Artist Spotlight: Chris Malone

Chris Malone recently joined an online art dolls discussion group I belong to, and I LOVE his work. He was born and raised not far from where I live, altho' he currently lives in D.C. (Funny how many artists came from Ohio but don't live here any more...)

His work reminds me somewhat of Jim Henson's more complicated puppets - whimsical, stylized faces and funny, more cartoony bodies and legs. They're SO colorful and the movement of the dolls (even when stationary!) is so much fun - another source of inspiration!

Teaching a old dog new tricks

I have a bad habit of buying "workbooks" - books where you are given certain assignments to complete while following the text - with good intentions, fully planning to complete them and thereby acquire a new skill or personal insight or whatever, but somehow I never actually do the work. The best example I can thing of is Sam Keen's Your Mythic Journey, which is a really terrific book about using autobiography and journaling to identify the myths that underpin your worldview, the "truths" about how the world works that you were raised with and that color the way you interact with the world. Great book. Wonderful exercises to help you figure out your authentic self and "re-write" the stories you tell yourself about your life (another way in which people get "stuck".) Did I ever *do* the work? No. I still have the book, and periodically I think it would be really valuable to follow thru with it, but I never have.

So right now I'm reading and *doing the work* of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards' classic manual on learning to see differently in order to improve one's drawing skills. I've previously said that I draw on a grade-school level (I may even have said kindergarten), and it turns out that a lot of people really do stop developing the skills needed to draw well when they're young - due to a combination of negative reinforcement from self and others (I mean, who would continue to pursue an activity when people make fun of your results?), and the hardening of certain representations (a house looks like this, a person looks like that) in one's drawing. Edwards teaches you to see differently - to stop trying to make, for instance, a nose that looks like a nose, and instead to draw the shadows and light, positive and negative space, that end up representing that nose, that chair, etc. The before and after illustrations of student work - the first exercises are done before reading any of her instruction, so the student has a baseline to look back on and see how far they've come - are really astonishing in some cases. So I'm hopeful, and I'm having fun, and I'm really feeling like I'm going to complete this one. Keep your fingers crossed for me - I'll see about posting some results when I'm able.

Reading List

I think I probably have an addictive personality: fortunately, my drug of choice is not whisky or heroin or gambling or sex, but information. When I get obsessed with a topic I tend to compulsively read, research, and think about it. Since I started expressing myself artistically I find myself reaching further and further, to new media, and every time I learn or want to learn something new it opens up a whole new array of materials to examine. Currently my reading list/library books include:

Artful Paper Dolls: New Ways to Play with a Traditional Form
Beaded Embellishment: Techniques & Designs for Embroidering on Cloth
Creative stamping with mixed media techniques
Celebrate Your Creative Self: Over 25 Exercises to Unleash the Artist Within
Releasing the Creative Spirit : Unleashing the Creativity in Your Life
Kaleidoscope : projects and ideas to spark your creativity
The decorated journal : creating beautifully expressive journal pages
Pretty little things : collage jewelry, trinkets, keepsakes
Artists' journals and sketchbooks : exploring and creating personal pages
Drawing on the right side of the brain
I'm not trying to do all of these things at once, but they're all inter-related in my mind.
Sometimes I feel like if I could just unscrew the top of my head and pour in all the information everything would come together.

Chaos in my wake

The thing that gets me stuck, as far as working on art/craft projects, is too much stuff. Stuff everywhere, and no clear space to work in, and things that can't be found to do what I want to do because there's no rhyme or reason to how things are stored. I've even been known to buy something that I'm pretty sure I already own - black Neopaque paint, for example - just because I can't find the one on hand.

Oh, there used to be organization: when all I did was gourds, I had one of those tall wheeled 5 drawer things that contained my tools, embellishments, paints, and dyes, and all of the things I needed fit in that one unit.

Then I branched out into polymer clay, and there were more tools, and jewelry findings, and wire, and different kinds of paints, and inks, and of course the clay itself, which you always have to buy more of when the local craft store puts it on sale at more than 50% off. Which meant more sets of drawers to house those materials.

Unfortunately, starting from the point where I focused on one medium and then expanded into several others, I didn't keep up with sorting things appropriately, because, you see, so many things cross over into other media, and my original system fell by the wayside.

My real downfall is the altered art. I have board books. Regular books. Altoid tins. Other tins. Little wood cabinets to be made into shadowboxes or shrines. 37 different kinds of glue (you think I'm kidding?) And paper - oh, god, the paper. Tissue, scrapbook paper, handmade paper, collage paper, plus all of the magazine pictures, old photographs, and ephemera (AKA "old paper that our forebears would never have imagined would be considered important or appropriate for making art from.") There are now shelves, and clear plastic shoeboxes, and stacking bins, and clear plastic envelopes, and little sets of drawers that sit on my tabletop. There are also multiple work surfaces, depending on what I'm doing - a large ceramic tile or glass board for clay, a self-healing mat for paper, newspaper for painting dolls... and everything requires storage space.

And there's also all the publications - Polymer Cafe, Art Doll Quarterly, Cloth Paper Scissors, Altered Arts, Belle Armoire, Legacy... I only subscribe to a couple, but periodically there'll be a special issue that catches my attention, and I'll have to add it to my library. These days I've gotten better about the actual books - I'll check things out of the library to make sure they're worth devoting the money and the space before I actually buy - but my art/craft library is still pretty large.

So this weekend I'm launching a reclamation project, in which I completely revamp the way my "studio" space is organized. I've secured a pile of empty boxes, and I plan to spend at least an hour each day sorting the drawers and the boxes and the piles of art supplies into categories, and ridding myself of some things (I have a bad habit of buying things just because they look interesting/useful, not because I actually already have a use for them, so I'm sure there are at least a few things that can go to a new home.) Once I have a better grasp of what all is there I'll be better able to assess what I need in terms of additional storage and how things can be set up for future, on-going organization.

And no, I WON'T post before and after pictures. Maybe after. Before is just too depressing. (Note: the pic above is NOT my space. Mine is not that bad. Really.)