Origami Around
trying on a metaphor
Sade Olutola
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Cosmic Funnies
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❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
sheepfilms
Cosimo Galluzzi
Show & Tell
DEAR READER
Claire Keane
Love Begins
pixel skylines
★
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
No title available
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
No title available
todays bird
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Italy
seen from Finland
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from Canada
seen from Finland
seen from Sweden
seen from United States
seen from Germany
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seen from Türkiye
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@chimaerasketch
44 paint drenched, high resolution scans
I released another texture pack! Free, (or pwyw!) scanned in from the paint rags I generated while working on Are You Awake?
Lots of bright fluorescent pops in this one, and fun rumpled paper edges.
UFO
Soft Sculpture, Sold!
I almost forgot about this guy! This was done originally for a soft sculpture workshop I was meant to lead which didn’t pan out. (It was an early draft, but time demands requiring I keep the workshop to 30m (good luck with sewing????) meant it kept being pared down until it was just pillows.)
It was nice to finally get to display it in a show! And it fit in nicely with the alien abduction mobile Freddy made.
I'm very tired and editing the last of my show stuff, now that 'Are You Awake?' is down will resume tomorrow. x_x
Waking Up
Acrylic and Resin, Available!
This was the first “eyeball art” piece I did, I believe, and definitely the oldest piece in ‘Are You Awake?’ Which hung July 3rd through August 9th, 2025.
The drips were added by hand after the initial pour, so I had to match the paint pour by hand. This one used a mix of paperclay and modeling compound for the eyelids. I didn’t discover apoxie clay until later!
Dazed
Acrylic, Available!
Originally a part of ‘Are You Awake?’, which hung July 3rd through August 9th, 2025.
This was a small I’d had around for a while, vaguely referenced off a photo of myself half awake.
Sigil Rift
Resin Mixed Media, Available!
This was part of ‘Are You Awake?’ Up July 3rd through August 9th, 2025. Prior it was a part of Coeus, which hung January 1st through February 28th, 2025.
This painting was less so a happy accident, and more so making something beautiful out of a disaster. It was originally intended as the background for a wholly different piece.
At the time, I had no workspace sufficient for doing work with fluid paint or large scale resin, until my mother convinced my grandmother to let me use her house. Originally, I was going to use the garage, but she learned I planned to use a space heater (…because winter, and temperature sensitive materials,) and all hell broke loose. She insisted I use the back bedroom. What she didn’t tell me was she intended to keep her house cranked up to 85° Fahrenheit. It cracked straight through to the bare white canvas. So I took a day to process this, and spiral grieve, then I got back to it. I had to. I started by painting in every crack in copper, and then did a thin overlay of fluorescent pink resin with pearlescent mica over the cracks. Then it got the final clear seal over the top.
Today was the last day for ‘Are You Awake?’
Phew do I have a lot of thoughts on this show, still. A proud disaster. I'm sure I'll have things to ramble on for months to come.
I still have shots I took to edit, a video walk through, and a few more things. SO many projects got left on the cutting room floor.
But it was a wonderful success, in the end. That's the part that matters, really.
So 'Are You Awake?' was produced with about a seven month lead up. It wasn't the original concept. It started with me reaching out to Freddy about a prospective show. We'd worked a fair bit together, he's also a mixed media artist who works a fair bit with resin, and I enjoyed his help when I was working on 'Coeus'. I also knew, in all of the... everything, leading up to this year, that I'd need a project to throw myself in to, just to stay sane. He suggested we bring in Bryan, a mutual friend who I went to school with, and I agreed. Our original concept was to execute a fake archaeological expedition. It was quite involved. We had inspiration boards, a museum trip to study museum mounts and displays, and a fair bit of world building to create our fake society, as well as study in to techniques we'd need to fake the "artifacts" we'd be creating.
Then we all got sick.
Or, well. We all had health issues, in any case, and other events exploding in our lives that just completely wiped us out. Finally, myself still recovering from a horrible nearly two month long sinus infection that would NOT budge and left me barely functioning, we were down to three months left, after swapping our show's slot with another show to squeak in an extra month of work. We realized that our original idea, while we were still quite attached to it, was far too ambitious for the time (and health) we had left, and we shifted focus. I suggested dreams--we could just focus on making stuff in the time we had, and could pick the work that tied together the best in the time left. My idea was, in truth, that any art could be justified as being "from a dream" or inspired by one, so we could just create freely. ...but as soon as we had a theme, it was like things started to subconsciously tie together.
It wasn't the first art piece done by far, but really, It started with the blanket fort. Bryan wanted some sort of tent or yurt someone could go inside for an installation, but he hadn't put a lot of final thought to the outside of the installation. I, still very drained from my prolonged health issues, was fresh back from a second trip to Meow Wolf's Grapevine location, during which I became VERY impressed by just how many places there were to comfortably sit down whenever my energy wavered and I felt unsteady. So I immediately knew I wanted his installation to be comfortable. I suggested a blanket fort, and it just sort of went from there. Suddenly there was this warm, comfortable space to relax and sort of be "welcomed in to a dream," and my sketch page for dream signs came together shortly after. Even Freddy's early idea for suspended fish tied in to everything--there was a LOT of looking in to dream journals to see what different things symbolized.
