chloe may brown artist Chloe May Brown is a hands-on maker who draws inspiration from the land and the sea. She dyes & sews fabric, builds sculptures, plays with clay, designs & screen prints textiles, paints pictures, and loves to … Continue reading
e. terumi woods
artist
Terumi Woods hesitates to call herself an artist. She’d rather say she’s a compulsive creator — fascinated by architecture, urban spaces, and nature, particularly when they intersect with each other.
Through real-world training in an architecture office and the variety of classes she took at City College of San Francisco, she realized there is a real tension between keeping the artistic inspiration alive and the tedium of the details. Her drawings try to represent that tension. Terumi is starting to really play with watercolor, a medium she finds both intriguing and terrifying … and she’s in love.
Find Terumi at Woods Work Studio and on Instagram.
jennifer judd-mcgee
artist
jennifer judd-mcgee lives and works on mount desert island in maine. mixed media and illustration are her favorite mediums, and she draws her inspiration from her coastal maine surroundings. she has shown her work in galleries across the country and is represented for licensing and illustration by lilla rogers studio. please visit her blog or her etsy shop for more information.
emily gaines demsky
artist
emily lives with her husband and their children in a funny-shaped house at the bottom of a hill. she paints in a spare bedroom while her kids are at school, and she shows her work when she’s not feeling too shy. she sometimes blogs at shining egg, and she records the bits of her days at habit.
lisa solomon is a mixed media artist [and sometimes college professor and graphic designer] who lives in oakland, california with her 16-month old daughter and husband, a one-eyed pit bull, a deaf french bulldog and a cross-eyed cat. She loves things organized by color, is currently obsessed with spotting birds because her daughter loves them so, and hopes to take a luxurious vacation sometime in the not too distant future [who is she kidding?]. In her studio, she’s currently working on pieces about deforestation, and she is creating abstract portraits of her family members by embroidering in various colors and stitches their birth or death dates [not as recognizable numbers]. You can see more of her work on her website: lisasolomon.com — or read her ramblings [she tries to post weekly] on her blog. Continue reading
Color, line, shape, texture, and light are the media that express the emotion in my work. Rather than creating a recognizable object, I use the elements of painting itself to allow the story to unfold. There is no plan in my painting, yet there is process. I let a color, a line, a shadow dictate what comes next. The purpose is to create expression and emotion strictly out of in shape and color – completely abstract. My best works are the ones that just happen, when I allow myself to be surprised. Elizabeth Schuppe graduated with a degree in Studio Art from Skidmore College. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Continue reading
Mimi and Minh-Ha met in grad school in 2004. Since then, their friendship has been forged through differences of sartorial sensibilities, consumerist modes, and Vietnamese accents as well as across the distances between hotel double beds, New York City, Champaign, and San Francisco. In 2007, they launched Threadbared, an evolving collaboration between two clotheshorse academics to discuss the politics, aesthetics, histories, theories, cultures and subcultures that go by the names “fashion” and “beauty.”
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mimi
mimi
mimi
minh-ha
minh-ha
minh-ha
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on the nightstand:
mimi:
a box of tissues for allergic reactions to my enormously furry maine coon morton. a thrifted novelty glass filled with life-sustaining water. my eyeglasses and contact case. decorated science fiction author connie willis’s latest novel of time-traveling historians called blackout (hardback, with the cover removed for reading purposes).
minh-ha:
my laptop and eyeglasses for late night, middle of the night, and early morning working—insomnia, though not my friend, seems to have settled in and temporarily (I hope!) rearranged my work and waking hours. also, Martha Woodmansee’s fabulous historical account of the political economic constructions of “the author” and “creativity”.
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am loving:
mimi:
minh-ha:
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what inspires you about spring?
mimi:
minh-ha:
in new york, the first street-sightings of spring dresses without puffy coats always starts a warm glow inside of me. I’ll be back in nyc when this is published and that’s what i’m most looking forward to.
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what’s one item in your spring wardrobe you can’t go without?
mimi:
this year, it appears that it will be something bright green.
minh-ha:
my new cropped steel blue leather jacket with the slightly puffy shoulders and the pin tuck pleats running diagonally down the sides.
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what’s your idea of the perfect homemade spring meal?
mimi:
agedashi tofu in dashi, topped with freshly grated ginger, green onions, seaweed and bonito flakes. bowl of white rice. seaweed salad.
minh-ha:
I second mimi’s agedashi tofu and would also add a bowl of Vietnamese cold noodles with julienned mint, carrots, cucumbers, red leaf lettuce and lumpia (which, admittedly, i prefer more than Vietnamese spring rolls) and a good dousing of nuoc mam.
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what are three constants in your day?
mimi:
minh-ha:
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tell us about the inspiration behind the work featured here.
mimi:
Fiona and I are both invited to present at Sarah Lawrence College’s 12th Annual Women’s History Conference called “The Message Is in the Music,” this first week in March. We had been researching and discussing the Los Angeles punk and new wave scenes in the late ’70s and early ’80s for her talk, which inspired me to revisit my former new wave/no wave nightlife persona (from an era when I lived somewhere with a queer nightlife) for these photographs.
