The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

I was pleased to come across the finished short film of the story, because I’d thought it was just an iPad app. It’s a beautifully done animated film about the curative power of story. Be sure to watch it full screen.

So far 2012 is shaping up to be the year of turning thinking into doing. You know how it is, there are all these intentions and ideas in your head, and you never quite get around to them. For me this is completely focused around art, and all the things I’ve been thinking about for ages and not getting around to are ones that could contribute to my development as an artist.

In the past month there are three of these intentions I’ve taken off my list and transformed into reality. The first was to begin hosting an evening of art making with a small group of fellow artists. It was a terrific evening of good conversation, productivity, and sharing of art – exactly what I’d hoped for. I can hardly wait for the next Artist evening…

The second intention/idea I was happy to finally get around to was to launch my very own artist interview series. This was an item I’d written down on a list of goals for last year. It was the series of Food Advocate profile interviews I started for the Foodtree blog that got me going. I was impressed by the level of information people were willing to share about food that encouraged me to finally bring this idea to life and reach out to artists. You can read the first interview here.

This week marked the beginnings of getting started on a third goal that has been languishing away on a to do list, which is to establish a mentor relationship with a more experienced artist. Until recently I wasn’t really sure who to approach about this, especially knowing there isn’t another artist doing work similar to mine in Vancouver. But I realized this wasn’t a detail I should get hung up on, and came up with someone I wanted to reach out to. Yesterday I met with M.A.Tateishi, a mixed media artist I admire, and we discussed this idea of having her become my mentor. It was a really good conversation, and I look forward to her input and guidance as we trial this relationship over the next three months.

It feels very satisfying to get these long held thoughts into a forward motion. Now I just need to keep up the momentum…

I’m pleased to be kicking off this series of artist interviews with assemblage artist (and good friend), Valerie Arntzen. I hope you find her as inspiring as I do.

Valerie in her studio (Photo by Wendy D)

Tell us about yourself:
For starters I am female and going to be sixty this year. I love those milestone birthdays as they kind of knock on your door of memories and aspirations. You take stock of where you have been and where you are going. I have been a worker all my life from draftsperson, treeplanter to buyer in the film industry and artist. My life started in Toronto, Ontario but when I was 19 I moved to Vancouver. I am married to an artist, Arnt Arntzen who is a designer/builder of modern furniture. He makes every piece himself. We both collect things but his found objects are large. He is also my technical director when I need a problem solved. We have been together for 33 years.

How long have you been an artist and how did you become one?
I have been a self taught artist for over 20 years. My first show was in 1990 and since then I have tried to be in at least one show a year while I did my money job in theatre and film.

I like to work and use my hands and head. My mother says I was always working on at least two things at the same time. As a kid I received a brownie camera (which I still have) as an Xmas present and took photos and created photo albums. I still carry a camera and take a lot of photos which I often use in my pieces. I started my art career as a painter of found objects in which I would do these crazy patterns all over vases, furniture and other objects.

I am now an assemblage artist. Assemblage is an artistic process in which a three-dimensional artistic composition is made from putting together found objects.

Do you work full time or part time as an artist? If part-time, what do you do to support yourself?
Retirement from my money job happened about 8 years ago and I have been a full time artist since then. I was also a founding director of the Eastside Culture Crawl and the executive director for 11 years. Retirement from that position happened 2 years ago. The amount of money I have been earning from my art practice has been going up every year. I would not have been able to support myself on those earnings in the past but now my studio is paid for and my husband works full time in his art practice and is very successful.

Record History by Valerie Arntzen

Record History (detail) by Valerie Arntzen

What are some of your favorite materials to work with?
I LOVE JUNK! Being an assemblage artist is a fun job. I get to collect, re-use, recycle and give new life to discarded objects, wood and metal. The found objects I collect can vary from a souvenir Statue of Liberty from New York to a complete set of sun dried animal vertebrae found on the beach in Mexico. I collect when I am out for a walk or traveling different parts of the world.

