Other Projects

Strawberry Margaritas

My Dad makes the most wonderful strawberry margaritas.  I really can't take any credit for this "project"  because I recently enjoyed a round of margaritas prepared by my father.  They were delicious!  I thought I would share the recipe with you.

Combine all the ingredients in a blender:

6 oz. tequila

2 oz. triple sec

6 oz. frozen limeade

Fill balance of blender with one third fresh strawberries and two thirds small cube ice.

What's your favorite frozen beverage?

Featured Artist

Jaye Fox
Jennifer (Jaye) Fox received the preponderance of her training from several academic ateliers, including those of Andy Reiss in Brooklyn, and many others associated with the Art Students League in New York City, where she received Board of Control and Merit Scholarships. Her work is also informed by her studies in the Growth and Structure of Cities at Bryn Mawr College.  In 2004, she received the prestigious Phyllis Mason grant, she has been a finalist in the American Society of Portrait Artists (ASOPA) annual competition, and has exhibited at and received awards from the Salmagundi Club and the Pen and Brush Club in New York City.  Her work has recently been featured in publications including Failbetter.com and the Manhattan Users Guide.  To see more of Jaye Fox's work, you can visit her website and her Etsy Shop. She co-directs studio21south, an art gallery in North Adams, Mass. 

Are there particular artists who have influenced your depiction of light in your Nocturnes Series? 
Good question, but no.  This was entirely experiential, from growing up in New York City, where the night sky was always defined by streetlamps.  They turn the sky a particular color that is very hard to place, which has always fascinated me.  As an artist, I wanted to take on the challenge of figuring out how to represent this in paint.  It's difficult, because it's really more of a retinal effect than an actual local color, so the painted representation of that light is really an abstraction (in a way, all painting is an abstraction, but this, even more so).

I am rather taken with your series of paintings of the Kosciusko Bridge, in Brooklyn, which are painted entirely from the vantage point of one street corner. What initially drew you to that particular location? 
My significant other/fiance and I thought we'd like to take on an industrial theme, and paint on site, outdoors. At the time, I had access to an apartment in the residential area that was quite close by an industrial zone, which I'd always found generally interesting, but didn't know well.  Our idea was to drive around this area of North Brooklyn and pick a few sites that interested us, and paint in different places from time to time.  We found one street corner where we both found something that interested us.  That was April 2008.  We were there through the summer.  We returned in 2009, and again in 2010.  Sometimes, the more you get to know a subject, the more interesting it becomes.  We both kept finding new themes and vantage points we wanted to explore...all on that one street corner!
     We only finally got off the corner when we were both preparing for a show and realized that it was going to look seriously monomaniacal if we didn't hurry back and paint something else.  That was a busy week.

Has showing the work of other artists, as co-director of a gallery, influenced the choices you make in your painting work?
This is another wildly interesting question I'd never thought about.  I'm not consciously aware that it influences the choices I make, but selecting work and curating a show of other artists generates a constant internal dialogue with the artwork.  I'm always thinking about what other artworks are about, their strengths and weaknesses, how they relate to other works, how people respond to them, and how my response changes over time.  I'm sure that this ongoing chatter in my head must be solidifying my own ideas about picture-making, but I'm not, at present, conscious of how it's turning up in my work.

Many thanks to Jaye Fox for sharing her wonderful work.  


What do you think of Jaye's Kosciusko Bridge series?

Wedding Insert

Custom Design

This past week I designed a insert to be included with the wedding invitation for a couple who will marry in Newark, Delaware.  The hotel had provided them with a generic invitation insert providing details about the hotel accommodations.  They wanted a custom designed insert to coordinate with their invitations. 

I developed two schemes from which they were able to select.  The designs incorporated the colors and theme of the invitation.  The bride wanted to create a coordinating insert, without matching the design of the invitation too closely. 

The couple selected the design with a green border and a flowering branch.  These 3.75"x4.75" inserts will be a charming insert with their wedding invitation and accessories.

