Oooh, fire! Beautiful, candy-hued flames engulfing equally beautiful, candy-hued houses {both drawings, and found imagery}. Oh my word, I absolutely love this work by artist/designer Jennifer  Mehigan. She is a graphic designer who is currently working towards her BFA in Art Education at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney, Australia. Now, not that I would ever want her to ever switch majors, but she may want to consider a career in Arson Forensics.

{via Art Hound}

Draw! Get it? Draw your guns, but also it’s a drawing… No? Ok, sorry, I’ll stop.

I found this fantastic cowboy-inspired work, by American artist Will Shea, on Mammoth & Co a few days ago. I loved all of it instantly, but have officially added that black, white, and red showdown to my art wish list… y’all. Ok, really, I’m done now.

Love. I love these paper collages by Toronto based artist, JP King.

I wrote a post about Sarah Burwash last week. She’s in residence at Spark Box Studio, and she mentioned the two fabulous artists that are there with her at the moment. One of them is Kirsten McCrea {who I wrote about last August}, and the other artist is, you guessed it, JP King. Ok, I need to go and spend some time at Spark Box … clearly, they are my kind o’ people.

Photographs? Nope.

Found photo collage? Nope.

Graphite drawings? Yes.

What?! Yes, it’s true. California based artist Ed Loftus, and his trusty pencil amaze me. There was a great article in The New York Times about him last December. Apparently he has struggled with OCD since childhood, but if there’s a silver lining… it’s his unbelievable artwork. According to that article “…the works are rendered in painstaking detail — partly a result of the disorder — and a single piece can take up to five months to complete. In the last three years, Mr. Loftus has produced 10 works.”

Slow, and probably painful, but what an amazing result.

{I found the work of Ed Loftus at Jack Hanley Gallery, NY}

I love it when fabulous artists email me with links to their fabulous work! Case in point, this series, titled Calling the Caves, by Halifax based artist Sarah Burwash… but she’s not in Halifax right now, and I’m insanely jealous. She’s currently in residence at Spark Box Studio, in Picton {a beautiful, small town just outside of Toronto}. I would love to spend some time there, quietly working away. I asked Sarah to tell me a little bit about her experience so far {I had planned to paraphrase, but her description was just so lovely, I’ve directly quoted her}:

… it is so blissful to be in a big old house surrounded by corn and hay feilds, it is peaceful and relaxing, and also productive and inspiring. The sun has been out often and the fields are dusted with snow. Chrissy and Kyle who run Spark Box are amazing hosts, light hearted and ambitious pair, they make you feel very comfortable and welcomed and go out of there way for you. I have a large studio space to work, and there is a great library of books from art books, to wild flower books, to old life magazines. There is a bright kitchen with a record player and a spunky dog running about. It is a quiet, relaxing, and beautiful place providing the time and space to work on art, get feedback and meet others. The other artists, Kirsten and JP, have been a real treat to have around, to chat with, share resources and glass of whiskey.

Ok… don’t you want to go there right now?! I do! Good luck with your work Sarah – I can’t wait to see what you create while staying in this amazing place.

A gold skirt, simple portraits, and one very festive sweater. This lovely, day-in-the-life subject matter, by American artist Christina Renfer Vogel, is exactly the kind of work that makes me jealous. Oh, and her hat, of course… I’m jealous of her fantastic, cozy fur hat!

{ps. I want that gold skirt, titled ‘Event’, in a fancy frame on my wall… it’s 36″ x 36″! Gorgeous.}

What do all of these fabulous pieces have in common?

1. I love them.

2. They are open-edition prints {…and I love them.}

3. They are crazy affordable {…and I love them.}

4. They are all at Thumbtack Press just waiting for ME! Sorry, I mean us.

{kimiaki yaegashi // lilly piri // kate pugsley // gianluca foli // martha rich}

Now, that’s my kind of princess! POW!

I wrote about Swedish artist Alexandra Hedberg almost two years ago. In that post, I was jealous of some of her gorgeous, washy watercolor/acrylic paintings… but look what I just found!!! A series of hand-colored screen prints titled {quite appropriately}, Colouring. My favorite images in this series feature Snow White, behaving in very unprincess-like ways! Love ♥

These are easily the most cheerful abandoned spaces that I’ve ever seen! Forgotten places drawn beautifully in candy-hued palettes – such a beautiful/sad combination. Philadelphia based artist Amze Emmons is the artist/illustrator behind these strange gouache & acrylic landscapes … I have to be honest and say that I wish I could hop into that final piece {titled ‘National Treasures’} to grab that aqua couch, and that giant head!

Well, I’m back from Salt Lake City. I am exhausted, inspired, overwhelmed, and I have pretty much completely lost my voice from laughing/talking all day and all night at this year’s Alt Summit. If you weren’t there, I’ll give you a quick rundown… on the very first day of the conference, I was lucky enough to speak on a panel about “Successful Collaborations” with these lovely ladies:

As you can see, as soon as I was finished talking {first day, first panel, first speaker!? Yes, it was nerve-wracking!}, I got myself a giant cup of coffee and spent the next two days learning all sorts of things, from all sorts of amazing people. My favorite talk was from the keynote speaker on Friday… Ben Silberman, the creator of Pinterest. He was funny, humble, and well, totally and completely inspiring!

So, so good! {look how big that lunch crowd is – that tiny white dot in front of the black screen is Ben!} Now, if you’ve never been to Alt, you should know that you’ll learn an insane amount of information about being a blogger, but you’ll also learn how to look fabulous. All the time. Apparently everyone {including me} got the memo that this year, was in fact…

Buns, shoes, accessories, vintage dresses, stripy tights. Yep, the Sartorialist should show up to next year’s event… he’d have an abundance of material to shoot! Speaking of photos, on the final night, the third floor of the hotel was taken over by a whole bunch of fantastic mini-parties put on by some of Alt’s very generous sponsors! I think almost all of them had a photo booth… so, my super-cute roomie {Kathleen, of Jeremy & Kathleen} and I hit as many as we could:

What a couple of weirdos. I’m not sure why we’re attempting the ’sexy pout’ in every shot… oh well, we had fun! And then I lost my voice ; )

If you were there, I hope you had an amazing time. I highly recommend the Alt experience to anyone who is interested in the world of blogging… and photo booths.

{All of these images are from Alt’s Flickr stream. Thank you to the fantastic photographers that documented the past crazy few days for us!}