Arts Messaging Campaign in Portland

I’m excited to share two designs that were chosen as part of Creative Portland’s Arts Messaging Campaign! Creative Portland has been working with the City of Portland on their Stay the Course public health campaign - installing designs from local artists around the city to reinforce safety practices like hand-washing, wearing masks, and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here are the two designs that I hand-lettered, inspired by the traditional style of sign-painting:

They were recently printed on banners/installed by Creative Portland here at 770 Congress Street in Portland:

(For scale, “Wash your hands often” is about 5 x 5ft, and “Thank you for wearing a mask” is about 7 x 7ft!)

Many thanks to the Creative Portland/volunteer installer team for printing and hanging these! I’m grateful for the opportunity to use hand-lettering to share these reminders about simple things we can all do to keep ourselves and each other safe. Keep an eye out for other designs around the arts district if you’re local, and find out more about the work of Creative Portland here.

MECA Holiday Sale Window Display

I am so excited that my design was chosen for Maine College of Art’s Holiday Sale Window Display this year! I thought I’d share the finished display along with some process photos of the project below:

While brainstorming different ways to fill the window with illustrations in a holiday theme, I decided to design a series of moths in shades of blue - accompanied by a few lanterns to warm up the space. After sketching the full layout of the window to-scale, I made templates of each moth shape/size and used them to make wooden cut outs (thanks to help from my dad):

After priming all 32 moths, I was ready to start painting them based on my sketch. Luckily I had plenty of room to work on both sides of these in a spacious spray booth at my dad’s paint shop:

And after many hours/days spent building up coats and details, I was ready to install them at MECA, along with six kerosene lanterns (shout-out to my mom for her idea for/help filling them with string lights!)

I think my favorite view is at night, when the warmth from the lanterns and icicle string lights really shows:

Below is the artist statement I wrote to accompany the installation:

Through researching pollinators as a frequent theme in my work, I’ve recently become interested in moths and their unique markings. Having been introduced to the philosophy of Cosmic Education this fall, I’m also interested in exploring a theme of universal interconnection through pattern.

I found many visual connections in nature while designing these moths; between wing patterns and leaf veins, stars and snowfall, snowflakes and flowers. Drawing inspiration from Scandinavian folk art, I illustrated these connections throughout this series of thirty-two hand-painted wooden moths.

If you’re local, be sure to check out the Holiday Sale on December 6 + 7th! (more info here).

Many thanks to my parents and husband Kyle for all of their help while I worked on this project - and to MECA for this opportunity and their support! What a way to kick off this holiday season.

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12/14/19 Update: Maine College of Art and Portland Stage won Best Spots for a Photo-Op in Portland Downtown’s annual Holiday Window Display Contest! Check out all of this year’s winners here.

Geary Brewing Co. Mural

I’m excited to share a project that I just finished last week: a hand-lettered mural for Geary Brewing Co - painted on the door to their Tasting Room in Portland, Maine! I wanted to first share a couple photos of the finished work, then some process photos and insight into something new I tried for this particular project.

This mural had a tight deadline - and considering it required painting outside in April (a bit early for Maine), it was a risky one - especially since it rained almost every day during the week I needed to paint it. But, I got one sunny day - so I backed up my Rav and hunkered down for as long as I could to work on it.

Since I had such a limited amount of time to paint this, I tried something I’ve never done before for a mural project: making stencils. A couple days before I started painting (on a day I was supposed to paint but got rained out!), I made a big Photoshop file of my sketch/the door to-scale, then went over the sketch on my iPad to get higher-resolution lettering in black.

I had prints made of the major elements (like the Geary logo, and ‘NEW ENGLAND’S’), glued each of them to thin cardboard, then painstakingly cut out each letter with an x-acto knife. I figured it would either be a huge waste of time or a huge time-saver and luckily, it worked out great!

I had realized that I just wouldn’t have enough time to lay out the design correctly (exactly as-pictured in my sketch) in pencil or chalk - so luckily it only took me an hour or so to first coat everything with my stencils. After that, I was able to spend the rest of my time adding in the remaining designs, building up the layers and refining the details. There’s something about murals that always seems daunting to me at first - but then so liberating since it’s 100% hand-painted (and a nice break from digital). I’m really happy with how this one turned out!

Picnic Holiday Sale

The Picnic Holiday Sale is officially one month away! I’ll have a table there again with plenty of totes, prints, patches and pins. My husband Kyle will also be there selling our seed bombs and his terrariums! Hope to see you there.