Life Being Eaten: Send Help: Studio Updates

Hello Kittens!*
So the semester is beginning to wrap up and school is eating my life--NOM nom NoM! Here are a few snippets of what sort of shenanigans have been happening in the studio:









What have you been making?

Massacreade Recap + New Work!

Hello cupcakes!*

Ahhhh--feels good to be back in the blogosphere! I've been off making mayhem! And as you know when working on a project of Epic Proportions one must prioritize and something has to "give". This time around those "somethings" were laundry and blogging. The latest project my dear friend and Kelly and I were toiling on ended up being an H-Bomb of Awesome! Our Halloween schmorgasboard of art and music, "Massacreade: The Curious. The Marvelous. The Macabre." was well received--we sold out two performances in one night--and was enjoyed by all the freakish and fabulous in attendance! Here are a few highlights from the evening:

Anna looking exquisite with the Famous Graves
on upright bass and our special guests The Echelon String Quartet.

The final fierce pose from Skellywag Fashions (my mom!) smashing debut runway exhibition, "Glampyre"!
That's Kelly in the powdered wig!
The incredibly lovely Evan Flynn, special guest violinist and model.

My muffin looking dapper behind the drum kit.
He deserves a medal for putting up with me being a banshee
for 2 months--a really really shiny one.

Leah Schultz rocking the viola--ensemble coordinator of
The Echelon String Quartet and all around Renaissance woman.
They're amazing performance changed a lot of minds that night--classical music is METAL!
A full view of me feeling like a princess in this awesome
Rosemary Clooney inspired gown Mom made for me.
It was a treat to perform in this incredible outfit, certainly helped
me channel all the dead jazz singers The Famous Graves covered!
The talented Mrs. Julie Ivens was behind the camera.
John Miller of The Echelon String Quartet destroying the crowd with his cello--
nothing hotter than a man in a bunny mask. :)

Our dear friend and talented artist Rick in
his clever costume doing what he does best--being spooky!

While Mum, Anna and I were recuperating from this extravaganza we decided to indulge in some retail therapy at a funky antique mall where I found this excellent Athena statuette! She's a stunning addition to the collection.
I'm also trucking along in my studio classes making books for my print studio, drawing goddess portraits, making shrines, practicing watercolor technique and as usual, up to my eyebrows in naked people for figure drawing! Here's a little peek of my hard ground etching project. The process involves little copper plates that are coated in a black waxy ground. You remove the black coating with a stylus, just like a scratch board and then dip the whole shebang in an acid bath to etch the exposed lines. I'm illustrating one of my favorite ghost story songs, "Long Black Veil", I think it will be rather lovely when it's finished. :)


I've also been lucky enough to make some new friends in town! The ladies at the Bewitchingbee Magical Supply, a wonderful metaphysical supply and spiritual advising operation here in Milwaukee, are sweet as pagan-pie! I'm working on some new signage for their storefront. Shhh! Don't say anything! It's going to be a Halloween surprise--I can't wait!More Making Stuff photos to come soon--and I mean really soon, not "3-weeks-from-now-soon"! hehe!

Now tell me dearies, what sort of mayhem have you been making?

Until Next Time,
Much Joy and Merry Making!*

Altar Building + Isis Bookwork

Hello Dearies!
School is officially over and the day is my oyster! While I sip my spicy tea and wait for this thunderstorm to start, I'll give you the scoop on what's been stewing in the HerSpeak studio since I've been away...

***A few days ago I felt the itch. You know--the itch to shuffle all your belongings, to make piles and generally mouse about. What ended up happening was this impromptu altar! I had started with a black candle that burns in my studio, which then led to a few stones settling near it...and a photograph...and then knots of string...and then another candle...and a magazine clipping...my tarot cards...and a doOdle and before I knew it, this was the end result:

It's my new favorite place in the apartment.

Aside from improvisational installation pieces, I finished my artist book, "Prayers for Isis". This petite accordian fold book was a project for my Print and Narrative Forms course, which is roughly based on a pocket prayer book or a Book of Hours. The pages consist of intaglio etchings watercolored illustrations and gold leaf on domestic etch paper. The text came from a stream of consciousness ramble I did about a year ago.

The pages read: "When they are with HER, they are queens of ostrich plumes & strings of crocodiles teeth--She Hounds wired and aware. When they are with HER, their skins are diamonds, rosy candied fly wings..."

"When I am with HER, I am stitched up swan parts--sure footed and insane. I speak in tongues of leaves, the recently deceased and lavish faun dreams--of dripping water, willow trees and the thousands of ticklish thistles."

"When I am with HER, me is I, this is WE and She is US--due cause for upper case. WE is grounds for celebration, strange festivities and acclimations in memory of dreams we never had, fires we never sparked and books whose spines we have long forgotten."