Western Avenue Series

Mile 4: 98th Street-90th Street
This sketch is a part of my Western Avenue Series, through which I'll be making 24 watercolor paintings, one to document each mile of Western Avenue, in Chicago.  I started this project because while it is not considered to be among the most “beautiful” of Chicago’s streets, Western Avenue is a perfect place to document the humanness of Chicago, the positive and the negative. In the words of Stuart Dybek, "Western, with apologies to State Street, is a great street,  Unlike State, it is a street that goes to the interior, the heart of the city, as it glides and glows through a United Nations of neighborhoods."  Check back next Monday to see the painting completed based on this sketch.

The stretch of Western Avenue between 98th and 90th Streets maintains some of the character of the portions of Beverly which lie further south.  Included in this mile are well established business like the Original Rainbow Cone, which is to be featured in the sketch above, and Beverly Bikes.  This mile also has seen new development, including suburban style strip malls which house chain stores like Applebee's and Walmart.  

There are also business like Evergreen Plaza, which represent some mix of these two genres.  Timeout featured Evergreen Plaza in a article highlighting various businesses located on Western, they said:

"On the South Side, if you say you’re going to “the Plaza” it is understood you mean Evergreen Plaza. (The nickname became so popular that in recent years, the mall dropped the Evergreen from its signage.) This Evergreen Park institution has been the quintessential city shopping center since 1952. But inside, the stores have more flavor than the typical collection of chain shops, with esoteric specialty stores such as Lids (devoted to ballplayers’ caps), Just for the Scent of It (an all-perfume store), Silver Design (jewelry), and Twin Hicks, which sells the artwork of Aaron and Alan Hicks (“identical twins…identical art styles”)."

I was totally charmed by the sign for Beverly Bikes, which is located on the northern edge of this mile  It is reminiscent of a time gone by and Beverly Bikes was, in fact, opened in 1921.  In those years it's had only 3 owners, in 1996 the store was purchased by Paul and Kathleen Weise and was renamed Beverly Bike and Ski.  Today, the store rents and sells both cross country skis and snowshoes.  Besides doing complete bike mechanics the store offers full ski service in those winter months for both cross country and downhill skis.  

Did you know that cross country skis and snowshoes were available for rent on Western?

Other Projects

Pizza, Eating

Some of my regular reader have probably noticed that many of the things I post about on Sundays as "other projects"  are a bit of stretch.  It is hard, really, to classify "eating pizza" as a project.  Eating pizza does, however, seem to me a worthwhile undertaking.  There is nothing quite the same as the melted cheese on crispy crust and savory toppings.  Last week I made a post where I shared about my adventures in homemade pizza making.  This week I'll share some of my favorite restaurants for pizza.

Iggie's, in Baltimore, delights me more than any other pizza place I know.  Iggie's opening while I was living in Baltimore and is located just blocks from where I was living in Mount Vernon.  There are so many things I like about Iggies.  First, of course, the pizza is delicious.  Not only do they make their own dough and their own ragu, they even go so far as to make their own mozzarella, which is fantastic.  My personal favorites are the Alice, which includes pesto and goat cheese, and funghi, which is topped with mushroom ragu, leeks and goat cheese.  Not only is the food great, Iggies is BYOB, so you can enjoy a bottle of wine you bring.  In addition, the ambiance is great!  There are charming tables outside during the warm months, the inside is great too.  The employees and owner are super friendly and in lieu of accepting tips, Iggies selects a different charity to which tips are donated each month.   

There are a few things I love about Spacca Napoli in Chicago.  First, I love its location, it is one of the hidden treasures of the Ravenswood corridor.  It is tucked away a block north of Montrose on Ravenswood and feels delightfully neighborhood orientated.  The owner Jonathon Goldsmith is a long-time volunteer at Inspiration Corporation where I volunteer regularly and an organization I think to be fantastic.  Finally, of course, the pizza is great.  The Chicago tribune describes Spacca Napoli as the source of "the city's most authentic Neapolitan-style crust (please, don't confuse it with crispy Roman 'za) by being anything less than a total hard-ass when it comes to the small stuff. From dough balls (between 180 and 300 grams) to precise cook time (90 seconds), Goldsmith enforces the rules — just like they do at the Naples spots where he trained. The result: full-flavored, supple bubbly crust offering a perfect combo of char and chew. Oven trivia: 1,400 lbs.; 1,200 degrees; oak-fired Number of pies on menu: 14-16 Our fave: Salsiccia e Broccoletti. This white pizza brims with Fior di latte mozzarella and fruity olive oil, plus rapini — a heart-smart veggie always helps mitigate gorging guilt.”  Sounds pretty great, right--it is!

