Month: December 2012

happy holidays

And see you in 2013.  I’ll be back on New Year’s day (postponed for at least a day or two- I’ve got the flu) with the details on my new year long drawing/painting project. I’ve continued to poke around in my old painting and drawing files as I get ready for my new experiment and I’ll leave you with one of my favorites.

circus parade

circus parade painting ann wood 2004

(you can click the photo for a larger image)

circus parade detail

I hope your holidays are lovely,

ann

drawing and painting

I used to draw and paint a lot.

merriwether lewismerriwether lewis 2005  (after the Charles Willson Peale portrait)

waterparkwest side water park 2005

junebug film art

illustration for film poster 2005

And  my begining here, this blog, was making marks on paper – the cardboard horse project.

horse8

And then all of a sudden I was sewing. A lot. And as I sewed more and more  the drawing and painting went away.  I miss that kind of work and that kind of expression but even though I feel inspired in that direction  I keep not doing it.  It is very easy not to.  So I’m making it mandatory and  planning a project in the 2 dimensional world  for 2013. I have figured out what it’s going to be, the focus, and I’m excited about it  but I’m still working out the particulars of how I’m going to share it – when I get that figure out I’ll tell you all about it.

shop update

I’m having a little shop update Monday (12/17 – 2pm ny time), you’ve already seen some of the new things- toadstools and little owls – and there are a couple new ships as well. One is paper mache:

paper mache ship

And the other is made from  an antique quilt fragment – pretty grays and lilac.

quilt ship

Both have little owl captains.

There is also a new dark toadstool with a little teal owl perched underneath- both made from turn of the century garments.

owl and toadstool

The new things will be available in the shop on Monday- 12/17  at 2 pm (new york time).

fortuny collection

I’ve made lots more Fortuny things including these toadstools.

fortuny toadstools

And  a couple others:

fortunysailor_3_2

A  gentleman sailor owl braving a perilous sea all alone

fortuny owl

A dastardly owl

rose fortuny songbird

A rose colored and gold songbird

fortuny red bird

And a red and blue songbird

(these and others are  available  at the Fortuny showroom  in Manhattan)

sponginess and some irregularity

These are the two of the  qualities I wanted my mushrooms to have – a sense of sponginess and sometimes a little oddness in the shapes.

toadstools

I also  very much wanted a concave underside for the cap – that has been the biggest struggle in creating the patterns and process . I didn’t want to make something realistic or botanical, not this time anyway,  but I did want a great deal of mushroom-ness. Mushroom strangeness. Also contributing to  mushroom-ness, I hope,  are  the curvy stems and tilted caps – impossible balance but for  stem bottoms weighted with glass bead fill thanks to a tip from abby glassenberg.

glass fill

It’s marvelous stuff. It is also magical stuff- pretty and sparkly and there is some delight and ceremony  in taking out the wooden  box I keep it in and spooning a bit into the stem.

There are new Fortuny toad stools too- I’ll show you those and more new things from that collection tomorrow.