Sketchbook

Icelandic Poppy Stamens

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:27:43 -0400

I borrowed my neighbor’s digital camera to test it out and play with the macro lens. The structure of this plant is amazing!

Icelandic Poppy

Fri, 9 Oct 2009 18:23:03 -0400

Today I picked up my stronger reading glasses. It’s official: My days with super hero vision are over. I went bounding across the street from my optometrist to a Japanese nursery to test them out. Oh boy, I can see!... and also I immediately fell in love with this Icelandic poppy. This orange is my absolute favorite color.

Verona rubbing

Wed, 7 Oct 2009 15:12:49 -0400

It’s strange. I did a rubbing of a piece of marble in Verona, Italy in 1997 and I can still taste and smell what I had for lunch that day when I see this.

The sun paints on water.

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:15:57 -0400

Yesterday I went hiking in Rustic Canyon. I spent an afternoon playing with my cell phone camera and the sun’s reflection on the water.

LAX to LEX

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:05:29 -0400

I love flying home to Kentucky. Literally, I get so excited boarding the plane and preparing in my window seat to fly from Los Angeles to Lexington. I pull out my sketchbook, camera, and iPod with a solid Bluegrass repertoire in preparation for the show. Grids, harsh rhythms, and endless, grey sprawl begin to decompress, as do I.

Nobody in isle 8 bother me please, I am having a moment.

Obviously this has been a hard year and Los Angeles is not an easy place to live lately. This past month I’ve had the same dream reoccur which is strange because I can never remember most of them. I bought an old tobacco barn and turned it into my home. I converted the interior into a kick-ass city loft space but allowed the rustic/aged exterior to remain. One long wall of the barn was able to retract into the ground to reveal a gorgeous, unadulterated landscape. The mechanism to open the wall is in the seat cushion of a red chaise lounge. In this lounge I start my day with a cup of coffee and end it with a night libation. It is there that I watch at dusk the stars of a dark country night reorganize and realign into a Manhattan-like grid and then by morning fade into the fog.

Oh, did I mention my general lee is a hybrid? Yeeeeeeeeeeh-HAH!

I like this dream.

Eyes wide open.

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:47:19 -0400

I love walking around Los Angeles with my buddy, David Fischer. He is the photographer who shot my work and a fellow artist. David takes pictures while I scout out the curbs and sidewalks of the area for treasures. We have discovered some amazing places together while walking that I have never noticed in the 5 years I have lived in West LA (primarily because I have spent them in my car).

We had a rad time yesterday walking through Santa Monica’s finest trailer park. Yes, you read correctly. The trailer park was built in the late 1940s as a camp for vacationers and weekend beach visitors. Over the decades, it evolved into a quaint year-round community of faded Airstreams and other travel coaches permanently parked next to Colorado Avenue. There existence pre-dates current local Santa Monica codes so their zoning dedication remains. Slowly the condos, townhouses, and freeways have sliced away the era that touted this way of living.

As much as I loved walking around the park I felt I didn’t belong. People would step out from their trailers to get the mail or weed wack their 4’ x 4’ personal patch of grass and I couldn’t help but feel like I was intruding. After all... the gnome was watching me!!!! David on the other hand went into full hunting mode and started walking around with his eyes wide open. He was oblivious to everything except for finding the perfect shot. I admire his sense of adventure. I didn’t find anything that day, but I think David found himself.

David is a great photographer of the found condition. While I am searching to find that perfect decrepit object, he is searching to shoot the actual environment and location of which the objects are found. What is so amazing about his imagination is that he is not only seeing with his eyes to capture the image, he is also visualizing a stage set for his fantasies of digital collage. Oh did I mention he also is a master of digital photo retouching? That is what he does to pay the bills. I hope you’ll take some time to search through his gallery: http://www.hypnofish.com/compositing/thesis/01_zoo.html

I find his work truly wonderful and I often try to imagine the stories he is trying to tell. To me his collages are fairy tales with no words.

Pan Drippins’

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:58:03 -0400

Why does all the good stuff happen OFF of the canvas where paint is allowed to mix and swirl on its own?

It's time to buy handmade.

