Long Island City Open Studios

Several large studio buildings were holding open studios today, so we went around and looked at artwork. I work for a ceramicist in LIC Arts Center, so it was nice to go say hi to him (I'm starting work again tomorrow), and there were a lot of other artists who were interesting to talk to. I didn't see a whole lot that I found especially memorable, but it was the conversations with artists that were more valuable to me. It seems that as a young artist people are very interested to talk to me and excited that I've chosen something that I really want to do - some of them came to it from a job they were less passionate about and so they envied my course. Although, we'll see how it goes!

Artists who caught my eye:

Violet Baxter, who does beautiful paintings of New York

Karen Dimit, who makes votive-looking assemblages of stone, wood and metal 

Charles Birnbaum, who makes amazingly detailed ceramic pieces and is very influenced by Lee Bontecou

I also spoke with Yukiko Kobayashi, who besides being a talented artist might be interested in helping me practice Japanese!

I'm excited to go to more events like these, and pleased that there are so many inspiring people here!

Manhattan

I found some great things on my walk today. We went up through Little Italy and Nolita, across 8th over to the Meatpacking District and down the west side on Hudson Street. Almost every street we were walking on had some kind of street fair. It was amazing. 

We found a couple cool arts fairs, too, which was exciting. One was "Art in the Village", which has been apparently going on for 79 years. It seemed to be mostly fine art (drawing, painting, photography), which I guess makes the vendors enough money to pay off the stall fee...

I was even more excited about the "Young Designers Market" at my old elementary school, the PS 3 building on Hudson by Christopher Street. There weren't many stalls, but what I saw was pretty interesting. Of note were bags made of knitted strips of plastic bags, and some handbags and purses in cute patterns.

I'm really excited to see what else I find this summer! If you know of any good craft fairs, please post in the comments.

Doll Project

On graduation, I got a sweet little doll from Fran at the costume shop. She had a heavy winter dress on, so last night I decided to update her.

Chickies

Also some cutesy things. I made these Easter chickies from a pattern my friend had. After making three in quick succession, though, I was pretty sick of the pattern.... It works much better with stretch; the head is really huge and kind of a strange square shape. I don't know why they didn't try to make it a ball shape instead of a prism, but I suppose you use fewer pattern pieces this way.

Twig Houses

For my senior show at Brown I made a lot of slightly architectural twig sculptures. I really enjoy making things like that, but the problem is that they really can't be transported. So when I left, I had to get rid of some of them, and so I went around and planted them outside:

It's hard to photograph it well, but it looked nice in the stones.

Intro

Not to be confused with clockworkcities.blogspot.com, which was my travel blog from my semester in Japan. I like to keep these things separate, but I think it will be helpful to have a place to put all my various projects. 

For now, check out my website at www.emilygarfield.com to see some of the slightly more art-related things I've made. (Slightly).