Each ovalette of text has a corresponding illustration of a maiden, mother and crone version of the same Virgin Mary/Isis/Tonantzin/Lady of Guadalupe icon.


It was interesting watching my peers handle the book during critique: very delicately, carefully turning pages, gingerly touching the gold leaf and absent mindedly rubbing the soft velvet casing ribbon as they read. Most smiled widely when they found the illustrations and recognized the woman as someone they know from paintings, church windows, or their own mothers. Whether they found Goddess in it or not was not important to me, they found Comfort. And really--aren't they the same? :)

And for tomorrow--more projects to document and post! Oooh it feels good to be back in the blogosphere! I'm going to brew a second cup and flit about to all of your blog homes to see what sort of mischeif you've been making! What have you been up to, my pretties? What sort of tinkering have you been doing in your studios, kitchens, classrooms and journals?

Until next time,

Much Joy and Merry Making, Friends!

Spider Woman and Goddess Give Away!

Hello Friends!
Though it was sleeting all afternoon there are sure signs of spring peeking out of the ground--all sorts of activity! There's been activity in Apartment Number 5 too! I began a weaving piece a few weeks ago and after much swearing and many yards of yarn, it is finished!

The planning stage:

Spider Woman has a wonderful mythology and busy busy fingers, so she seemed an appropriate subject for my Creatrix themed work this semester. Though the Hopi story is beautiful, I have no business lifting Hopi imagery. So, instead I borrowed the idea, tweaked it and created the HerSpeak version of the magickal earthy goddess.

In progress:

This weaving is made up of 5 different colored yarns, each being trimmed and changed after 5 stitches to create a painterly background as opposed to one flat color. After weaving the circular background, stars, pearls and glass beads were embroidered onto the blue circle.

The finished work!

I wanted there to be an interactive element to the piece, so I chose to place a grommet where the Spider Woman's third eye would be, through which you can pull a periwinkle colored thread. (There is a bobbin mounted on her back. It makes a delightfull whirring sound when you pull it!)

Now, on to the good stuff--

***A Goddess Give Away!***

To say Thank You to all you gorgeous souls out there for your support, commentary, thoughtful discussion and insight, I will be giving away this limited edition print! This HerSpeak Tarot Card is 1 of 18 double-sided hand pulled, 5"x7" lithographs printed with a vibrant violet ink on hand torn cream domestic etch paper:

The verso side reads:

"THE HERSPEAK IS A SOFT CARD; ITS VISION IS OF TOMORROW, MAYBE NEXT WEEK, CERTAINLY NOT IMMEDIATE. SHE LOUNGES ABOUT THE DECK ONLY TO POUNCE WHEN THE QUERENT LEAST SUSPECTS IT. (BE SURE TO CHECK IN ON THE THIRTEENTH HOUR OF THE THIRTEENTH DAY FOR BEST RESULTS!) THE HERSPEAK CARD IS ONE OF JACK KNIFE POSSIBILITIES, OF HOPE, OF EXPLORATION. THIS CARD ASKS YOU TO LISTEN, YOU SEE; THE UNIVERSE HAS MUCH TO TELL US IF WE ONLY LISTEN TO H E R S P E A K."

This printed was lovingly made and signed by yours truly. Get in on the Give Away fun by leaving a comment saying what YOU are doing to listen to the music of the spheres, the wind, your intuition by Midnight on Monday April 20th! Tuesday morning, the ever awesome Muffin will randomly draw a winner! Which of you will it be, my pretties?

Until Next Time--

Many Blissings and Merry Making, Friends!

Shadow Box: Planning Stages

It's been a light posting week as I've been busy serving food to the masses,weaving on the Wooly Universe and nest building. Here's a sneak peak at what's been a buzzing in the Studio!

The planning stages of my shadowbox began with web writing and scribblings...

The parameters of the project were that the entire piece needed to be made entirely out of paper and be 3 dimensional. After printing three different papers using oil based ink and making a trace monotype from a cartoon drawing of the “bird lady”, I began constructing the cardboard frame…

I wanted the piece to have a shrine-like feel, so lighting was important. Once the skeleton was built, I began punching a series of holes into the surface with nails and pins to let the backlighting leak through in little star spots. Then a string of white Christmas lights was fished through a hole in the frame…
After the pin holes were created, I began the task of weaving the nest frame which I built using 1/8” strips of printed paper. (I got the speckly effect by spritzing the printing plate with mineral spirits.) This was the most labor intensive part of the project, but the toiling was eased by a the good company of a neighbor and a mushroom pizza. :)

The finished product...

Here's the piece with the lights off. (My camera has a hard time taking low light shots, but I wanted you to see the effect...you get the idea...hehe!)

