Julia Rothman

While exploring Design*Sponge I've come across some Julia Rothman designs. While she has a bit too much of the domino (as in the magazine) aesthetic, there are aspects of her work that like, such as her attempt to bring a children's book illustration look into current design, her simplified color palette and not-overly-obvious-but-not-overly-complex pattern repeats.

All images are from her website:

http://www.juliarothman.com/

If you want to learn more about her or her joint business visit:

her blog at http://www.book-by-its-cover.com/

and her business, Also http://www.also-online.com/

As breakfast's number one fan, she got me with this one. I like the children's book illustration quality of her drawing and color. I also like the unexpected items, champagne for breakfast. She uses a limited color palette to bring cohesion to the composition, like the pink of the ham is the pink on the jellied toast, and the tan of the toast is on the muffin and pancakes as well.

Limiting palette pinks and browns, I like the reference to women's magazines of yesteryear. I like the illustration actually provides clear instructions.

I can't look at this one without thinking of one of my favorite illustrated movies, Disney's 101 Dalmatians. Maybe its the black outline and line weight?

This was the first Julia Rothman illustration I saw. I was drawn to the pattern repeat and colors which strongly reference children's books. There is a specific book that it recalls, but I can't put my finger on it, so if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

Computer's Startup disk has a lot on its mind

Here are images provided by Grand Perspective on what's keeping my computer so occupied.

A complex patterning of tile work.

Alien Planet

Being that I am stuck in suburbia for awhile I decided

as a mental exercise to look at my surroundings as if

they were an alien planet.

What would be my impression? Could this be seen as foreign terrain?

The units in the center of the photograph are three

stories. We can just see the top floor peeking over the road.

The dwellings look like they were plopped into the landscape.

Each dwelling is perfectly alike.

No favoritism here.

A utilitarian common space where refuse is deposited

and some kind of sorting takes place.

All surfaces are painted grey-green.

These instruments either bring something into or

take something out of each unit. Each has a

measuring device on its face.

There weren't any people out and I found it easy to look at

the complex as if it were alien. The architecture

appeared very utilitarian and the units were identical

to the point that all surfaces were painted the same color.

Maybe the culture is concerned with uniformity and efficiency?

While the architecture was bland and gave little

information about the people, the liter seemed to stand out

against this background. An empty potato chip bag under a bush,

a toddler's sock by the side of the road, animal droppings scattered

about in the lawn and on the edges of the road, a piece of holiday

paper that is labeled 'To Eric from John and Ian", and a small melted

piece of plastic, perhaps from an electronic device, on the road.

So yeah, I could see it as an alien planet,

but it doesn't make it any more compelling

to live in.

New Sights

The end of summer brought many new sights that I compiled to share with you. For example, Rock Hill's latest public work of art made in cooperation with Winthrop University's art students. The heads are supposed to look like they are talking to one another (according to the plaque). Thus continues the trend in creepy Rock Hill public art.

Below is the interior.

A scene from Charleston. The cow and milk rotate on a turntable. Seems so poignant through a rainy car window.

Enough with South Carolina.

And our latest endeavor, Project Gold Box , one of the many ways we distinguish ourselves from those 'other neighbors,' a room entirely gold with a large crystal protruding from the ceiling. I predict the room will function similarly to an orgone accumulator.

Hatch your own moldy dinosaur

I bought Jace a lovely dinosaur egg from Food Lion. The packaging said the dinosaur would hatch after two days of being submerged in water. Well, ours was a late bloomer and took a whole week and by the time I took it out of the water, the dinosaur was disintegrating.

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Our very own beguiling blue-eyed Stegosaurus!

Documenting the hatching process made me realize nature moves at it's own pace... and I need to clean my incense burner more often.

Spring Inventory

Here are some examples of the work done this past semester. The first set is from my Surface Design studio:

Here I chose a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder as my color and composition source. I really concentrated on color matching on this sample and for the composition I took my inspiration from Mondrian and applied squares of color in the same place as they appear on the original composition.

Here my color source is Wayne Thiebaud. I decided to take the color stripes found in the ice cream and make my own stripes. The colors follow from left to right. Color matching was very difficult in this sample because there were so many slight variations in each of the colors in the original painting. I tried to keep the ice cream feeling in the stripes I made.

Thickened MX dye with a seaweed solution, set for one week. Resist dyed. I'm not too crazy about what basically amounts to tie-dying, but I like the sense of depth created by this thickened dye. There is more color variation and is more visually interesting than most tie-dye. This was made using only two dyes, orange and chino.

Marbling!

A while back I bought a marbling kit and I found this to be the perfect opportunity to try it out. I use two methods, raking with a fork and droplets. Many of the colors dispersed differently. Notice some of the Lisa Frank influence?

Some more samples (old school PBS influenced):

Reverse applique by hand

Machine Appliqued

Embroidery in Progress:

The dark park of the fabric is reverse appliqued fabric that I overdyed. The rest is stitches in different golds. I want to fill more of the space with embroidery. Below is a detail.

This past semester I also decided to learn how to weave. Here are some of the results:

This was my first successful weaving, boxes made from satin weave structures. It was made on an AVL compu-dobby 24 Harness Loom.

This is a sample playing with twills on the same loom.

We learned how to use the Jacquard TC-1 loom. Below the weaving is my pattern made on Photoshop.

Christmas 2009

Above: tourist painting (?) with "painted in holland" stamped on the back. Oil on panel board.

Above: Knit mini quilt. Triangles in no particular arrangement. Perhaps made of scrap yarn.

Above: jade necklace

Above: Light bulbs with metal filament shaped as two leaved flowers. Some kind of coating has been applied to give filaments color when turned on.

Above: Detail of light bulb turned on. The light appears to vibrate softly.