Clamshell Boxes!

   My family has experienced a great deal of death over the past five years and as a result, I think about my loved ones a lot.  Finding ways to acknowledge how much I care for them has become very important to me and as an artist, a really natural way for me to do that is to make art about everything that is important to me about them.  That being said, when it came time to decide what to make for my final projects for my Artist's Books and Drawing Materials and Techniques classes, I chose, without hesitation to make a series of drawings based on family photos.  These drawings would be reproduced in sets of five and distributed among five clamshell boxes.  I'd then give each of my family members their own clamshell and set of drawings.  

   

   I'm really pleased with how the project turned out for a variety of reasons:

1. I feel pretty good about my clamshell-makin' skillz 

2. I've been able to focus on doing some highly-technical drawing and gain confidence in my drafting abilities

3. I've been able to analyze and understand my drawing process and experiment with several new techniques with the help of my drawing professor, Richard Deutsch

4. Each making session doubled as a kind of therapy session. In creating these tangible objects, I feel I've gained a greater understanding of intangible things like the feelings I have about my family and all of the death we've experienced

   

   I'm going to continue making these drawings and sending reproductions to my family and in the process, I'd also like to learn a bit about making quality reproductions- something I currently know nothing about.  Richard said his friend, SAIC legend, and my former professor, Peggy MacNamara employs some really impressive reproduction techniques, so I might be shooting her an e-mail sometime soon.  I'm considering taking a print class at some point while I'm at school in order to learn how to make multiples of my drawings.  Having a great deal of control and being able to use an extremely fine line is really important to me so if you, lovely reader, can think of a printmaking process that you think I'd like, lemme know.

  

   I hope everyone's holiday celebrations are going along swimmingly.