Weekend Eye Candy - Mark Making Edition

Weekend Eye Candy - Mark Making Edition, 1. detail detail, 2. New Cups, 3. beautiful old ink life..., 4. DSCN6107, 5. DSCN4810, 6. Hands, 7. bee brown canteen, 8. Typography / fine art / texture / graffiti / photography / design, 9. DSCN4840, 10. graffiti tears, 11. Mark making into the earth's crust, 12. Aboriginal cave art, 13. quince vase (B), 14. Mark Making into the earth's crust, 15. TEXTURE ECRI 0176, 16. DSCN4982 Created with fd's Flickr Toys

People have been making their marks on the world from the dawn of time. We do it every day. From the cave paintings at Lascaux to Egypt's hieroglyphics to the tempera hand print turkeys we all made at Thanksgiving to the hit and run "vandalism" created by graffiti artists. We seem to have a deep seated need to tell our fellow (wo)man that "I was here".

Lately I've been really intrigued with Amy Tavern's jewelry and Diana Fayt's ceramics. Of course I'm drawn (no pun intended) to the charming birds, bees, whales and rabbits that populate Diana's wonderful tableware, but it's the dots, lines, circles and other beautifully chaotic scritches and scratches that I adore.

Likewise, the rough cut silhouettes and "quick bend" tab's were what first attracted me to Amy's sterling silver jewels, but the coarsely filed, abraded and distressed paint treatments sealed the deal for me.

Recently Amy took an enamel class at Penland (where she is a resident artist) that "collect[ed] a range of marks found in the Penland landscape. These will be used as the basis for an exploration of nontraditional enameling processes." Oh, how I wish I could have ben there too! There's a similar class being offered in Seattle later in August, but of course, I'm already booked to teach. Sigh.

But if two are offered, perhaps there will be another. That I'll hopefully find out about in time. Until then, I'm searching Google and the world outside for more inspiration and doodling in my little book to develop a range of marks that will tell my corner of the world that "Lora was here" too.