DANIMAL GRAFFFIXXX

Last summer, I went to a small arts and crafts fair in South Minneapolis. It was neat, but I actually liked the prints displayed around the coffee shop sponsoring the fair way more than anything that was a part of the sale.

Again, this is another person I don't know much about, but I really enjoy his prints. His name is Daniel Luedtke, and prints under the name Danimal Grafffixxx.

His prints are full of bright colors, and he uses a split-fountain technique to get some neat gradient effects and lots of layers.

I saw both of these prints for sale at the Center for the Book Arts, and I was really tempted to get the one with the microphone lady. Maybe someday soon.
DANIMAL GRAFFFIXXX blog
DANIMAL GRAFFFIXXX on mnartists.org

Jeff Millikan

When I was home this past week, I stopped at the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts for some supplies and for some quality work time in their nice cafe. As always, I spent a long time looking through the shop and the gallery. The current exhibit, Quantified Aesthetics, was all about work that featured numbers and formulas.

One piece I really liked was a book by Jeff Millikan (unfortunately, I forgot the exact title of the piece). From what I gathered, Jeff takes old books (this one was a math textbook, I think), covers them with beeswax, and places them in custom bee hives. He tries to use the beeswax to encourage the bees to build honeycomb in certain areas, and eat away at the book in others. It was really fascinating to have the beeswax built directly on the book, and other pages seemed chewed through, showing many layers of text and diagrams.

There were also some photographs of other pieces of his, which were all equally interesting. I've been trying to find more information on him, but have not been too successful yet. I think he might be an adjunct professor of photography at the University of Minnesota, but again, I'm not sure if that's the correct Jeff Millikan.

I did, however, find this single image of a book from this series (which he calls the Insect Manuscripts, if I remember correctly).

overdue

Well, I said I was going to get back into this, but that was over a month ago. So, maybe I'll try posting other things besides my work to get back in the habit of updating. (I'm toying with the idea of making some spring mixes)

In other news, here's the full embroidered/sewn storytelling project that those patches were for. It's somewhere around 18"x24" in size. Overall, I think I like how some of the individual patches turned out better than the entire piece, but I absolutely loved that I did an entire project without using my computer at all. It was an extremely refreshing break, something that I should do more often.

embroidered patches

Here's a peek at the embroidered patches I've been working on for my storytelling project for studio right now. I think my favorites are the bear and the beehive... I also like how the leaves of the trees came out.

getting back in

After a long period of no updates, I'm going to try to start back up again. I'll probably change the content of what I put up, especially since I won't be able to do quite as much experimenting since I have plenty I should be doing for class.

Luckily, though, I'm working on an honors project which includes making hand-bound books and completing spreads in them every day, so at least I'm doing something with my hands all the time. I'm also doing some embroidery for one of my current projects for class, which has been kind of therapeutic. I feel really great having not used my computer at all for this project (so far. probably won't, though. total win.)