Running Scales

Anyone who ever took piano or voice lessons or did sports competitively knows about warming up. On the piano, you play scales, do re mi. In the pool, you swim a few slow laps to get the blood moving. You limber up, you shake yourself out and hone your focus.

Lately, art projects are on my mind. I may be gearing up for something big, but for now, I'm running scales, stretching. To do this, I'm exploring the perimeters of a strictly limited tool—using simple Snapchat tools and my fingertip on the screen of my phone to draw and write over photographs. Only, for the most part, I start with photographs of almost pure darkness, to create a blank, mostly black canvas.

With no eraser, no way to alter the thickness of a line, and very limited colors (no black or white, no options for tints and shades, just a short slider of bright rainbow colors) I'm making little compositions. Then I tag them with simple messages, and put them out into the world.

Find me on Snapchat (Amy K / amyKstudio) to see these as I post them, or check out the growing collection on Facebook.

Five Things

The creative juices are flowing, and I expect I'll be posting more here soon. In the meantime, here are five things I've made during my long absence from this blog:

1. Spark*Letter, my email love letter to the world. I write one when the ideas are ripe and I have time, which works out to be about four times per year. You can see the spring issue here (and subscribe so you won't miss the next one).

"The Web"

2. Leggings for Society6. I call my line "Happy Legs." I've got four designs so far, and plan to make more.

3. Podcasts— I'm recording one-on-one conversations on Hello Climate Change, as a tool to help me (and hopefully others) think about this overwhelming topic in a less overwhelming way. My goal is a hundred conversations. I'm about a third of the way in, learning and gaining insight every time. (Subscribe on iTunes or wherever you like to get your podcasts.)

4. Kaleidos— Using Quartz Composer, I made a tool that uses my computer's camera, sin waves, ASCII text, and a glitch triggered by sound in the environment to make these kaleidoscopic artworks.

   

5. Photo collections, four ongoing visual journals on Facebook: Walking Shots, Things on Top of Things (AKA Surfaces), Millie, and Sinks.