Tell us a bit about the process you go through to create your work:
I almost always have my camera with me. I use my photos in lots of different ways: in my assemblages, cover them with bees wax, collage them or make books. My files of photographs are categorized under themes such as fences, rust, texture, chairs.

My studio is a visual feast piled high with labeled boxes and drawers stuffed chock o’ block on shelves holding my collections of junk and treasures. Getting out my treasures and creating an assemblage in a favorite box takes me back to a memory of a special trip, person or event. I like to work in series mostly due to the fact that I collect in multiples but I also find my thought process needs more than one piece to be complete. One assemblage piece seems to complete the other.

Shamans Closet by Valerie Arntzen

Shamans Closet (detail) by Valerie Arntzen

Where do you find inspiration for your work, and what keeps you motivated?
My travels definitely inspire me. I collect stories, treasures and photos from my trips. I can start a piece with a found object, box or photo and then it just develops from there. I think I have about 10 years of assemblages worth of stuff in my studio. If I think I have artist block I try to challenge and inspire myself by taking a class, collaborating with another artist, attending art shows, artist talks or going through my library of art books. My biggest motivation at the moment is moving to Amsterdam later this year for six months. I have a show in October there and will be making the art locally as well.

Is there a favorite project or piece of artwork you’ve created? Tell us about it:
One of my favourite pieces I have made is called “Bullets to Buddhas”. It started with a printer spacer box that a friend gave me from his old building in North Vancouver. The spacer box was used to store pieces of wood that you would put between the laid out type (yes one letter at a time!) to create space around each article. I filled the box with bullets I had made by a props person in the film industry and small metal Buddhas I bought at a temple supply store. On the back I carved text from the bible Isaiah 2:4 that talks about turning your swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. My thoughts behind the piece, is that thousands of years later we are still using weapons (bullets) and they should be turned into something peaceful (metal Buddhas). Peace not War!

Bullets to Buddha by Valerie Arntzen

Bullets to Buddha (detail) by Val Arntzen

Tell us about other artists who have inspired you:
I look at Joseph Cornell‘s work a lot. He was an American self taught artist and sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. I love Frida Khalo‘s story and work…against all odds and lots of pain she stayed true to herself as an artist.

Artists that are alive and I admire, show with and talk with are Ken Gerberick (Vancouver) and Bill Thomson (Burnaby). They are both assemblage artists and they both paint as well.

Other than art, what are you particularly excited about right now?
I guess my trip to Europe is what I am most excited about as it won’t all be about art. My husband and I will be learning so much about living in another culture as we usually only travel to places, and not spend so much time there. There will be lots of new adventures and new people in our lives.

What are some of the biggest challenges you feel artists face today?
I am one of the lucky ones who has a studio that I own. Studio space is disappearing or getting too expensive. It is affecting all types of artists from every medium. For those who go the gallery route we are also losing our galleries as they close up for various reasons.

What is special about the arts community where you live? What’s one thing you would change?
I live in a part of Vancouver that has always housed and supported artists. Translation: rent was cheap and places are in the area of mixed use – industrial and residential. Our community supports each other by collaborating, sharing, coming to each others shows. The artists here give back to our community whether it is through teaching children, helping raise money for a project or just generally making our neighbourhood beautiful with their art.

Our biggest hurdle is rentals that are reasonable whether it is a studio, home or live/work studio. As people purchase and renovate and save the old houses the extra space becomes too expensive for artists to rent. We are also getting too many cars in this neighbourhood as more people move here.

Where can people find you both online and offline:
I have an open studio date on the First Saturday of the month. The next ones are February 4th and March 3rd.

Website: www.valeriearntzen.com
Blog: valeriesarttalk.blogspot.com
Contact: 604-817-9130 or valeriearntzen@gmail.com

If you’ve never heard of The Sketchbook Project, it’s a collaborative series of art books created by 5000 artists from around the world. Each person signs up to receive a blank sketchbook, which they fill with whatever they choose in any medium, and then send it back to the organizers. The collected works becomes a travelling show, and eventually a printed catalogue.

