Mass MoCA roadtrip Part 2

I got a little carried away shooting some shadowy self-portraits in the 360-degree projection space at MASS MoCA.

Mass MoCA roadtrip Part I

Last month I finally made my way up to N. Adams, Mass, the home of MASS MoCA. Below are some images of the indoor and outdoor exhibitions.

Wave sketchbook

I recently made my friend a pocket-sized wave sketchbook using leftover scraps of Rives BFK Lightweight as the sketchbook pages and an old collagraph print as the endpapers. The bookcloth is actually a wave fabric I found at Joann Fabrics last fall.




I tried creating a pretty little layout of some images to illustrate my bookmaking process, but the document turned green when I tried converting it from an Illustrator file to a .jpg. I wouldn't care so much except it took me forever to create the freakin' layout! you can click on the image below to see a larger view of the images/text, just try and ignore the fact that they're green...

red prairie press day

design *sponge has my friend and fellow SU alum, Rachel from Red Prairie Press today as a guest blogger. Check out the interview here!

Zea Mays Flickr group

mizz thang, originally uploaded by ms.Tea.

Take a look at the new Zea Mays Flickr group. I just came across this shot Tracy took a few weeks ago of me workin'.

pencils today

This afternoon @ Zea Mays I worked in pencil over this collagraph I printed on Tuesday. I rarely work just with black ink and graphite, but I'm excited to see what else I can make with this limited color palette. I'll post again soon!

New Work for April

Happy Spring! Below are a couple pictures of my work at Zea Mays this month. This is a collagraph colored with ink and acrylics.


Below is the same plate, but hand painted with ink & gesso washes over the forms {yes, there is a baseball-inspired pattern to celebrate the new season}


Then, I added the yellow wash background. Not sure If I should have done that....I really liked the simple white back, but it felt like it needed some contrast.


So, I ended up gessoing over the yellow to block it back out. I like how a little of the plate tones and yellow wash come through. Maybe this one is finished.


When I was making the yellow wash, the ink and gesso/acrylic mixing in the tray accidentally created a marbled surface. Now if I ever want to marble paper I know how!

New Work for January

Left to Right:

1. Micron Pen on paper (in progress), 5-1/2" x 4" 2. Ink on Rives, 5-1/2" x 4-1/4" 3. Ink on Rives, 8-1/2" x 9-1/2" 4. Artist Proof #1 (Collagraph print), 7" x 6-1/2" 5. Artist Proof #2 (on tan Rives BFK) 6. Artist Proof #3 (still in progress)

Hatfield Holiday Luminarium

Thought I would try and squeeze in one more post before the end of 2008. Snow has started fallin again, which means I'll be back to bloggin!

Below are a few photos I took at tonight's Luminarium on my block in Hatfield. The 3-day snow storm let up just in time for this pretty display of lit milk jugs lining the sidewalk. Happy Holidays everyone! xoxo

Up and Running

Hello thereeee hope you had a good summer! I suppose I'm not a very good blogger if the minute the weather turns warm I run away from my computer and my blogging responsibilities. It's just so darn pretty out here in the Pioneer Valley and I had places to go and people to see! I promise to be around more this Autumn. It's my favorite season, so I can't promise I wont be running away somewhere beautiful, but I'll try my hardest. To make up for my capricious behavior this summer I finally updated my website: dianamackenzie.com
It's a simple design so I can hopefully add/update easily. I want to have links to my most recent prints, through flickr or picasa. I'm really excited to get back into Zea Mays when they open up this week. If I get my act together this weekend, I want to submit a couple prints into the flat file project. If I can just keep from running off....

I fell

Diana, we thought you'd like to know that we shipped your items today and that your order is now complete. Please review your shipment information below.

1 awesome couch (90 lbs.)

