visual cues from a contemporary who's doing something just like them, and in the same medium. I don't mean to be hard on this person, her work is lovely, it just loses a little bit of...something...for me when I think about people's work being so trendy. Like, mexican wrestlers are the new bigfoot are the new deer...(if you get my drift).

The high point, however, is when she tells the stories that are actually straight from her childhood. The best is one in which her father killed a crow, and brought it into the house. Their house was immediately surrounded by throngs of other crows, who knew what was inside (She speculated that maybe he was the king). The murder of crows went away when the dead crow was buried elsewhere. A great story. I hope so much that it's true!

Last night was paper cutting, fun sushi dinner with Clint at our usual Saturday date-night place, and then chai and lots of magazine reading (and a great conversation about Hello Kitty and handwriting tablets at the coffee shop with my friend Mary + her boyfriend + Clint).
I have high hopes for the rest of today, so I better unplug myself from the internet now!

Comments

[jeana sohn]

hi there.
today someone emailed me and gave me this link of your post. i dont know why that person did it but i read your post anyway and i appreciate that you mentioned about my cover and wrote kind words about my work.

about the low point your were talking about, i kind want to explain. i dont think i just went to a giant robot show and parrot it. the show did inspired and encouraged me to start painting. when you dont know how to paint, you get a lot of influence from other artists you like and slowly learn how to develop your own style. i think that's what i did. i did not just copy some trendy style without any effort. i've been making so many work since then and now i believe i have my own style.

sorry if this made you feel uncomfortable. i just wanted to explain. that's all. no hard feelings.

ps: and the crow story is real. yup. : )

-jeana-

[janelle]

the selvedge is awesome this month! Magazines are definately my vice. and since i discovered selvedge a few months ago. . .every month i try not to buy because it is so pricey. But is the perfect magazine that I have always looked for - more textiles and art, and ethnic crafts and textiles than fashin mags, but it also has fashion. i loooove it!
by the way, love the nest heads!

[Blair]

Those silhouettes are lovely, I hope you put more in the shop. I am actually a little obsessed with silhouettes.