If you’re interested in participating, the deadline for sign-up is tomorrow.

Boris and spent a week on Bowen Island over the Christmas holidays, as we’ve done for the past few years. It was a very rainy Christmas but I still managed to get out for a walk each day. This is the same view of the North Shore mountains taken about twenty-four hours apart. It’s one of my favorite views on Bowen.

Perhaps I need to revisit paper engineering in the new year.

These photos are from two weeks ago when Vancouver had a few days of frost on the ground. I love the look of frost on leaves and grass, the way every detail is outlined and highlighted.

Here are a few ideas that I’ve found so far:

Zipper8Lighting on Etsy

nellianna on Etsy

TetraBox Light by Ed Chew

This last one comes with a step-by-step how-to, and is made from reclaimed TetraBox packages. I really like the idea of making a new chandelier from recycled materials.

So I thought I’d try something new and share some of the things that inspire me right here:

Illustrations by Dorian Mocan

Altered envelopes by Kristiina Lahde

Thread and canvas paintings by Nava Lubelski

May the inspiration weave it’s way into a new series of work…

The flowers are made from colourful tissue paper and masking tape, with cloth covered wire as the stems. They’re a mix of torture and enjoyment to make because it’s not easy wrapping thin paper around a tiny wire and ending up with it in the resemblance of a flower.

At the moment I have less than thirty flowers completed, and hope to make twice that many. I’m really hoping this installation idea is going to look as magical in person as it does in my head. It’ll definitely give visitors a pleasant blast of colour when they stop by during the Culture Crawl.

And if you’re wondering, all the flowers will be available for purchase – in case you want to take the magic home with you.

Paper-Craft 2: Design and Art With Paper

Paper-Craft 2 is a fantastic book full of an amazing variety of projects, designs, illustrations, art installations, fashion and more – all made from paper. It’s inspiring but also a bit intimidating to browse through this book because of the high calibre of the work included. But the collection makes it clear there is no limit to what a creative person can do with paper.

Masters Book Arts

Masters Book Arts is part of Lark Crafts excellent masters series of books. I also have the collage edition in my library. It mainly focuses on handmade books and showcases the wide variety of forms a book can take, and they often don’t look like the traditional form of a book.

The Repurposed Library

The Repurposed Library is written by book artist, Lisa Occhipinti, and it focuses on transforming books into home decor items. There are projects for lamps, chandeliers, vases, bracelets, wreaths, and more – all made from old books. My favorite project is the book bursts, which are deconstructed books transformed into circular wall sculptures.

All of these books were purchased at Oscar’s Art Books in Vancouver. (Support your local independent book store!)

This is a selection of the many photos I’ve shared through Instagram over the last few months. I generally strive for sharing interesting and beautiful things – sometimes art, often graffiti, and mostly nature. The app reminds me of the early days of Flickr when sharing photos with a community felt really exciting and inspiring.

Papers

Antiquarian Books

Late Winter Sunny Day

Big Lou’s Butcher Shop

Boris

Vintage Dress

Cherry Blossoms

If you’re on Instagram, come and find me. My username is simply Rachael Ashe. I’d love to share photos with you.

The final form of this project is yet to be determined but now I am well on my way with a clearer idea.

Our adventure to the museum happened on a spur of the moment Sunday afternoon. I was looking at photos of bones and things I’d taken at the ROM three years ago, when Boris suddenly remembered he’d recently bought an admission ticket for the Beaty through Groupon. It opened over the summer and I’d been wanting to visit, so off we went on the long journey to the other side of town.

The first thing you see upon entering the Beaty Biodiversity Museum is the awe-inspiring Blue Whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling in the main atrium. I’m sure the sight of it causes many a traffic jam by the front door as people stop to stare. I continued staring from every angle as I spiralled my way down the ramp to the bottom level where the rest of the collection is located. Standing underneath the whale made me feel very small and I couldn’t help but imagine it crashing down on top of me. (Curses to my over-active imagination).

