news!

I recently entered a couple pieces into the 30th Annual Juried Exhibition at my local gallery. I found out yesterday that one of my pieces was chosen to be a part of the show! They chose Knitwit:


knitwit, originally uploaded by avalilly.

I'm really excited. I get to exhibit with a group of varied artists that I haven't met before (well, maybe some I've met)! It's nice, because most of the shows I've been a part of have been basically with a good number of classmates from university, so this is a nice step towards getting my work more exposure.

The show is at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington and it opens on October 17, 2010 with the reception from 2-4pm and it runs until November 7, 2010.

Please stop in if you're in the area! :)

scratch board fun

knitwit, originally uploaded by avalilly.

So I found a book of illustrations by Virgil Finlay that reminded me how much I enjoyed playing with scratch board back in high school. I thought I'd give it another try and see what I could accomplish with it.

If it isn't hard to tell, this took a very long time. Scratch board is basically a thick paper (usually white) covered in china clay and india ink, which you scratch away to make the image. I use a tool with a tip like these:

I will be selling prints of this, probably in an edition of 50. My test print at the original size of 8.5" x 11" didn't yield enough detail, so I'll probably make them at 11"x14" instead. I just need to find the best place in which to sell them online and also how much to price them after printing costs.

Once that's figured out I'll throw a link up on here, if you happen to be a prospective buyer!

19/52

sleep tight, originally uploaded by avalilly.

Hmmmmmmm. Yah, I still don't know how I feel about this one. I was happy about it until I started editing and then I just had mixed feelings. Ah well, it's something.

I have another for the 52 project in the works. It's just... there's so much editing involved when you decide to pretend you live on the ceiling (think week 15). It should be a fun mini-series though. I just... have to do it. Blahhh.

On the plus, I am nearly finished another large drawing. Soon, my pets. Soon.

mortal

mortal, originally uploaded by avalilly.

I don't think I've posted this one yet. I finished it back in March, I guess I just haven't gotten around to documenting it. Yesterday I decided to photograph a bunch of drawings I've done this year. I posted them to flickr, so take a look if you wish (click on the image to take you there), most have already been posted here though. Detail photos are also contained in the comments of the images on flickr.

Feels like I haven't been doing much drawing lately. Or, well, anything but photography, really. Must motivate self...

open house

Yesterday was York University's Visual Arts Open House. The entire Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts was transformed into an exhibition space for all students of 3rd, 4th, and 5th year standing to show their work. I just showed a few of my drawings in the drawing area, as the only other studio I'm taking at York right now is a historical painting techniques course and my painting isn't that far along yet. There was a lot of really great work being shown, so I ran around with my camera taking photos of my favourites:

As you can see, I kind of stuck more so to the drawing and painting areas. The sculpture work was scattered throughout the building and had some really good pieces, but I just don't think my photos did them any justice. I didn't take any photos in the photography area, mostly because there were so many people in it and also a lot of the work is smaller so you wouldn't have been able to see it very well unless I posted like 100 close ups of each work. There was also some time based art and printmaking areas showing work too.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is, go to York University's open house next year. There is so much to see and it encompasses so many different styles of art. We installed our work in the morning and the show went from noon until 8pm! If you have a chance to see it sometime, I definitly recommend going. It's one day only~

drawing area exhibition

Over the past week (March 3-12, 2010), some of my work was shown in York University's Drawing Area Exhibition in the Gales Gallery. Basically any work done in any of the drawing classes could be shown. I selected two of my most recent drawings. It's strange in these photos, it looks like I'm one of the only people utilizing bright colours, so they stand out a bit even though they're in the background.

The blue ones are mine!

By far one of the coolest drawing installations I've ever seen. She had some faint lights coming from various points around it. The actual paper is so fragile! I can't imagine how much patience is needed to pull this off.

 

The two portraits on the far left and far right were done with ink stamps, which I thought looked really neat. One girl used a butterfly stamp, one used stars, and the way they stamped them created the portraits. It was really neat to see up close and then from far away.

Overall I was quite impressed with the work and how the show was set up. The drawings were done by everyone between 1st and 5th year, so it was interesting to see all the different strengths and styles beside eachother.

24 hour workshop

Over this past weekend I participated in a 24 hour workshop organized by the Visual Arts Student Association. Essentially, participants would start, finish, and then hang their work in the Special Projects Gallery in under 24 hours. We are displaying our work all this week (January 18-22), the gallery is in the Goldfarb Center for Fine Arts at York University next to the Curry's.

Facelift (Laura Crowell 2010) 22"x30" conte on paper

(I'm not 100% done with this, but it'll do for now.)

These two drawings were done by Michelle Mackinnon. I believe they're 6'x3.5'. I can't believe she finished the one on the right in less than 24 hours. Amazing!

A paper sculpture by Billy Garland.

Print media!

Awesome mixed media work by Diana VanderMeulen.

Unfortunately, I don't have the names of all the artists. I'll try and get them and then update this later on, but go check out the show and find out for yourself in the mean time!

chantilly lace

Recently, I was given (very short) notice that I would be participating in a group exhibition in the Gales gallery at York University. It was to feature works by five talented young female artists (Jess Thalmann, Jiallin Ji, Jo Fallack, Lili Huston-Herterich, and myself). Unfortunately, due to time contraints (ie. practically no notice and it being the busiest part of the semester), there was no way to really plan a show that would have a lot of cohesion between all the different work. So, we figured we would all just put in whatever work we could and that would be that.

Another unfortunate piece of business was that the artists who utilized the gallery space right before us were given the wrong shade of white paint to restore with and our walls ended up having very noticeable darker blocks of paint across them. Already being frustrated with the show and everyone being so busy, there wasn't any time to go out and buy the right paint and fix it. We decided to just roll with it and we installed our work over top and named the exhibition Chantilly Lace after the shade of paint that wasn't meant to be there.

These are the drawings that I installed in the show:

Outspoken (Laura Crowell 2009) 22"x30" conte on paper

Untitled (Laura Crowell 2009) 22"x30" conte on paper

La Scapigliata (Laura Crowell 2009) 22"x30" conte on paper

The show will be running until November 13, 2009.

Interesting experience, to say the least. I am a little sad that we were given such crappy notice about it though. I've wanted to show work in that gallery since I found out undergrads were allowed to apply, so it's unfortunate there wasn't enough time for me to produce new work for it.

Outspoken is my most recent piece. I'm hoping to continue with a series of drawings in a similar style. The hands drawing has already been shown at Whippersnapper gallery earlier in March of this year in the Play/Pause show. La Scapigliata is sort of just a drawing for the sake of drawing something. There's not a terribly big meaning behind it, so I felt a little silly including it.

Ah well, there was space on the wall, so why not!