I fell the other day. In love with this love seat from Target. The Milano in Rust & Black is exactly what I've been looking for the past 9 months (I'm picky, and cheap). If you know me it isn't hard to believe I've gone this long without a couchy piece of furniture. I love chairs...there are 5 in my not-enormous apt.... and I rarely have more than 1 visitor at a time ( does family count?), so it never seemed totally necessary. But recently it's bothered me--walking through my "living area" and all I have is a club and a wing-back to define the space. I'm really excited about my new acquisition, but not excited about carrying it up a flight of stairs by myself---anyone wanna pitch in when it arrives?? I'm prepared to beg!

+failure+

"I would rather fail but fail intriguingly" ~Linda Jaivin, author of Eat Me

I just came across this quote on Daily Imprint blog. Sometimes I feel down on myself for trying out new things that don't always work. It makes me hesitate to keep up moral and continue to think outside the box if I'm not sure my idea will work out well. I love the nature of this quote because it writes off failure as a bad thing. Go! Give all your weird-ass ideas a try! The worst that can happen is you fail in an unoriginal way...I'll keep you posted with mine...

Is there such thing as too much Orange? or too many Tee Shirts? No.

Tito, the guy that works at my gym said to me today, "You wear a lot of orange!" and I was like, "Really? I do?" He insisted I always wear orange when I work out. I blamed it on my alma mater's school colors, which were blue and orange, so I may have acquired an abundance of those {awesome} colors over time, but so what? Take that Tito!
When I got home I checked, and okay, yeah, I have a few orange shirts and several more with orange designs/writing on the front. But I have a crapload of blue tee shirts and almost as many white ones...red ones...green ones. Basically, Tito made me realize I have a million tee-shirts, but I've tried to purge them before, and I'm never successful...and then I get a couple more...
I just did a tally of the clean tees on my shelf...I stopped counting at 50 because that's just embarrassing.

My parents got me this awesome book last year filled with vintage tees of yesteryear. Do you think they were trying to tell me something?

Found this website Design By Humans, with so many cool tee designs that I'm pretty sure I could easily double my collection in one shopping cart. You have to go to their site, and you will fall in love too. Check out my wish list (size medium, hint hint)

Funky old book

This weekend is the League of Women Voters' Annual Booksale on the Amherst Common. Julia, Seth and I stopped by this afternoon after brekkie at Esselon Cafe; I scored a few random classics for 50-cents or $1.

This was my favorite-- The Ford Treasury of Favorite Recipes From Famous Eating Places.
As it reads in the forward by the Editor-and-Chief of Ford Times and Lincoln-Mercury Times, William D. Kennedy, "Happy motoring, and successful cooking!"

Check out the funky end papers

And an excerpt from the Northeast

Spilt Milk

Here's a lesson on what happens when you try and carry too much at once:

Last week, I was attempting to take all of my groceries upstairs to my apartment, and I almost immediately dropped the gallon of milk in the driveway. The jug split down the seam in the plastic, causing milk to spatter on my car, my feet and gush onto the pavement. I was about to just dump out the rest into the bushes but instead I decided to make a mad dash upstairs and put the remaining milk into every vessel I had in my kitchen. It was crazy how much milk was left!
I filled my Crate & Barrel Ona Pitcher, 2 carafes from Salvation Army and a mug (from a set I made last summer). What's funny is I only bought the milk because Trader Joe's was totally out of soymilk that night. Dude, no more milk.

Like a cliche, when I went back down to my car to bring up the rest of my groceries--NO JOKE--my landlord's cat was there, lapping up the puddle of milk on the ground.

no more Nalgene

I had to bid farewell to my Nalgene bottle a couple weeks ago since drinking from it was probably killing me and my unborn children. My fondest memory of this bottle was freshman year of college, in 2-Dimensional Design Studio; we made a bet whether or not it could survive a fall out the 3rd story window of the Crouse College building onto the concrete sidewalk below. Needless to say, it survived the drop; that was 6 years ago and remained my main source of hydration until now. Farewell Nalgene, you've unfortunately been replaces by a sleeker and less toxic Camelback 16-ouncer, from REI.