All but a small fraction of objects are tucked away in a vast underground storage facility that houses the over two million pieces in the museum’s collection. It’s the storage that doubles as display and walking through the endless rows of tall cabinets reveals windows of skulls, taxidermied animals and birds, aquatic life in jars, fossils, preserved flora, insects, and everything else to do with the study of biodiversity.

As a child I was always drawn to the animal displays in museums, but as an adult I can’t help pondering the staggering amount of dead animals taken for the sake of research and how this contributes to the depletion of species. It’s a bit morbid to realize how many dead things are in one place, even if I do happen to have a fascination with dead things.

Boris and I started out following a tour of people lead by an interpreter but quickly got side-tracked by one wow-inducing thing after another. There was really no end to the captivating objects and creatures to look at.

This crocodile still looks ready to eat passerby – and with a smile I might add – even though all that remains is it’s skin. It was HUGE.

The windows into the storage units are sporadically placed throughout every row, and there is a variety of ways things are displayed. Some are set up to show objects at their best advantage, while others (like these) are pure organized storage views. I was amused to see even museums use shoeboxes to stash things away.

The Beaty Museum is a welcome addition to Vancouver’s cultural repertoire, and goes on my list of recommendations to locals and visitors alike. For me it can finally be a stand in for the ROM, a place I would visit frequently when I lived in Toronto and miss having access to. It’s funny how looking at photos taken at one led to the exciting discovery of the other.

Please visit flickr to view the full set of photos from my exploration of the museum.

One of my favorite moments during the Culture Crawl was turning around and finding the lead singer and guitar player from Wee Boy Pretty standing in my living room. I did a bit of fangirl gushing and told them how much I’d been enjoying their music. They were just as enthusiastic about my work as I am about theirs which thrilled me to no end. Check out the video below to get an idea of how good they are live.

I was really thrilled to see this work in person even if it only represents a small portion of the over one hundred million seeds the artist has in the Tate Modern installation. Most of the work in the show focused on the body of work the artist has created using urns. Ai Weiwei takes historic clay pots and porcelain vases and dips them into industrial paint or alters them in other ways. Some of these are up to 7000 (!) years old.

The other show on at the Museum of Contemporary Craft was Collateral Matters, an exhibition of ephemera and printed materials from the museum’s archives. I really like how the curators chose to display the wide variety of materials. There were also two stations where visitors could practice their hand writing or make something from paper and contribute their own ephemera to the show.

There are more photos from the Museum Of Contemporary Craft available on flickr.

I hate white walls, especially in the dreary winter months, so I’ve done my best to place colourful things around the room. I put up two strings along one wall and hung photos, cards, artwork, and other little things using tiny clothes pegs. I have lots of my own work around the room but tried to include prints and things I have from other artists.

The bulletin boards above my desk are filled with inspiring things. My laptop is on the table in this shot, but when I’m making art it sits elsewhere while I make a huge mess. Most of the books I plan to alter sit in a stack by the door with Oliver the octopus sitting on top keeping an eye on things. He’s the land octopus (inside joke) Boris and I always wanted, and we won him at the PNE this summer.

It’s a really nice little studio space, and I feel very lucky to have it.

New Directions in Altered Books by Gabe Cyr
This is the book that started me down the road of altering old books and turning them into art. For years I had been pondering using books in my work and through the ideas in this book I was finally able to move from thinking to making real work. There are plenty of projects to choose from with excellent step-by-step instructions, and a large gallery of work for inspiration.

Paper Engineering & Pop-Ups for Dummies by Rob Ives
Making altered books eventually led me to experimenting with movable parts and pop-ups and this book has been a terrific resource for ideas. There are many patterns in this book for making paper mechanisms. I tend to use it as a jumping off point for figuring out how to make a custom piece to suit my needs.