minh-ha:
The inspiration actually came from a conversation mimi and I had about our sartorial sensibilities back in January—published on threadbared. I always knew I favored solid colors (mostly black and gray) but the conversation and the photographs we took for the blog post made me conscious of how really focused my wardrobe is. So in the spirit of Spring, I wanted to experiment with color and new shapes in ways that still felt true to my style—which explains the fuschia and blue patterned tights as well as the blue and white striped asymmetrical dress (thereby fulfilling two new sartorial curiosities: complicated jersey and small flashes of color—and please note that the blue and white stripes don’t even come close to “nautical”). While the sweatshirt vest is gorgeously gray, its loops, pleats, and multiple exposed zippers make it a great example of jersey grown-up. As for the blue jumpsuit—a not too recent purchase that hadn’t been photographed but has been worn a lot (usually with a black turtleneck underneath) and always with one gathered pant leg pulled up à la LL Cool J.
penelope dullaghan
artist
Penelope Dullaghan is an illustrator and fine artist who started her freelance career after a five-year stint as an art director. She currently lives in the teensy town of Winona Lake, Indiana with her writer husband, 11 month old daughter, dog and two cats. She chronicles her artistic development at her website, Penelope Illustration. She also heads up and contributes to a weekly creative outlet and participatory art exhibit: IllustrationFriday. Penelope’s clients include Starbucks, Target, United Airlines, and Oprah Magazine.
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on the nightstand:
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am loving:
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what inspires you about winter?
not much to be honest. but i’m trying to look at winter in a different way… viewing it more like the season of savasana. Relaxing and quieting to rejuvenate and let the rest soak in.
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what’s one item in your winter wardrobe you can’t go without?
my ridiculously large and insulated snow boots.
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what’s your idea of the perfect winter meal?
spicy chili with all the fixins’ and an ice cold beer.
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what are three constants in your day?
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tell us about the inspiration behind the work featured here.
“This paying attention to the ground of the mind is like observing the sky rather than the things in it. We may notice a bird flying through the sky, but certainly the sky does not become smudged from this movement. Today it is rainy, but somehow the sky does not become wet. Tomorrow it is sunny, but the sky doesn’t ignite into flames. The next day there is an exciting show of thunder and lightning, yet no one rushes around trying to repair the sky. In the same way, when we have the discipline to stay with our practice, we insist on remaining identified with our own neutral witness, the part of us that stays the same regardless of the passing show.”
~ Donna Farhi
When I first read the quote above, I breezed right through it. Sky… got it. Birds… got it. Practice… got it. But this quote somehow found its way into my head, and I found myself thinking about it all the time. In the shower… Driving my car… Playing with my daughter… The more I thought about it, the more true it rang. For me, these simple words somehow shed light on the whole idea of being still and watching. On not getting involved and attached to each thought and emotion that rides through our minds. And not letting our stories take us over. It made me stop and try to identify with my own neutral witness periodically. And keep coming back to that over and over. Practicing gently. And I thought that was a beautiful thing.
And so I was inspired to share this beautiful thing I discovered by creating a piece of art and an animation that sort of illustrated the idea. The woman is sitting. Not in meditation or an asana, but just casually cross-legged. That, for me, is where I challenge myself to live my yoga — off the mat in everyday life. And everything flows through her in her stillness. She can still be seen faintly as birds pass, the wind blows clouds in and a storm comes up and finally blows over. She is the neutral witness.
I hope you enjoy it and might think of it occasionally as a reminder to connect with the part of you that stays the same regardless of the passing show.
sarah neuburger
artist
As a maker of whimsical and unique designs, Sarah Neuburger churns out all manner of housewares, artwork, paper goods, and rubber stamps for The Small Object, a small cottage industry she began back in 2004. Sarah has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, which means she was a crazy lucky devil who got to experiment full-time in her studio for two years straight. She now feels even more lucky to be running her own shop full-time. However, to this day, she still does not like the color violet, and she will never bring vegetables to your house.
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on the nightstand:
A vintage clock, a seashell lady made in the Philippines, and a beautiful blue pitcher (made by local potter Margie Thompson), which holds equally wonderful crochet narcissus from Etsy seller Suili.
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am loving:
Linen, plaids, triangles, cut paper, Versacraft ink, curry, ginger syrup, and cayenne chocolate cookies.
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what inspires you about winter?
The bare negative spaces, cool air, breath becoming visible.
Winter is awesome. I love everything about it. When I was further north, I loved waking up to a blanket of white space. Going out for a walk after a snow and hearing the sound of compacting it under my feet never once got old.
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what’s one item in your winter wardrobe you can’t go without?
Footless tights. I know it seems ridiculous footless anything in the winter, but down here we don’t have to worry about snow.
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what are three constants in your day?
Beyond the obvious: email, post office, packing orders…here are the ones I have to try harder to keep constant:
heather smith jones
artist
Heather Smith Jones knew she wanted to be an artist from the time she was three and watercolor painting in her father’s clay studio. Growing up in the mountains and by the ocean, she now lives in a little house on the prairie with her designer/builder/woodworker husband and their three cats. Her favorite days are spent drawing and painting quietly in her sunlit studio, making bread or cookies and helping tend their vegetable garden. Heather earned her M.F.A. in 2001, and is represented by galleries nationwide with work in many private and corporate collections. Please visit her website and blog to see more.
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finding winter
animals of all kinds
monday story
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on my nightstand:
a stack of magazines including issues of art on paper, vegetarian times, and smithsonian and sometimes a stray chocolate wrapper.
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am currently loving:
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what inspires you about spring?
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what are three constants in your day?
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what is your idea of the perfect spring supper?
I think we enjoyed a wonderful spring supper just last weekend when we had a handful of friends over for a little impromptu garden party. We opened up the studio door to the garden, the kids played in the field next door, we ate grilled kabobs, spinach & strawberry salad, and potato salad, with each dish incorporating either a salad green or herb from our garden. Oh, and there were cupcakes.
this joy+ride 