Free Shipping, Crafty Wonderland, and Starving Artists

The craziness has officially arrived. Holiday madness. In honor of this, I am offering *F R E E * S H I P P I N G* through December 18 in my Etsy shop. You may find the perfect gift for your loved ones, work colleagues or yourself from Octavine Illustration.

In addition, I will also be at the amazing, incredible, utterly spectacular craft fair held only in Portland, Oregon: Crafty Wonderland. Outgrowing every space it has occupied, this year, on December 14, you will find me, along with 140 of Portland's best artists and crafters, at the Convention Center. It promises to be a rip-roaring good time replete with goodie bags, gift wrapping and the best handmade gifts out there.

The Moleskine journal pictured is a hand-painted, hand-screenprinted, original illustration by me. It is available through my Etsy shop and makes a wonderful gift for the note taker, poet, aspiring novelist, musician or artist in your life.

Back to work I go, tying ribbons and sealing envelopes, giving each and every package sent out care and love. So remember, this holiday season, *B U Y * H A N D M A D E* and feed an artist.

The Constant Hustle

My daily life can best be expressed as a constant hustle. Either creating or promoting, I seek to find a niche for myself. However, I find that what interests most is the personal: anecdotes that tell of a self-styled bohemian existence. In celebration of this, and in gratitude to Hadley and Tangobaby, here's a bit more....

1. I live in Portland, Oregon. Today is a particularly Portland day: grey, dark and rainy, but lusciously green, perpetually forested. I love it here. The rain is most romantic--like strolling through an Impressionist painting. It is on these dreary days I am creatively prone and rather productive.

2. I love to go to old cemeteries. In Oregon there are random Pioneer cemeteries throughout both the cities and countrysides and I find nothing more relaxing than walking through the decaying stones, each telling a history all its own.

3. I spent my honeymoon in Paris, London and traveling through Morocco. Looking through the pictures this morning provoked a yearning for adventure to the exotic. Backpacking through cities and ruins, I want to explore places unknown and wander through cultures foreign.

4. I do not drive. I walk or take the bus. This affords me the opportunity to create specific routines on my outings. Each and every day I pass by a handmade sign nailed to a street lamp. Its painted words read, "Loafe in the grass with me." No matter my mood, I smile and give a wink to Walt and a nod to Portland.

5. I love buffets. I like to have an unlimited amount of exactly what I want. Rather telling, I must say.

6. I love Masterpiece Theatre on PBS. But I am unhappy with their new format. I don't really need to hear Allan Cummings or Gillian Anderson wax historical. Plus, a modernized theme song? Please. And the new Mystery format also sucks; only snippets of Edward Gorey's drawings and the original music remain. A travesty indeed.

7. I need to get out more. I am comfortable to remain in my house, putter around my studio and only go to the dog park for socialization. Maybe a concert this week. Or a dinner party. We'll see.

Women Making History and the Self-Styled Edwardian Broadside Painter

I am interested in politics. I like to participate in my democracy. However, sometimes politics is not top priority as life takes hold. Yet the past two weeks here in Portland, Oregon and throughout the United States illustrate how life and politics are inexorably linked.

Two years ago this month I participated in a mural project created and executed by my friend, colleague and personal hero, Robin Corbo. Painted on the side of a carpeting warehouse on busy Interstate Boulevard in Portland, Oregon, the mural serves to represent various Portland communities and celebrates the women who went above and beyond to help further equality within their respective neighborhoods, ethnic groups or human rights organizations.

Perched atop a three story scaffold at times, (a truly terrifying experience which I failed to really get used to) I spent two weeks creating the alphabet, designing the layout and painting the lettering below each portrait. Located next to a century old train yard and working solo without music, I listened to the rumble of the locomotives, the oncoming traffic and the streetcar line. Feeling like an Edwardian broadside painter I enjoyed the industrial feel of my environs.

I think about this mural when I listen to the speeches made by Sarah Palin. Each of the women pictured in the mural fought to further the rights of women everywhere and now a woman stands to threaten those painstaking accomplishments.

I think Eve Ensler and Tina Fey/Amy Poeler explain the situation best for while I think it vital for women to continue to make history I certainly do not want to see it rolled back.

Queen of the Surface Streets

I spent the past week in decadence celebrating my beloved's birthday. One night spent swaying to the gyspy rhythms of Devotchka, the next dancing to the indie jams of Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks provided a much needed rock out.

Dinner at Le Pigeon, their chef voted by Food and Wine magazine as the top chef of 2007 capped the week off perfectly.