The Penland Book of Handmade Books
While this book does have instructional pieces in it I actually bought it for the gallery of works, many of which push the boundary of what is a book. The image on the cover is a great example of this. The book is a collaboration between Lark Books and the Penland School of Crafts, located in North Carolina. There is some really incredible art work inside.

Playing with Books by Jason Thompson
I originally picked up this book for the fabulous gallery of work in the back featuring many of the internationally known altered book artists I’ve come across. Most of the content is instructional with projects about making things from book pages rather than full books. I used one example to create the five petal flowers for my installation in Container Art. Lots of the projects inside are decorative.

Creative Time & Space: Making Room For Making Art by Rice Freeman-Zachery
Nothing is more helpful to an artist than talking to other artists about how they pursue their art. This is a book which is a great resource for how to make time and create space in your life to be creative. It’s written by an artist and it features many helpful hints from the fourteen artists she interviewed for the book. All of them pursue their craft full time and have worked hard to make it work for them.

Artist Survival Skills by Chris Tyrell
I’ve come to realize that to be a successful artist you have to think about yourself as an entrepreneur. It’s one of those things they don’t teach in art school and have to learn along the way. Chris Tyrell’s book is a handy reference for helping to develop a professional art practice beyond the art making, with hints on pricing art, maintaining an inventory list of work, developing mailing lists, and the dreaded taxes. I took a four week workshop with Chris last year, which was money well spent and a kickstart to my current trajectory as an artist.

If you’re interested in buying any of these books, do try RubyDog’s Art House for the books on altered books. It’s where I’ve purchases some of these and Leanne has many other creative resources in the shop. As much as possible I like to support local stores when book buying.

It’s my birthday today and I thought I’d mark it with a self portrait. I haven’t taken one in quite some time and last year I didn’t do a birthday portrait because I wasn’t feeling great. A year later and things are much better because I’ve made a lot of the changes and taken my life in a direction I’ve always wanted to go.

This photo didn’t turn out at all how I was visualizing it in my head, but I’m happy with it. I love my goofy facial expression and the magic of floating mid-air in my bedroom.

RubyDog’s Art House is my favorite place to buy supplies and find inspiration for the collage work I create. I’ve been going there for the last couple of years and I always find something unique and inspiring to take home. The shop is owned by Leanne Bishop and it’s always fun to chat with her while I browse through the store.

When I dropped by a yesterday to pick up a new book about collage I decided to take a few photos and show people some of the interesting things you can find in the shop. There is an excellent selection of books on collage, book making, painting, and more. I think I’ve bought most of my art books from RubyDog’s because she seems to be the only one in Vancouver to carry as many books about altering books.

This is Ruby the dog, who can often be found napping peacefully in the corner, and is the namesake of the shop.

There are plenty of interesting little things to look at all through the store.

I’ve used these some of these tiny bottles in one of my altered books (that now belongs to someone else).

I have some of these clarinet pieces in my possession and that have not yet made their way into a collage. Leanne has a HUGE collection of letterpress pieces for collaging or collecting.

There’s really no end to the variety of things you can find at RubyDog’s Art House, from vintage ephemera to billiard balls. Please check out the shop and help support a wonderful local business.

RubyDog’s Art House
623 Kingsway
(Kingsway near Fraser Street)
Vancouver BC V5T 3K5

The space is newly renovated with high ceilings that give the store an airy feel. There are lots of beautiful and colourful things to look at including the front counter which is covered in vintage yardsticks. At this point I should mention I don’t actually sew but I do love threads and textiles.

The store was having a soft launch last weekend with their official opening day this Saturday, June 5th.

Did I mention the gorgeous fabrics Spool of Thread has for sale? These are pretty wow. Some of them would be dreamy as a summer dress or as curtains in my new place.

Thanks to Spool of Thread owners Lili and Henry for being so welcoming to their shop and allowing me to take photos. I’m sure the store is a welcome addition to the Vancouver craft scene.