Pizza Art is located to near to my first apartment in Chicago.  I walked by it many times as I walked north from the Rockwell Brown Line stop.  It is tucked into a charming collection of shops, which reminds me of a small town.  It wasn't until last summer that I made my first visit to Pizza Art.  I was immediately won over by the lovely outdoor tables, but on a later visit discovered the charm of indoor seating surrounded by a collection locally commissioned artworks.  I was delighted by the fact that Pizza Art is BYOB and there is an eight-foot wood-burning oven in the dining room.  In addition to delicious standard pizza selection like margherita and funghi, there are also exciting middle eastern inspired selections like calabrese (with tuna, anchovies, and olives) and frutti di mare (with mixed seafood, herbs and mozzarella).  

Next up, I need to visit Great Lakes Pizza (in my neighborhood) which has gotten rave reviews.

What are your favorite restaurants for pizza?  

Featured Artist

Carolina Gronholm
Carolina Gronholm draws what she sees, hears and dreams.  Her work is mainly focused on animals, trees, and swirls.  She gets her inspiration from dreams and her love for mother nature and the animals living in the trees, under the damp earth between the grass roots and in the sky.

In The Woods, drawing in ink and colored digitally, Carolina Gronholm

I love your elegant tree drawings.  Are there places with particularly beautiful trees, which you like to visit in Stockholm (or anywhere) for inspiration?
     We have big trees right outside our window, small parks all over Stockholm and big forests right outside town so the nature is always present here. Actually, Swedish forests covers 53% of the country-this is where my true inspiration comes from.

Trees Of Light, drawing in ink and colored digital, Carolina Gronholm

In additional to drawing and crocheting, you seem to do all sorts of other art-related projects.  Do you have plans for any particular art experimentation this year?

     Right now, I'm working on some mixed media paintings and drawings for a coming exhibition. I'm using inks, watercolors and yarn for this project. There is so much more I would like to try when working with new materials, it feels like my inspiration and creativity is bursting so I always try to channel it into any new art project.             

Sunday Morning Walk, drawing in ink and colored digitally, Carolina Gronholm

Tell us a bit about Sau, your cat, who inspires some of your art making.
     I found her outside in the freezing cold one Easter weekend 6 years ago and she's been with me ever since. She loves tearing paper - especially when the postman comes with letters, she likes acting like a guard cat I guess. Sau is certainly my muse and I love coming up with small amusing stories about her life through drawings. 

Cat On Cushions, drawing in ink, Carolina Gronholm

Many thanks to Carolina for sharing her lovely drawings.  Be sure to check out more of her work at her blog and her Late Night Drawing, her Etsy shop.

What do you think of Carolina's whimsical trees and playful cat stories?

Wedding Invitation

Lake Sunset

It is at this time of the year that I get really anxious for spring to come.  March tends to remain quite cold in Chicago, though it is warm enough to begin riding a bike in moderation.  I am looking forward to warm days when bike riding along the lake path and running at the steps adjacent to Belmont Harbor are a regular part of my life.  Designing this invitation based on a painting I made several weeks was a delightful reminder of the warm days to come.    

The design for this wedding invitation was inspired by the warm yellows and pinks of the sunsets over Lake Michigan. I love the drama of this scene: the most easterly trees bathed in the waning evening light, the other trees casting strong silhouettes against the vibrant sky, and one whimsical cloud floating out of the frame. This would make a charming invitation a weddings being held near the water. This invitation is small format: 4.25"x5.5, with rounded corners.

What are you favorite places to watch the sunset?