Interspersed therein was First Thursday, Portland's swanky art walk, skate show, and street party replete with large groups of revelers congregating in an open appreciation of culture and art.

I painted the above following the Devotchka concert. My favorite tune of theirs, Queen of the Surface Streets,

(I'll give my days to the Neanderthals
With the classic rock
And the wrecking ball
I'll go swimming in the wet concrete
And I'll cast my pearls at the unpaved streets),

inspired her, Art Deco style.

A Most Tragically Hip Art Show

The blooming of the daffodils and tulips here in Portland signals the beginning of art fair season. This past Monday and Tuesday were spent inside one of Portland's largest office buildings as a group of independent designers, crafters and artists displayed our wares through the newly created artist group, HandmadeNW.

Friday and Saturday will be spent at the school of indie rock star's children (The Shins, The Decemberists, Sleater Kinney, Modest Mouse, Stephen Malkmus and the scions of other famous rockers), Buckman Elementary. The Buckman School Art Show & Sell on Friday, April 11 and Saturday, April 12 at Buckman Elementary School in Portland, Oregon benefits the Buckman Arts Focus Elementary School and will be featuring the work of more than 100 Pacific Northwest artists.

Already written up in Pitchfork, the most popular online taste making music magazine, the Buckman Art Show and Sell is kicking off the event with a benefit concert by The Shins' James Mercer and Pavement's Stephen Malkmus held at the tragically hip Jupiter Hotel next to the tragically hip Doug Fir Lounge.

I am very excited for this event and for the rest of the summer art shows as well. Art fairs provide me with a sense of community, belonging and conversation. I enjoy chatting with customers and artists alike and come away feeling renewed and inspired.

Venus in Spring

Today my tulips bloomed and I finished a painting inspired by said tulips. Entitled, "Venus in Spring," it is one of a series that I am currently at work on. In addition to a full-size painting, each image is burned onto a screen to print from. The canvas is a Moleskine notebook, favorite of DaVinci and Hemingway. Each notebook is screen-printed with one of my Art Deco inspired illustrations (Grandpa Charlie and Venus among them) and then hand-painted. They are for purchase in my Etsy shop.

Last weekend friends visited from Williams, Oregon, a very small town in the Rogue Valley (a most romantic name for a locale). Living in the country they see little of civilization, thus the opportunity to shop at the garage sale going on across the street was of immense excitement. Filling two cars full with garage sale wares, they made their way home. I picked up a stash of 1980s movies and spent the day painting Moleskines whilst conducting my own personal Christian Slater marathon.

Unlike many artists, I usually do not listen to music whilst at work. Rather I have a little television and VCR in my studio and I listen to movies. The dialogue allows me to focus whereas music zones me out. Funny where inspiration lies.

Thus, four new Moleskine designs and nine new paintings are almost finished. I'm not sure if the '80s movies rubbed off as my usual fare are black and whites, Hitchcock or James Bond (the action keeps me moving quickly), but needless to say I most assuredly enjoyed myself (Mr. Slater in Pump Up the Volume makes me swoon. Sigh.).

Vanity, Oh Vanity--Southeast 34th & Belmont

I tell my friends from Manhattan that they have not seen hip until they have spent 20 minutes on the corner of SE Belmont and 34th in Portland, Oregon. Recently featured in the New York Times, this corner boasts the world famous Stumptown Coffee, the ultra-chic Aalto Lounge, a state of the art bicycle parking lot and skinny jeans galore.

Next Saturday, February 9, I will be participating in the Granny Panties Craft Bazaar hosted by the fashionable Aalto Lounge. The Aalto and Stumptown share a front entrance and despite an essentially perpetual drizzle, foot traffic is a constant as hipsters struggle to see and be seen.

In fact, rock star sightings are frequent and it is not unheard of to walk into Stumptown (Using vintage machines to grind their coffee beans Stumptown also got the attention of the New York Times.) and hear The Shins playing whilst stirring your coffee next to James Mercer.

This is my first Portland craft fair of 2008. After a fruitful holiday season, I am excited to get back into the swing of things vending my various Art Deco inspired wares.

The tee pictured is one of my best sellers right now and is on my Etsy store and at the Granny Panties Bazaar in PDX February 9.

Sharing the Road--Portland's Bicycle Community

Portland is a town run by the bicycle. Relatively flat terrain, streets that run along a grid as well as a green mentality allow Portland to be the city with the most bicycle commuters.


