This month in the studio, I’m experimenting with different shaped substrates — and really pushing myself on size.
Up until now, I’ve preferred for my work to be intimate in scale. Back when I was taking studio art classes, my teachers were always urging me to get larger paper, larger canvas, and I kept resisting. Eventually this led me towards making jewelry, where I was really working on a small scale. I was wearing magnifiers every day, and, for a time, I was in heaven.
When I set jewelry to the side, I returned to working pretty small — my max is usually 11 x14 inches! One of my friends pointed out that I like to work in book size. This is true. (I also like to make books.)
But for some reason, as the pandemic has worn on — for reasons I haven’t quite really been able to pin down — I’ve been feeling the urge to work larger and to take up some more space. So, when one of the teachers I admire offered a class called “Big and Little” — all about scaling up work, I was immediately intrigued and signed right up.
I didn’t expect that the first step would be to work in different shapes, but i felt very enthusiastic about that. This piece above, still in process, is six inches in diameter, so still pretty small. BUT, I have purchased 12 inch round canvas…and even larger square and rectangular canvases. (like…18x24 inches gasp!). So now I’ll want to use them. More as it happens!