Thu, 6 Aug 2009 20:36:36 -0400

Seriously. My budget is tight right now, but there are few things that I will splurge on these days:

a) When a friend takes a chance and starts selling something that they love doing.
b) When I am attracted to something that I have never been interested in before, i.e. me wearing pink!
c) When detail and craft are of high quality and of the hand.
d) When I find something truly beautiful.

Rachel Leonard is e) ALL OF THE ABOVE, and so I SPLURGED! You can find her fabu jewelry and a wonderful journal right here.

A personal touch.

Sat, 1 Aug 2009 13:22:51 -0400

I like to put something special in a home that adds a unique and personal touch. In the case of this house I taught the clients how to mosaic an archway that leads to the master bedroom area. All during construction we saved the tile scraps, grout, and salvaged some special tiles from a “bone yard” in a local tile factory. This factory beautifully hand-made all the tile for the rest of the house. We paid nothing extra to do this fun project except for a bucket of thin set to adhere the tiles to the wall. I had my client choose a personal relic in the house that had meaning to permanently place. She chose a little, mexican, figurine box given to her by her mother. It makes this space personal and significant. I taught the family how to do it themselves and they each took a turn at getting their hands dirty.

I find the construction process is incredibly wasteful and so many great materials both old and new end up in the dumpster. Most of the material for both my art and my architecture adventures are salvaged from job sites. Truly think about what it is that you are throwing away and imagine its potential to be reinvented.

Cadmium Red

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:58:57 -0400

One of my all time favorite colors to find in nature. It frenzies bees, demands attention, and stings my eyes with it’s vibrance. This tree is in my courtyard and I watch it everyday while it’s in bloom. Hummingbirds tend to battle each other to get to the perfect bottle brush first. I find cadmium red to be the most striking color in existence... apparently this is something nature has already figured out.

Good Morning.

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 13:42:18 -0400

I guess I am officially a blogger! Strange indeed, but it is something that I have been wanting to do for awhile now. I graduated in 1999 from the University of Kentucky College of Architecture. Ever since that day I have deeply missed the camaraderie of Pence Hall and the energy of being surrounded by my close, creative friends as we burned through the midnight oil night after night. O the insanity!

I realize now being a part of the Facebook community how easy it is to reconnect virtually to everyone and have seen how successful and talented we are across the globe. We have to take advantage of this reconnection. I have named this blog Sketchbook because going back and rereading my sketchbooks while traveling abroad for two semesters has made me relive the importance of USING A PENCIL! Imagine that, architects. When is the last time you sat down to sketch?

Send me a page of one of your sketch books and I’ll post it. Describe where you were, who you were with, and what you were doing. I’d love to see a collective of pages from our sketch books across the globe. Don’t be shy!

I am an architect.

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:02:26 -0400

To show you a bit about what I do as a freelance architect I thought I’d share an entry into my construction sketchbook a couple years back. It was a great day for me, although as stressful as it can be sometimes, I love helping homeowners achieve their vision for their perfect personal space. I also often work with two other great architects, Dana Motley AIA and Polly Osborne AIA. We three ladies have worked together for many years and have become specialist in green, sustainable designs for the home. You can find us here: www.osbornearchitects.com

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July 24, 2007
My alarm went off at 6 AM this morning...but Operation FOF (Feed-Obese-Feline) had already launched at 5:30. It was a big day for me. Today my first solo project as a newly-licensed architect started construction. The clients and the contractor decided that we should all meet regularly at the ungodly hour of 7 AM (for me this is obscene) down in Hermosa Beach every Wednesday. For those of who you don't know, I live north of Hermosa Beach in West LA and must commute south DURING Los Angeles Rush hour to this meeting. It is always lovely to start your day with a SigAlert on the 405 due to half a mattress in the middle lane.

I arrived at the site at 7:02 AM flustered with a nice coffee stain on my right knee. I walked into the structure to see that the demolition had commenced. All the beige carpet had been stripped, framing exposed, and the cottage cheese ceilings were being prepared for abatement because it was found to have asbestos . We had foresight of the situation because in order to get the permit we had to hire an expert to test the house prior to demolition. However when the kitchen floor had been removed we found THREE separate layers of vinyl flooring ranging from 70’s paisley to terra cotta plaid underneath. I wanted to take a swatch of the vinyl for a painting later but I couldn’t. Unfortunately most old vinyl floors have asbestos in them. I informed the owners that this too must be abated. It will add some time and extra cost to have it done properly, but it is a health concern. Always have a contingency plan for the unknown when doing a remodel. It is amazing what you’ll uncover along the way.