Ultimately, I can think of a million things I wish I'd done differently, and there are a lot of projects I"m sad we had to cut, but what show doesn't go that way? I'm proud of what we accomplished, and we got a WONDERFUL response to the show. And those cut ideas? Well, we can always have another show.
Boop beep
Boop beep
Sacred Visions, Resin Mixed Media, Available!
This was a part of Coeus (January 1st through February 28th, 2025) before it hung in ‘Are You Awake?’ (July 3rd through August 95), 2025.)
I think it’s one of the earliest conceptual pieces that led to the Portents. Coeus was a lot of me playing with shape language I’d visited on before, and seeing how far I could take it, as well as really pushing some of my more intuitive work.
Epochal Portent, Resin and Acrylic Mixed Media, Available!
This hung as part of ‘Are You Awake?’ From July 3rd through August 95), 2025.
As I mentioned before, the original Portents grew to include the Grand Portents, and then, well, if a larger Portents was a Grand Portent, what did that make this, which included multiple smaller portents?
And I finally figured well, if the idea behind a portent is a merciful flash of clarity, a vision of the future to help you prepare, then this must truly be intended as a vision of something earth shattering. And so, Epochal it was dubbed. This was the first larger portent assembled. The eye mold was a happy accident. I didn’t have time to wait on additional silicone molds, and got out my reusable mold compound to make a few more molds so I could cast quicker. Well, reusable mold compound even once solid is quite fragile until fully cooled down, and in my impatience I didn’t realize it was still warm in the center. The mold tore on the iris, but it tore in an interesting way that I deliberately recast immediately once I saw the results of curiously casting in to the resulting mold, anyway.
Mycelial Reef, Vellum and Acrylic Yarn, NFS
This installation was fun. It departed from my original sketches, but I think keeping it all white made it a stronger contrast to the fish Freddy made. (Eternal catch.)
The concept was overhanging growth that sort of melded fungal and plant shapes where you couldn’t tell which was which, playing with how soupy dream imagery gets. Eventually using branch coral as inspiration led us to how similar anemone and coral looked, and that looped us back around perfectly to the fish as subconscious theme running through the show as a sub theme.
For the hanging, I took inspiration from Meow Wolf—Baba Yaga’s Garden uses mesh to attach the leaves to for the branches, and it was genuinely a fantastic idea—it distributed weight perfectly, and meant the installation could just be held up by cable tacks.
Amanita Cathedra, Soft Sculpture Furniture, Sold!
This one was originally part of a show I did two years ago, Undergrowth, but I brought it back for the fungal garden in ‘Are You Awake?’
It’s very sturdy with removable slip covers to make both cleaning the covers if necessary easier, and the eventual reupholstering. The covers themselves are hand dyed, hand embroidered fleece, with wide whale cotton corduroy for the gills. I’m still insanely proud of these.
Fungal Glade, Mixed Media, Sold!
On display as part of ‘Are You Awake?’ through August 9th. This guy was a happy accident. Freddy and I took a trip to the hardware store for materials to hang the fungal glade installation, (only to learn the mesh we needed was online only!) and we happened upon a dead tree that had toppled. …so we loaded the car up with wood and took it back to our studios to heat sanitize and make art with, as one does. :b
Polyphore, Soft Sculpture, Available
A lovely little clump of bracket fungus made in to a soft sculpture wall hanging, for the fungal garden as part of ‘Are You Awake?’
I can think of things I’d do differently, but that just means learning happened.
I’m still pleased with the shape, and I like the way mesh overlaying fleece translated pores. If I made more wall hangings like this, I’d possibly put a more rigid material on the back panel to reinforce the area around the keyhole specifically, possibly an internal frame, but it still hangs well, and it holds its shape.
Candelabra Tangle, Resin, Available
Brain Tangle, Resin, Available
On display as part of ‘Are You Awake?’ Through August 9th!
Some newer tangle shapes I’ve molded and cast between Coeus and now. I’m developing quite the repertoire of these things, and my brain is starting to develop its own mythology and lore around them. Tangles, as my mind has insisted, are a culmination of energy that gets snared and winds around itself, forming a concentrated mass. Think of them as the lingering feeling that pools inside you until it feels solid, or the thought that doesn’t leave you until it takes on a life of its own. Neither good nor bad, innately, but a tangled mass of thought and / or feeling just the same!
The counterpoint to this seems to be a Wisp, where one of these gets a core dense enough to ignite and start burning off the thought or feeling in a sudden, intense burst! But I have yet to sculpt something I’m happy enough with to cast.
Know The Signs;
Grand Portent (Yellow), Resin Mixed Media, Available
Grand Portent (Blue), Resin Mixed Media, Available
Know The Signs, Resin, Available
On display as part of ‘Are You Awake?’ through August 9th.
The grand portents happened as a natural consequence of the portents I made for my show earlier this year, Coeus. I 3d printed the original eyeball (or rather, had Freddy 3d print the original eyeball,) and after rather a lot of sanding and priming, made some silicone molds to cast more. The tangle frames happened during a day of free sculpting to get better used to my monster clay, and proved a perfect size for the eyes. Much like my original portents, they make use of acrylic skins from my paint palettes and pour overspills as their background, and to form the eyelids. It’s a nice way to make sure none of the paint involved goes to waste.
This sign came from me rather liking the phrase I wrote at the top of a sketchbook page on lucid dreaming signs. The whole wall came together around that page.