handmade division talk about blog

it's october 15th! that means it's the handmade division team's talk about blog.
every month we have a topic that we write about, then post links to the other team members' blogs who wrote too! (so be sure to see what they said in the links below!)

this month's topic is "Tell us about yourself - how did you get to where you are now with your skills?"

this seems like a simple question, but it isn't really easy to answer.
when i was a kid, i LOVED when we'd get a project in school to make a diorama.
i thought they were like little worlds that we could hold in our hands and disappear into.
i used to make little worlds outside too. with stones and moss and little acorns...whatever i could find.

i also really liked comic books.

when i was in art school, i kept leaning towards making collage type stuff. i found out about joseph cornell who made diorama sort of things with found objects. it seemed i had the same disease as him...finding stuff and feeling compelled to take it home and save it "for something".

after school, i realized that i had spent so much time with collage type stuff and i really wanted to focus on paint. so i spent a few years painting...portraits, still life...stuff like that.

i took a good few months off (maybe even a year) from painting, and really questioned what i was doing. it took me ages to finish a painting. i needed to reevaluate the way i was working.

it was then i decided to try to put everything together.
somebody (a teacher?) once said to me "notice what you notice". i always think of that.
why am i drawn to certain objects and things? what is the significance?

i started working in a way that i could put the objects in my work as symbols.
sometimes they aren't even symbols, but are purely decorative.
i started making little separate sections just for certain objects...to tell different parts of a story (like a comic book) and telling the stories in whatever medium felt comfortable or necessary to describe them.

so i have my diorama little worlds, i have a place for my found objects, and i am able to use painting and drawing too! it is much more natural for me to work this way. it makes me happy :)

here's the links to the other team members' posts!
please check them out too!


Andes Cruz
Tess Norberg
Jaime Pickering
Purified
Nancy Dale
Jewelry by Natsuko
Sand Fibers
Alice Istanbul
Thomasin Durgin
Beth Cyr
emily watson
Tosca Teran
Lisa Hopkins
Tamra Gentry
JJ Papke
Alisa Miller
Mary Spencer