show and tell

i was recently commissioned by one of my friends to design a guitar paint job (not to actually paint the guitar, thank goodness). this is the final sketch and i'm pretty well pleased. can't wait to actually see the guitar!



it was no doubt inspired by 3 things:

1. the recent performance of florence and the machine that i had caught at coachella.


2. a vintage cover of salinger's catcher in the rye (this is the part where i admit to perusing bookcoverarchive.com at least once a week).


3. pablo neruda's poema 13, which is excerpted in the inscription.

Entre los labios y la voz, algo se va muriendo.
Algo con alas de pájaro, algo de angustia y de olvido.
Así como las redes no retienen el agua.

Between the lips and the voice, something goes dying.
Something with wings of a bird, something of anguish and forgetting.
Similar to the way that nets don't retain water.

in case you were wondering about the thought process of a designer!

king of hearts

i had some downtime at work today so i made a pattern. it doesn't quite tesselate properly, but i'll tinker with it more next week, or whenever. in defense of my break from corporate productivity, i had already designed one retail announcement and two posters for the day, and my boss was busy photoshopping ties onto pictures of devendra banhardt.

i was thinking today about the difference between graphic designers and studio artists. graphic designers utilize mathematical principles such as geometry and repetition, which is correlative to a general sense of nerdiness and obsessive compulsive behavior in the profession. artists, on the other hand, disregard established systems and therefore are always cool. testing out this theorem finds us at this crossroad: if i am good at math and nerdy, am i doomed to be a designer?

january projects

things are settling and i'm slowly getting my life in order. my hands smell like alligator from... cooking alligator this morning. touching it felt like touching my boyfriend's flesh. i was thoroughly grossed out, and will probably never cook meat again, no matter how novel the source. ANYWAY,

1. i am in the process of redoing my website, carolstardust.com. if you have been faithfully following my work (HA!), chances are you've seen most of the work before. it's organized a little differently, which might prompt new insights. at least, it helped me write a fairly coherent artist's statement. check it out and TELL YOUR FRIENDS!

1.a. i'm thinking about making flipbooks of my drawings/animations for sale. or screenprinted clothing out of some of my drawings? would you wear passive aggressive line drawings?

2. i'm applying for a fellowship/grant thing this summer to do um, community/nonprofit/public art stuff. fingers crossed. i like the egotism of seeing my own exhibition history, so i'll also be working on augmenting that.

3. i'm starting my own comic visual journal about my life as a dejected twentysomething. basically, a formalization of what i already rant/draw about on a daily basis.


4. i brought back a bunch of family photo negatives from the last time i visited my family. i plan to organize them and print them as an ode to memory, family dysfunction and happy accidents. i also want to start a career in which i curate people's family photographs for shits, giggles, and a livable amount of money.

5. i'm still making doodles at work.


5.a. i'm trying to get better at my job. luckily, that involves a lot of trips to the art and architecture bookstore, as well as watching snooty art films. and going to coachella :-).

teen chefs: a haiku

hey, let's make cookies!
use the mixer, not your hands!
you put flour where?!

hmm

freelance job tonight? no problem. let me put on my thinking 'stick.

go see the silversun pickups

i made their tour poster :).