My makeshift product photography studio.

I have been re-examining how I photograph my upcycled products for display in my online store.  Having done a bit of research of other successful online stores and paying attention to my own online shopping tendencies I realized my photographs may be a bit too much.  The backgrounds are distracting one’s eyes away from the product.

I have come to realize that the best way to show off a product is to show ONLY the product.

I do not have the money for a photography studio or even the proper lighting.  So, I am depending on my makeshift studio, natural lighting, my tripod and Photoshop in hopes it will do the trick.

Because I feel like white backgrounds are so atrociously boring (not in all photographs, just in my products shots) I have made a compromise with myself that the first photograph someone sees of the product will be the boring white background shot.  The rest can be detail shots and ONE artsy-fartsy photograph is allowed for each product if I feel the urge.

We will see how my customers respond to this makeover when it is complete!

Remix.

So, in an attempt to shed my art past and hopefully get out a current funk I have started tearing apart and getting rid of my old work.  This seems pretty crazy to me and I don’t feel good while I am partaking in the act of cutting apart my large installation pieces.  But honestly at this point I don’t know what else to do.  I do not enjoy looking at boxes that are and will never go anywhere.  They have passed their prime and are no longer eligible for current art exhibitions.  And, I don’t plan on having a retrospective and even if I did the work wouldn’t make it that long.  So, as everything in life has a cycle, so must my artwork.

The first piece I decided to dismantle was “Toilet Paper” which was created in 2007 and consists of 30 rolls of toilet paper with several portraits printed on them.  Have a look.

So, after unpacking it, tossing some of it, saving the clean toilet paper for later use and keeping the images I think I might turn into new works, this is what I am left with.

A much smaller box and a somewhat calmer mind.

Update – The Living Room Project

I have been asked by a few participants how the process for making my new Living Room piece is going.

I have been sketching out how I want to go about creating the work. I have created a model as a starting point.

The photo above is my living room that I will use as my base for creating a new living room out of the several photos I have received. The process will take a while, so I don’t expect it to be completed any time soon.

I am dissecting each photo I receive and separating them into sections. Each little piece of everyone’s living room is being put into labeled ziploc bags.

After I collect enough of each piece I will sew them all together into a new living room!

I still need living room photos!

If you or anyone you know has not submitted photos, send them my way. lauren [at] laurenusher.com

A Transitional Period.

My art collaborator, Lisa Rasmussen, and I have been discussing the idea of change for a a few months now.  We have been working on a project called Art is Moving for 2 years now and are loving our success.  Lisa will be moving out of the area in September of this year so the dynamic of our collaboration will inevitably be effected.  We are attempting to practice having a long distance art relationship so that we can continue to be a positive force in the art world and community at large.  At this point we really won’t know what will happen to our project until it happens.  Luckily, we are both fairly easy going women that are not afraid of change.

It seems as though I am going through an individual transition as well.  My own artwork and art concept seem to be shifting.  As I am attempting to live a minimalistic type life I am starting to wonder where art fits in.  By minimalistic I mean, low impact, sustainable, eco friendly and the like.  As I try to limit the amount of new material I purchase for my house and life and increase the amount that I reuse and recycle, it has started to make little sense to by new materials to create art.  About 2 years ago I started a project called Significant Stranger, where I made a rule (as I usually do for my art projects) that all of the material I use for my “canvas” had to have been used by someone else before me.  It tied wonderfully into the concept of the art project, that those in the past have created the world I live in today.

There seems to be another reason my body and mind gravitated towards reusing material. This past week I starting having trouble using linoleum to carve because I cannot find anyone who will recycle the small leftovers that I create.  Although I can’t believe I am saying this, I am going to give up linoleum.  Artists are supposed to be creative, right?  Well it is time to get creative and find some used material to act as my linoleum.  Book pages that are stacked and glued together make great carving boards, old wood from the dump, old doors, drawers, lots of stuff.

If Art is Life and Life is Art it only makes sense that the two should mirror one another entirely.

I’m workin’ on it…

So, I collected a ton of “Quilt Patches” during the Fremont Earth Day Fair back in April.  Now the time has come for me to figure out a way to sew them all together.  The problems I am facing are the fact that the materials I am using are extremely fragile and usually do not get sewn together with a sewing machine.  Ignoring those two obstacles, I don’t think I should have much of a problem.

Since the quilt is made up of newspaper and manila folders, I wanted to protect it with some kind of covering.  I found some old transparencies my husband donated to my “reuse it” pile of materials and it is working out great!  I am sewing the the plastic transparency to the top of the patches and sewing the patches together at the same time.

I don’t know how large the quilt is going to be yet, as I am just sort of organically sewing it together.  That seems to be the way I work when it comes to sewing, I don’t know why.  But, as soon as I am finished I’ll take a photo and show you the final project.

I have contacted a few people down in Fremont in hopes of displaying the quilt when it is finished.  What I would really like is to have it on permanent display somewhere in the city.  I’ll keep you posted (that’s the best pun I have ever made-I know, not very good.)

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.

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.

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–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

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.