The Others--the LOST Band

You're probably not surprised to hear that there's a LOST tribute band who writes a new song for every episode of Lost and then posts them on their MySpace page. But, did you know there's one here in our own Pioneer Valley? My friend Mark told me about these guys called The Others (it's their joke band, they're really the Thungs). They're a riot because you have no idea what they were talking about unless you are a LOST fan like me and my crew.

Their sound is actually pretty good considering and I'm even more into them because they're local. I find that crazy random. Apparently they don't alway perform as The Others, more as the Thungs, but I can't wait to see them live soon and talk LOST with them because chances are they're more into the show than me and have some pretty good theories.

Trimline

When I was in Atlanta earlier this month, I tried really hard not make any crazy purchases, but I couldn't resist getting this 70s burnt orange phone (in the center of the photo). It was only $10 at the vintage store Nineteen71 on Euclid in Little Five Points. The owner was really cool and let me take these photos in her shop. It still works--yes, I am one of a hand full of people my age I know that still has a home phone line. It took a little extra time in the security line at the airport, and the NSA guy joking commented on it's randomness. That's me, random!

I found the same color/style phone on Oldphones.com in the original box for $100. Do people collect these things or something? I wish new electronics came in retro colors...I would love an avocado green ipod and I would have been into a wood paneled flatscreen.

Last weekend I was watching movies on Hugo HD, and I painfully sat through Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs' book-turned-not-so-good-film. But it did have a really awesome production designer and I was excited to see my phone -same color and style- used as a prop in his character's mother's ultra-swanky 1970s living room. I think when I grow up i want to be a production designer for funky movies with big budgets.

New to Me

I always feel cool for 5 minutes when I think I discovered new music, but I should know by now that I never have, and never will have any idea of new and awesome--especially not music. I wait until everyone else has discovered it first, and about a year and a half later I'll finally catch on. Well, today I felt really excited about some stuff that appeared on my Pandora mix.

The Weepies

It was the first whole album I've purchased from ITunes and I've been listening to it all afternoon. It helped me feel a little less bitter about the snow that dusted my yard and car--at least if I couldn't run around outside I could shut myself inside and listen to something awesome.

Regina Spektor

I knew Regina existed, I just didn't realize how many songs on her album(released in 2006, this is how withit I am, everyone, trust me) were so good. I'm not completely living under a rock, my friend Cate had Regina's music video "Fidelity" on her Myspace page last summer (the one that starts out all edgy and B&W with the creepy mime mannequin and then they throw paint at each other at the end). BTW, On more than one occasion Cate's Myspace song has exposed me to what's awesome and hip, another example being the now infamous what's-her-face junky brit Amy Winehouse's "Re-hab." When I heard that song on her page i was like WTF does she like this song for? Little did I know.....

Jillian Tamaki

I fell in love with Jillian Tamaki when I saw her illustrations for an article about Children's Books in Cookie Magazine last month. (Even though I'm a bigger fan of Wonder Time Magazine than Cookie, I still dig their commissioned illustrators) Go to Jillian's website and I think you'll fall in love with her work too. It really draws you into the dream state she creates with her soft, inky lines and soothing color palette. The imagery and style have a nostalgic quality that is comforting but still contemporary. I'm eager to check out her book Skim that will apparently be out this Spring. She was gracious enough to give me permission to write about her, so thanks for the okay Jillian!

You should all subscribe to her online sketchblog. Here is another one of my favorites from her site:

Whole Foods Appreciation

I just want to give a shout out to Whole Foods for being open normal hours on Easter. {happy easter BTW} I was one of the many people who still had to work today, and while I understand why many places had limited hours or were closed in observance (i.e. my gym, trader joe's, barnes and noble, the gas station) I appreciate being able to hang out in Whole Foods and drink chai, shop for my weekly sundries and get a good bottle of wine. . .not to mention check out the handsome WF fellas.

My Ridiculous Purchase of the Day

Today I bought a new TV set. It's ridiculously huge but my friend Josh talked me into it and I saved random loot. So maybe I don't have cable, but now I can watch movies from anywhere in my apartment, which makes it worth its weight in gold (all 27.7 lbs). That's my style-- all or nothing, baby. So, wanna come over and watch a movie?