Last night I watched Foreign Correspondent, a very old Alfred Hitchcock movie featuring Amsterdam. Bicycles dictated traffic and seemed to be the primary mode of transportation along the cobbled Dutch streets.

Bicycles still rule the streets of Amsterdam, but like Portland, they no longer dictate traffic as SUVs now rule the road. And while much of Amsterdam looks as it did through Hitchcock's lens in 1940, the bicycle is not quite as prominent.

Although the city of Portland protects cyclists through legislation, accidents occur. Every year Portland's bicycle community puts on a concert and bike ride to promote bike safety and celebrate the lives of those who were lost to bicycle accidents. The benefit is called "Share the Road."

The benefit is a consortium of local bands. I illustrated this concert poster using as my inspiration a picture I had taken of my sister riding her bicycle through the Dutch countryside. (This was our first international trip together and we had a grand time, despite our ridiculous matching backpacks.)

Each font is hand-wrought and from my own unique alphabets. Along with calligraphy, designing alphabets is my favorite aspect of my profession. A well drawn font can articulate a specific theme, era, and mood whilst drawing proper attention to the message at large. However, the font style must also match the illustration to allow for a well executed event poster.

Paris from High

I imagine a drizzly spring afternoon in Paris circa 1934. She's a movie star or maybe a dancer. Something glamorous. Although naked, her lazily draped cloak gives a bit of warmth. She is not unhappy as the hurried boulevard beneath provides solace. The terrace of the grand hotel is aged; the wrought iron rusted.
No matter, she is beautiful and a dancer, or maybe a movie star. Something glamorous.

Painted with gouache on a very cold day in NE Portland, Oregon.

Wedding Invitations, Calligraphy and Art Nouveau

When I was married my chief concern was my invitation. Sitting on the floor of my small lakeside apartment I drafted invitation after invitation. Basing my design on an Art Nouveau perfume bottle circa 1915, I sought to create an invitation that incorporated our Hebrew names, calligraphy and an Art Nouveau or Art Deco design.

My dress was from 1930. The long princess sleeves were cut and the neckline lowered. I found a tuxedo bought from a Fifth Avenue tailor in 1935, cufflinks, a shirt collar and a bowtie. Holding fastidious to my theme, I purchased a pair of ca. 1930s bridal shoes. The wedding invitation had to match.

Maintaining my black and white theme, I placed the Hebrew calligraphy into small banners; the English text in the center. As with many wedding and Bat or Bar Mitzvah invitations, the Hebrew calligraphy is decorative.

Combining the aesthetic of the Art Deco and Art Nouveau periods with my own and my husband's Jewish traditions allowed the invitation to be truly representative of our wedding day.

An Art Deco Explosion

When I first moved to Portland it was November and we were subletting an apartment with little insulation nor finished flooring.

The cold air seeped into every nook; every cranny touched by an almost Artic chill. One room was kept heated. Using reruns of Perry Mason as ambient noise, I painted and painted and painted.

The time spent there was my most prolific.

Constructing an entire series out of one word titles and beautiful women, I chose my favorites to be screenprinted. Eventually a few designs out of a large pile (piles are the measure of all things) were screenprinted onto tees, totes, aprons, prints, cards and journals.

The title "Explosive" is both French and English. The style Art Deco but the fashion 1960s mod London.

Album Art--My First Foray Part I

I just started a new commission today. It is for an album cover entitled "Knives That Stab Your Face." I know, pretty intense. However, Brian, the soul behind "Knives," is a slight redhead reminiscent of a rookie detective from Scotland Yard. I think it's the goatee. His music is akin to Elliott Smith or Leonard Cohen. Singer-song writer stuff with a dark edge. Hence, "Knives That Stab Your Face." The theme of the album art is to be "sinister" but will not be literal.

This being my first foray into album art, I am very excited about it. Brian wants to have the album ready for printing in a month. So that leaves me like two weeks. Yikes. Better get to work and stop futzing around on the computer....

Oh, and pictured is the painting Brian likes best and I am using as the inspiration for the album cover.

PDX Etsy Show

On December 22, my local Etsy group put on our first ever Solstice sale held at Portland State University in conjunction with the Portland Farmers Market.

A grassroots effort, the show was a success and gave everyone an opportunity to put a face to a screen name.

PDX Etsy is a consortium of artists from throughout the Portland area seeking to find community and promote art, craft and Etsy.

In addition, PDX Etsy is an invaluable resource for questions, concerns, vending information and marketing.

Artists helping artists.

Beautiful.