from norway (& nj!) with love

recently i had the very great pleasure of having my lovely friend linda brun come to stay for 10 entire days of art-making, treat-eating, shopping, cooking, journaling, crocheting... in other words, pretty much the best STAYCATION ever! :)

cool chicks onna train
(photo by linda brun)

during that time we made several excursions into new york city: we had dim sum at golden unicorn, took in the feast for the eye that is the rubin museum, and even cruised a couple of favorite thriftshops on 17th street... (angel street and housingworks chelsea) ...tho alas, we have no amazing finds to report from the latter.

sesame balls... my favorite!

on a different day we met up with massachussetts' sweetest and most talented freestyle crafter sandi taloumis, and together we all rode the subway a few short stops out of manhattan to visit the brooklyn art library, home of the massively inspirational sketchbook project*! obviously we had to do a bit of art shopping, as well, at blick and the ink pad. in the face of such overwhelming fun, i somehow managed to take NO PHOTOS AT ALL, so i'm posting (with permission) this one linda took of the three of us (plus 2 extraneous passers-by, lol!) that i really love:

in front of the ink pad
(this pic and lots more awesome ones by linda brun; go check out her instagram account!!!)

the main purpose and event of linda's visit, though, was what we came to call "art camp". we set up a big long folding table in the living room, loaded it with supplies-- paint, stencils, stamps, pens, pigments, vintage paper, magazines, modelling paste, and pretty much anything else that struck our fancy-- and spent the majority of our free time playing and experimenting in our journals. you can see linda's work on her blog-- my favorites are the series of "found faces" that she made over the course of several days; i posted some of my things on instagram at the time, but here are a couple more pages, both finished...

craft paint squirted right out of the bottle, tinted modeling paste thru circles stencil, lots of outlining, plus hand drawn and shadowed bricks. the latter were linda's idea, she thought the word looked like graffiti--this is why it's great to make art in the same room with other people, i would not have thought of bricks! :)

...and unfinished:

modeling paste through a fern stencil, shadowed with stabilo pencil on top of random ink spotches; i'm not in love with this one, but i wasn't really going for a finished product, just playin' with my stuff! 

finally, to cap the whole visit off in style, linda made fabulous new multi-media journals for herself, sandi and i:

we are going to all three work in each of them in turns, via the mail, so that at the end we will each have a book with work by all of us in it. i'm thinking we'll all need to meet up again next year to review the end result! well, ladies? who's in?

♥♥♥♥♥

*the sketchbook project-- both as an idea and an exhibition--is AWESOME; however one thing you might not realize until you get there (at least, we didn't!) is that you won't be allowed to just randomly pull books off the shelves and flick through them, each item must be requested electronically and will be brought to you by one of the librarians. for maximum enjoyment, it's a great idea beforehand to cruise the digital library, create a free account, and make yourself a little queue of examples you'd like to see in person! meanwhile, the brooklyn art library is a short, safe walk from the L train at bedford ave, through a neighborhood with plenty of shops, restaurants and other fun places to visit! well worth the trip! ♥