Ariane is in San Francisco this week, and last night her tweet about Alamo Square had me revisiting my photos on Flickr taken in SF on a trip there a few years ago. The trip down memory lane reminded me of these shots taken in the deYoung Museum of three sculptures by Ruth Asawa.

She’s a San Francisco based artist best known for her sculptures created by crocheting or tying wire. The work is delicate and beautiful, and captures organic forms that remind me of micro-organisms or seedpods. Ruth is also a painter and has numerous large scale public art installations located around San Francisco.

I’m really glad to have this reminder of her because it’s very much in line with the more craft oriented work I’m interested in at the moment. It’s also the perfect inspiration for a thread-based piece I keep wanting to experiment with.

Visit Ruth Asawa’s website for more information about her work.

I’m always on the look out for inspiration to keep my creativity fueled and fired up. I collect things like postcards, art show flyers, clippings from magazines, cards people have given me, photos and other bits of ephemera. As shown in the above photo I keep some of the things on display pinned to the bulletin board facing my desk. I love having something interesting to look at while I work on the computer.

These days the internet has become my main source of inspiration. It’s the quickest and easiest way to do research for my work or randomly come across the work of other talented artists through Twitter, Flickr, or blogs. Thanks to Boris’ introduction to Posterous I’ve started gathering together all the bits and pieces I find on the internet that inspire me instead of leaving them forgotten in google reader or filed away in email. Take a look at my posterous page to see what I’ve collected so far.

Some of the artists featured on my bulletin board:
A print by Theo Ellesworth
Two invites for shows by Soizick Meister
A flyer for Cecilia Z. Miguez
Postcards by Anahata Katkin

Please leave me a comment if there is an artist or blog you find inspiring.

I decided to do a list of good things and see how many items I could come up with. Here goes in no particular order, good things from 2009:

1. Discovering the art of altering old books and taking a huge step forward with my collage work.

2. Concluding the 52 weeks self portrait series that I started in 2008.

3. Moving out of my cold and dark apartment in Kits and moving in with Boris.
4. Bringing a regular yoga practice back into my life thanks to the forty day yoga challenge.
5. Going on walks with Anne on Bowen, and getting to see new trails I hadn’t walked before.

6. Canoeing and a picnic in Widgeon Creek.

7. Going to Jericho park and throwing the frisbee around with Boris.
8. Working on a portrait series inspired by my self portraits.

9. Swimming in the Pacific Ocean for the first time ever.
10. Writing regularly in my paper-based journal.
11. Learning how to make mozzarella cheese.
12. Attending Artfest in Port Townsend.

11. Eating Dungeness Crab caught by James.
12. Riding Anne’s scooter around the North Shore with Boris on my birthday.

13. Visiting the Bug Museum in Victoria.
14. Snowshoeing on Cypress with the Mann Family.

15. Cycling around the city to see the cherry blossoms.

16. Rescuing a baby crow from the streets of Gastown and putting it into Kirsti’s care.

17. A surprise visit from my friend Tonia.
18. Heirloom tomatoes from the farmers market.

19. A July weekend on Saltspring Island with friends.

20. Hanging out with Kathy in Vancouver, and sharing Bowen Island with her at last.
21. Turning some of my collages into postcards.

22. Acquiring two cute little goldfish.

23. The return of Ruby Dog’s Arthouse in a new location.
24. Spending quality time with Kai during her brief visit to Vancouver.
25. Eating many delicious meals made with delicious deliciousness.

(I started this thinking I wouldn’t be able to come up with much, and I’ve surprised myself by realizing I can think of more.)

The wise words of Ira Glass on why creative excellence takes time. I found listening to this very gratifying, especially the part about self-directed projects and deadlines to work towards, because it’s what I’ve been doing for the past two years with fruitful results. I’m producing the best work of my life (so far) and I’m working hard at it. I am occasionally tough on myself because I feel like it’s taken me a forever to get to where I currently am as an artist. But there would’ve been no other way to get here because all good things take time and hard work. (And hard work takes time too.)