Country Girl on the Great Frontier

I really didn't know I was a country girl until I left the country. Sure, I went to college in deep south Savannah, but most of my peers were from freaking New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, D.C. and everywhere else people only on TV existed to me previously. Hell, even the Texans who grew up on ranches seemed like bonafide city slickers, silver spoon in cheek, next to lil ol' appalachian me. Where I was from, I wasn't perceived by the folks back home as a typical either, but for the opposite reasons, being more concerned with art, literature, and music than the average East Tennesseean bear. (Which is of course why I ended up at art school anyhow.) My thick accent, undetectable in the mountains, and lack of ipods and such weren't unusual, however.

Studying illustration, I was unwillingly put in my place as a young artist with an archaic view of the art world, having never touched a wacom tablet. The changes from papers to pixels of illustration are the unruly spawn, of course, of art and technology making wild rampant love. And that kind of copulation is unseen in the sticks of my youth! It's not like I had never used a computer in my life. It was that tinkering around "too much" on one was playing around. And as a teenager, the longer I spent on a computer, the higher my ever increasing chances of a crazy teen-hungry sex sicko waiting around every corner to get lil oblivious me. So I'll just say I was discouraged a little. Discouraged and poor. I couldn't afford things like computers and software. I learned at school, on SCAD's mac and epson and adobe and other such brand name equipment. Yet creating art that way wasn't radical to me... just frustrating and uninteresting. It's just a good way of preserving and presenting work digitally... virtually permanently yet changeable... "fixable". And I totally appreciate that!



I discovered printmaking where my work became inherently bolder via media. It made sense to me as well in that I was taught about illustration's primary definition as print based media... and how that's morphing. I'm still quite enamored with the oldest printmaking form to this day. (Relief!) It's alot like presently popular vectorized computer created graphics in that each color is its own layer and the image is created with clear-cut and separate positive and negative lines and shapes. And yet the character of the carving and unexpected flat textures and chattering lends organic ambiance. Halleluja, It saved me. I still paint expressively, but printing gave me a different direction when it comes to clear cut, punchy communication. All with hand cut wood and linoleum and sticky ink on real tangible thick paper. And hell, it looks good scanned in and on a computer screen, too, I must say. I've never shunned technology with my art. I mean, just look at me now, making my first blog post... about my art! It's just not my mode of creation. I'm hoping this blog can be a sort of digital sketchbook and I can connect with other artists out there- to expand my reaches into the community and hopefully what creative market still exists in this time.

I have also set up an Etsy account recently. One sale so far! Chicken Strips! Printed during my internship at Yee Haw industries.



http://www.etsy.com/shop/angelicapaige