Though I have what I planned for the project is completed, it doesn't feel finished. Any suggestions before I take it to critique on tuesday? For now, I'm off to weave! I hope you all had a wonderful week in your own studios! Until next time--

*~Merry Making, Friends!~*

In The Studio: Hecate Shroud

I feel quite a bit like a lady spider these days--spinning, winding and pulling thread. My Dream Time piece for Fibers is slowly growing tendril by tendril. Earlier in the week I dyed the cheese cloth I will be using to create a series of fleshy, petal–like additions for the existing coils which will eventually make a bed or nest structure for the entire piece to rest in. The dye was a combination of day old coffee, soy sauce and corn starch. (It smells as good as it sounds.) I wanted to achieve a very mottled, organic gradation of colors and if you can ignore the stink, this soy sauce concoction does the trick!

My initial plan only required a few large tendrils, but decided it was far too clunky and didn’t invoke the sort of movement I was aiming for. So I am creating several other more dimensional root structures to beef it up. I’ve also been sewing on small glass beads so the forms play with light a bit and reference something like dew drops or suggest the fantastical. I’m going to experiment with coating the yarn in gel medium to see if I can get more of a fresh wet sheen and less of wooly surface texture.

Aside from the Wooly Universe, I’ve been working on a paper construction project for printmaking. The theme for the course is personal memoir and I'm planning to do a piece about my mom. She has posed for me in the past, but the pictures were less about her and more about a mood I was attempting to capture. I want this work to speak about her personality and her seemingly supernatural creative skills. I have a photograph that I took of her wearing one of her fabulous costume pieces, but due to my fledgling skills in the darkroom it never really captured what I intended. So, I’m planning to use this photograph as a springboard for the project and will hopefully be able to animate the piece so it speaks properly.

By the way, if you dig this nitty gritty process stuff, you should visit my dear friend and kickin’ artist Rick. He’s been posting some crazy creepy work for his thesis show. It’s such a treat to peek into his studio and see what sort of shenanigans he’s up to!

What are you working on this week?

Until next time—
Merry Making, Friends!~*

Book Work: Piel de Noche

The To Do list is No More! After much cutting, stitching, and smudgy finger prints the casket book is complete!

[Piel de Noche]

This piece is about memory. It's strange how memory is not really what we think it is--that it is permanent, like a fixture we can look back on when really, memory is elastic. It's subject to editing. We change it to accommodate our lives, our needs. We romanticize it, we demonize it, sometimes both simultaneously. This seems to happen to an even further extent when something we loved, or thought we loved dies. The blurry font, faded bone paper and haphazard binding are meant to elude to the muddiness of memory. I weighted the cover so it resists the reader as if to say, "Are you sure you want to recall this? Do you want to deal with this now? With all these people around?" Then the cover slaps back onto the table exposing the pages.
The book is small, only 6 inches long. I wanted it to be intimate, something you'd have to hold in your hand to read. Each page is hand printed, one letter at a time with water-based ink, sewn together with coffee dyed thread and mounted inside the wooden casket. My dear friend Rick was a peach and translated the text for me. (Thank you!) He did an artful job, making sure it remained lyrical and wouldn't read like stereo instructions. This is the text in English:

[Night Skin]

Beneath the blood black maple—
The dying leaves dance a dance of animal bones—
and I am putting on my night skin.

The evening grass—
The wet hair of a boy I used to know—
it was the kind of love that drew blood slowly.

The trees, waif skeletons of Luna moths
soon to be stripped twigs praying for the cover of frost—
I hear the shudder and coil of living things below me
where tendrils of trees intertwine—
when roots touch—do they make a sound?
Do they know one another?

The breeze stirs the branches in slipperless steps—
Telling me that summer has passed.
The sun is merely a whisper—
The taste of ash lingers there
as the naked quiet of night crawls towards us.

The brushwood weeps a scarlet psalm
as I try to remember his skin—
It was the kind of love that made you fierce.

Beneath these bundled twigs within arms reach of the dead—
In my night skin, I am there with him
tender and fading, the dusk drawn by wind twine—

Where we dance a dance of animal bones
for the last time.

Molly Roberts 2007

I'll be glad to get this thing off my work bench! Now it's time for a little rest and relaxation. First thing is First: Detox! Since I've been making things like a banshee I've been living on day old pizza and pot after pot of coffee with minimal catnaps. I'm looking forward to walking into my studio wearing my pajamas with my hair all awry to begin tinkering with all the ideas that have been piling up. I've got dream boards to create, journaling to catch up on and new years plans to plan! For now, I'm off to dream of buckets of cold water and cucumber facials!

What do you kids do to rejuvenate?

Wishing you Much Peace and Many Blissings!~*