I went upstairs and found the clients and the contractor already talking about the gutted master bedroom and bath. The contractor and his foreman had their clip boards ready and each had a pencil behind an ear. As soon as I walked in the questioning began. I am a notorious non-morning person so I was the source of a good laugh by all. I did manage to give them the information they needed and do a full electrical walk-thru. The wife's eyes were widened with excitement and the husband stared analytically at the exposed roof rafters above the bathroom when I walked in. "We can raise the ceiling in the bathroom!", the wife cheered. This was good news. The ceiling of the existing bathroom was only 7'-3" in height; the husband's height is 6'-2. The poor man had to always duck to take a shower and mentioned he felt oppressed in the existing bathroom. I walked into the exposed framing to see what was there. There was a little mold in the wet wall that we will address, but for the most part the bones of the house looked good. It turns out we can raise the ceiling another 12". That added height will make all the difference to the husband's experience. The clients are very excited at this point to see it all start.

The day before I found out from my rep that Caesarstone, a great green alternative to quarried stone & marble, has discontinued our chosen color for countertops which had already been specified months ago. I informed the owners that we needed to pick out the new color. An opportunity presented itself. The night before I woke up in a cold sweat thinking, "Oh man... we are using white tile with white grout in the bathroom on the floor". It’s a guaranteed way to track your movements from the toilet to the sink, etc. due to the "muck path" that forms on white grout. I convinced the clients to go with a darker tile with a dark grout after discussing the muck path. We have time to adjust the finishes because we’ve just started construction and the wife now insists on no muck path. We chose rust red penny rounds with a chocolate brown grout. It is what I will probably put in my own bathroom if I EVER get to own a house in LA. Affordable,gorgeous, and rich with color... something I always try and get into a project as an alternative to white or beige. We’ll go light on the walls with this rich color on the floor.

Born to be wild.

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:03:08 -0400

I've been painting ever since I can remember. I recall watching my dad invent a homemade easel in the garage out of scraps from the wood pile stacked on the side of the house. My mother always had a craft activity of the day for me and my brother to explore. I remember a series of coloring books which only require a brush wet with water. The color magically appeared once the water from the brush washed over it. I thought I was a magician with a magic wand.

My mom was a super stay-at-home mom and a hard-core crafter too. We would make homemade play-dough (which tasted awful) and Papier-mâché balloons with a flour and water mixture... then paint them with tempera. They were inevitable birthday piñatas for any neighborhood fiesta. I had a felt box and we would sew doll clothes, christmas ornaments, and cat toys... my mom was a lot of fun to craft with. She is also a master sewer so all my clothes were handmade too. We pretty much could make anything with stuff we could find in the kitchen or around the house. I learned to be crafty and resourceful from her and kill a full day with hobbies. Those are some of my best childhood memories actually.

In honor of this I am going to make something random out of Papier-mâché. Hmmmm, what could it be?

Ah....nature.

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:16:50 -0400

I grew up in Kentucky in the middle of nowhere (notice the cows above my head). My mom would let me and my brother run around outside until dinner time with the neighborhood kids. All of which happen to be boys. I was a huge tom boy and never really had a lot of close girl friends growing up. So I spent a lot of my time playing in nature, looking at bugs, poking cow pies with a stick, and I even watched my brother eat an earth worm on a triple dog dare.

My mom grew a giant garden on the side of our house with most of our vegetables. One time she steamed a bunch of broccoli freshly picked from the garden and presented us with giant, vibrant green stems steaming off a platter. I curled my nose up but my dad dug in. It wasn't until he pulled the fork from his mouth that he realized the broccoli was completely infested with giant,1-inch caterpillars. They were the exact same color as the broccoli and even had small flecks of yellow on their sides that matched the yellow of a broccoli flower. I screamed in horror as my mom quietly threw all the broccoli back into the pot. She without hesitation pulled out 4 bowls and a gallon of Neapolitan ice cream realizing that I would never eat broccoli again... and I had the perfect argument not to. <heaven>