buttons! buttons!

It's that time of the year again: I'm getting all my goodies together for the Alternative Press Expo next month. That means I've got to order some new buttons, among other things, but the other things are boring. Paper and ink and plastic sleeves are not half as good as shiny new pin back buttons!




I want your opinion on these buttons, k? In the past I've just kinda picked at random whichever images I think would look good on a button, but then I end up with none of one kind of a whole bunch of another kind left over. My preference would be to have no buttons left, because they are happily living on your jacket or book bag or wherever! SO, vote for your favorites (as many as you want!), and I'll make buttons of the most popular picks. This is especially easy cause you don't even have to leave an actual comment, you can just click on this little poll-thinger!

Click click click!

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Or, you know, if there's something you think would be cool as a button that ya don't see here, I'm open to suggestions.

post ape + new in the shop + election!

First of all, here's a pic of my table at APE:



I'm all lurpy back there behind the tattooed lady. It was a refreshingly chilly and rainy in San Francisco this past weekend, and I liked that lots. Right after this picture was taken, I ran outside to get some soy lattes and change and returned as a big wet mess because it had started pouring on the way back. My coat smelled like a stinky wool sock and I looked like I had just hopped out of the shower. Gross. There are lots more pics on my flickr.

The table was very "Welcome to Grandma Brigette's House":



...but that's how I like it!

By the way, thanks all you blog followers who stopped by to say hello!

Other than getting soaked on the first day, the weekend was pretty much a success! I met a lot of really nice folks, and and I got to see people's reactions to my work up close. I must have distributed more than a hundred postcards and business cards over the weekend (I actually ran out of postcards by the second day). I bought something really excellent from Esther Pearl Watson, hung out with these guys, traded some artwork with my next-booth-over neighbor Ken, and met some fellow etsy shop ladies, including Tammy Stellanova. I'll show you all the goodies later.

I just added the following to the shop:

-the tattooed lady
-dog face man print
-mockingbird print
-family tree #3
-family house
-framed version of the sleepy pigeon print

There are also plenty of buttons left over that are also going to go into the shop as soon as I figure out a nice way of packaging them. I think I'm going to attach them to a little card or something, but I'm not sure if I want them in sets or separate. Ideas? Opinions??


I also had a dream about the election last night. In the dream, voting was all said and done and I had somehow missed it (I often have anxiety dreams were I'm late for something or another). The new president elect was none other than Shania Twain, the country singer. In my dream I was incredulous...I couldn't believe what was happening. I couldn't even recall Shania being in the running! I felt that surely this was a sign that the world as I knew it was coming to a close, and that we were all going to hell in a hand basket, and how could anything ever be more ridiculous than this??
Then I woke up, and was relieved to find that it was all just a stupid, stupid, stupid dream. How on earth did Shania Twain get all wrapped up in my subconscious, anyway? In any case, I voted, and I hope you did too! Today was, as they keep repeating on the radio, a big one in the history books.

Sorry there's so much chatter and no art stuff in this post. Before the week is through, I promise I'll have some new art stuff up. Promise!

one double wide post this week + ape is coming! + trees

Ok, I was doing really good with two a week, but this week has just been toooooo crazy! So I'm just giving you one large-ish post instead. I've been getting my stuff together for APE and let me tell you something about getting organized: it's HARD, and it takes a LOT of energy. I'm in CalArts-crunchtime mode right now, with a wackadoo sleep schedule and I've been fueled mostly by big cups of tea (with the occasional soy latte for emergencies) and packets of Emergen-C. But enough about me. I know why you come here and it's not for the jibber jabber!

I made a little series of family tree paintings for these crazy, kitschy frames I found.

First, an awesome frame shaped like a house! I can't take credit for the creation of the frame, but I can take credit for filling it with art.




This frame was really, really hard to photograph. It has a shiny finish on it, but the pic makes it look super glossy, which it's not!



The little paintings are digital, and I printed them out, cut them out, and put them inside of this awesome frame. I've never seen one like it...I wish I could find more. I'd do a whole series.


I got some of these "family tree" frames, too. They were really, really horrible looking when I got them. They're made out of some awful fake pewter stuff, and they looked like something your grandma would have on top of her TV, but not like a cool old school grandma. Like a REAL grandma who likes things that are made from pewter and filled with embarrassing photos.

I turned the first one into a librarian tree, complete with Miss Lib herself, and her owl friend, a fox taking in some new fiction.



These frames are double sided, so on the back I filled the frames with pages cut from an antique book (which, in all respect to books everywhere, was an awful book and kind of deserved to be used as decoration).



Here's the actual little paintings, since they're kinda hard to see in the photograph. Taking good photos is HARD!





This tree is smaller, but it's the runaway hit so far.

On the front: a handsome, 1920's-esque family...




...on the back, cut outs from a vintage National Geographic.





And here are the subjects themselves! Sean said that they seemed to be from New England, and that they instantly implied a story to him. He asked me what the story was, but I leave that up to the viewer. I didn't have a really clear idea of who they were when I made them, I just know that I like them a whole lot.




These, along with quite a few other one of a kind framed prints, are going to be on sale at APE this weekend! If you're going to be there then you should stop by, get your button, and check them out in person. I'm really really reeeeaaaally curious to see what kind of reaction they get...they're kinda artsy, but kinda crafty, but quite character design-y. Oh yeah, and there's more pics of them on my flickr!

So, I've still got some printing to do, but I will take LOTS of pictures on my little San Francisco journey and let you all know how it goes.

See ya next week!

It's business time.

Since I am supposed to be a professional artist, or something, it seemed like it was about time that I made myself a pro-feshunal type business card!

This is the front, with all my contact info on it! I omitted my last name because it is: impossible to pronounce (butchered daily, always and forever, with an inexplicable 'n' thrown in where there is none), not at all memorable, and also unspellable. Even if you can say it and remember it right, you won't be able to spell it. Doubt it? Go ahead!! Give yourself the Barrager quiz! It ends in disaster every time.




This is the back. I took a workshop through CalArts Alumni Services from a very wise and witty and with-it lady who proposed this astonishing idea: if you are an artist, and you are in the business of making images, and you are handing out a double-sided piece of paper with all your information on it, should you not make it look awesome so that people not only hang onto it but they know EXACTLY what you do just by looking at it?




By the way, if anything on these cards is unclear, or kinda hard to read, or smeary or something, NOW would be the appropriate time to tell me. Critiques are appreciated! Now! Because after I get these printed (I'm going to use Vista Print I think) it will be too late to give constructive criticism.


Another reason for getting my business card ready to go is that I'm going to be exhibiting at the Alternative Press Expo in November. This is a momentous, fun, and incredibly stressful situation for me. Before Halloween, I've got to make it look like I've got my act together, do a bunch of cool new artwork, and still manage to somehow do my "day job" (aka the job I actually got paid money to do although I mostly do it night). I'm going to need a lot of luck and very, very little sleep to accomplish these things.

In other small news, although I haven't sold a lot of stuff on my etsy store,
a couple of my items have been featured on the front page, which is kind of a big deal! It means that hundreds of people saw my stuff and clicked on it, too! It was a nice little ego-booster for me, personally.