Process

Earth Purses / New Artwork / Process — No Comments
3
Feb 10

Experimentation

I have started experimenting a bit with my screenprinting.  I am trying to design purses around a screen print.  Since Valentine’s Day is coming up, I thought what could be better than a heart?  I also had the screen already made and laying around, so it was great when I all of a sudden decided yesterday that I wanted to screen print on the next purse I made.

The best thing about experimentation is that it always leads down a path you have never been.  I gathered a great many new ideas in my head yesterday evening as I sewed my lopsided purse and pouch.  Check them out and let me know what you think.

My purses are available for purchase at my etsy store.

Process / Significant Stranger Project — No Comments
19
Jul 08

Oh won’t you be my neighbor

So, first and foremost I would like say that I am a total lame brain. I just received an awesome comment in my “comment box” here on my blog, but accidentally deleted it. If you are out there, person who commented on the Feminist bras and wanted to know if there was still time to be involved in the project—YES! I am still looking for some wonderful volunteers. Either leave me another comment, and this time I will make sure I don’t delete it. Or, if you don’t trust me, just send it via email to lauren@laurenusher.com and I will email you back with my address and bit more information on what I need from you.

So sorry that I totally approved your comment and then somehow deleted it. Wordpress can trick you sometimes if you aren’t careful.

On to another more happy subject. I am happy to say that I have finished another piece for my Significant Stranger Project. As you might have read earlier on my post Neighborhood Piece I have been painting images from found photographs onto old photographs from CalTrans. Anyway, I was struggling with the look of it and I didn’t feel like it was really delivering the concept I wanted it to. So I sat with it a while and came up with this.

Certainly a whole new idea. But, I am much more fond of it and believe it delivers a much stronger concept and, let’s face it, it is much cooler looking.

I grew up watching Mr. Rogers and have always had a strange relationship with the idea of neighbors. My whole artistic endeavor is about getting people more involved with one another, but I have to say, I still want a tall fence around my backyard. Does that make me a hypocrite–maybe so. But, I’m sure there are more people out there who feel the same. I appreciate privacy and believe it is a right, but I do think that we should attempt to cross our own boundaries once in a while and get to know those around us.

Process — No Comments
1
Jul 08

New Art–Feminist Bras

Here are just the beginnings of this piece. I still need to print more women on bras and figure out how to show them. I am leaning towards pinning them along a rope, but don’t know for sure yet. Also, I am considering using underpants as well, but don’t know that those really deliver the concept as well.

I’m torn between the above image and the first image as being my favorite thus far. I just love the look of this (above) piece. Susan B. Anthony looking so serious on a pink bra kind of gives me the giggles. But, on another note the mixing of sex and feminism that the first picture delivers is also powerful. But, there are more bras to come so I’m sure that my opinion may change. I’m actually surprising myself lately–I’ve started to use colored ink. This has hardly occurred over the past 4 years, so I’m anxious to see where I am taken.

I will keep you updated.

Process — No Comments
17
Jun 08

Process–Original Owners Piece

So, another beginnings of a new work. I find these days that I am bouncing from one piece to the next every other second. I can’t seem to remain hooked on one work in order to finish it. Don’t know why that is, but I will share another piece I am in the middle of building on.

These two pieces will be combined with many many other pieces like them. I hope to fill a huge shelf with piles of containers holding products I have used. For now I am trying to print the original owners of the particular companies on the product containers. I may combine them with current workers, board of directors, etc. in the future, but I haven’t decided yet.

I also want to print larger faces on more than one container–make sort of a puzzle.

I will keep you updated on how this process goes and hope to get one of these done eventually.

–Lauren

Process — No Comments
10
Jun 08

The Shoe Piece

So, this is another piece that is in the works–It is as hard as I thought it would be! But, I think when I am finished with it in a few months it will look awesome.

This piece involves not only significant strangers, but a significant event. For this project as a whole I am attempting to use events that have occurred both before I was born and also during my lifetime in order to communicate the idea that the past has set up the world we live in today and we (as a collective whole) are, everyday, setting up the world future generations will reside in.

Photography has always been a significant art form and practice for me. I chose a particular photograph I remember being powerful for me the first time I saw it when I was younger. It was taken as Elizabeth Eckford entered Little Rock Central High in Arkansas in 1957.

I decided to use this photograph as my subject matter for my shoe piece. What I mean by “shoe piece” is I am painting on the bottoms of shoes that have been worn down by various individuals. I hope to conceptually deliver the message of “take a walk in my shoes.” Like most of my work this piece is about perspective and attempting to show the connections we all share.

Process — No Comments
5
Jun 08

Processing

So, I started a new piece and I don’t really know what I am up to. I found tons of photographs at the East Bay Depot and for some reason was attracted to people sitting on their couches. At the same time they had piles and piles of old CalTrans aerial photographs. I didn’t know the two would be part of the same piece, but I decided to purchase them that day. What has happened with them so far is this…

I’m not feeling it at the moment and I don’t know why. I love the concept. To fill you in I have decided to take these found photographs and use them as my subject matter and use the CalTrans photos as my canvas. I want to express the idea that we all have neighbors and most of us don’t take the time to get to know one another. So, these ladies could be my neighbors. It is just kind of crazy to look at all of those houses and wonder what kind of people live there. What do they like to do with their spare time? Are they happily married or recently divorced? Do they like their lives? How am I connected to them?

I’m tossing back and forth with painting faces or leaving them blank. Conceptually speaking, leaving them blank would make more of a suggestion that they could be anyone. And it would also express the sort of anonymity that a lot of us live in these days. We don’t communicate face to face so much anymore (this blog being an example). In some ways that is a good thing. There are people out there who would never get the opportunity to view my work if this blog didn’t exist.  But, then again, sometimes there is nothing like a face to face conversation.

Enough babbling, Just wanted to write a bit to clear my head. I’m starting on a new blank CalTrans photograph and using and older gentlemen who is sitting on a couch. We will see how this painting turns out. I think I might leave the ladies alone for a while and look at them again in about a week with fresh eyes.

Another thing, why am I painting? Why the sudden urge? I don’t know…

Lauren