A walk down memory lane

I have been moving my old studio into my new space this week. As I go, I have been cleaning out old files and boxes that I haven’t looked at in years. I have been surprised that the daunting work of moving has actually ignited passion and excitement as I become re-inspired by what has laid quiet in boxes. I am fired up to make new things and excited to remember old things that I have made. In one of the folders was a magazine article about a project I had forgotten about. Back in 2010, I was lucky enough to find myself in collaboration with a group of California artists who were making some very unique wedding favors for a “wedding as art project” event. Two artists were getting married and wanted a wedding that was anything but typical. They ended up having a “festival of interactive and performance art” and my work was included. I worked with artists Bettina Hubby and Ed Ruscha to make the thickest paper I could —it was more than three inches thick! — that they wanted to use for a die cut project. (How they ever cut through that thick of a piece of paper is still a mystery to me.) They cut “I DO” into the paper and used it as wedding favors. It took quite a long time to accumulate the amount of white paper scraps to make such thick paper. I had to build special molds to pour the pulp into and then it took at least a week for each sheet of the handmade paper to dry. I made a couple hundred of them and then shipped them off to California with my blessings and the assumption that, now that my part of the work was completed, I would not hear from them again. I was thrilled when I did hear from Bettina, several months later. After the wedding, Bettina sent me a thank you note with clippings of articles about the wedding from several different magazines, including LA Weekly and The NY Times Style Magazine, with pictures featuring the paper I had made. It reminded me how much I love to collaborate with other artists and how much inspiration I get from those experiences. It makes the dreary work of unpacking and organizing into a treasure hunt. Now back to the unpacking to see what other surprises and memories await!

To see the entire article in the New York Times Style Magazine, go to: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/seeing-things-getting-hubbied/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

For the LA Weekly article, go to http://www.hubbyco.com/static/gallery/files/Get_Hubbied_LA_Weekly_.pdf