Bananas are my Barometer
Cleaning out some old notes, I find this list of potential painting titles. What does it mean? I think I was thinking that when I run out of bananas, it's time to go grocery shopping. The rest is undoubtedly culled from spam emails.
I keep a lot of these lists. I keep them in a file. One day, they'll reach a critical mass, run off and form their own colony.
Related: How and Why to Title Your Work.
Sketchbook Covers 2009-2015
A sketchbook is a mobile studio. A judgement-free laboratory. Something to do with your hands when you feel awkward in public. A snapshot of a time and place (some exposures longer than others). A companion. Each one is unique, and as such, each wears a different outfit. Here's a selection of customized sketchbook covers, some front, some back, 2009-2015. Most recent first.
* I can't take credit for this particular cover. Sketchbook designed and built by SomaVenus. The back, pictured below, is all me though.
Sketchbook 2012: No Trespassing Quilt
Sketchbook 2012: No Trespassing, mixed media, 2012 by Sarah Atle
No Trespassing, mixed media collage sketch, 2012 by Sarah Atlee
Like the Millennium Quilt series, I made this drawing while my mother was recovering from surgery. I thought it would be interesting to create a geometric composition based on a (blurry) photograph. Abstraction through pixellation, although the original photograph is the digital media, whereas the drawing below is analog.
Fijian, jiving, and scheme are cool words.
Sketchbook 2012: No Trespassing quilt sketch, ink and colored pe
No Trespassing Quilt, ink and colored pencil on paper, 2012 by Sarah Atlee
Pink is Choices
Pink is Choices, ink on paper, 2013 by Sarah Atlee
Pink is choices. Pink is me allowing me to be me on my own terms. Pink is choosing to use pink because I want to, not because the Barbie aisle at Toys 'R' Us tells me that I should.
I wasn't always a colorist. In college my work was monochromatic, or very nearly, because I didn't feel that I was educated or practiced enough to use color.
At first it was yellows, reds, blues. Now the pinks are my favorite paints and pens. Bright, soft, luminous, loaded, cliched, camp, kitsch, new & radical in every sense, all over again.
Pink is choosing to accept things that I rejected as a child. I did not accept commercial interests telling me who I should be, and pink was an inextricable element of that. Now, choosing pink is my way of declaring that I am whoever I want to be, without fear of rejection.
Dedicated to my Mom, who taught me that it's okay to be my own person.
Sketchbook 2012: Day/Night Quilt
Day/Night Quilt sketch, ink on paper, 2012 by Sarah Atlee
I had so much fun with my Millennium Quilt series that I raced right into this quilt concept for a friend's impending baby.
mely's quilt beginning cropped
I began cutting and piecing not long after finishing the sketch, though it was almost another year before I completed the quilt proper.
At one point, I was so enamored with the finished sections of the quilt that I decided to turn one of them back into 2-dimensional art. I'll post pictures of that piece next week.
Here are pictures of the near-completed quilt in my studio (I just love the morning light in here):
day night quilt photo 2 72 500
Day/Night Quilt, detail view in the studio, 2013 by Sarah Atlee
day night quilt photo 1 72 500
Day/Night Quilt, detail view in the studio, 2013 by Sarah Atlee
Update: See the portion of this quilt that became a painting.