Artsy week-end

What a weekend. On Saturday I had a lecture at the society of illustrators given by the fantastic artist Yuko Shimizu, who talked about her experience as an artist and her very bad relationship to her home country Japan. After that I want to the exhibition of Nara Yoshimoto who creates this famous art of cute children who do something creepy, such as smoking cigarettes. From the exhibition I learned that there is a name for the “cute creepy” in Japan, it’s kowa kiwaii and disgusting cute and creepy is “kimo kowa kawaii” – I kinda always wanted to know that because this art form is very popular at the moment.

Later I went back to the Society of illustrators to see a lecture given by illustrators Sam Weber, Toma Hanuka and Shimizu who talked about their experience as artists. I really enjoyed the lecture, there were so many young students (me including) who listened with shiny eyes, uncertain of their artistic future. A funny side-information is that I have gamed with Sam Weber once because he is in my friend Tim’s gaming group.
(Below: The illustrators, from ltr: Hanuka, Shimizu, Weber)


The next day I decided to go to the DUMBO art festival because the Threadless “Everywhere-Tour” had a book-signing there and I wanted to get the book anyway (it’s about the history of Threadless). I was super-nervous, of course, because I was curious to meet other Threadless artists and maybe even staff members from Chicago.

So what I got was actually much better: Founder Jake Nickell was there, and my sensitive plan to talk to people and maybe tell them that I was getting printed on Threadless fell apart, because what I basically did was: Shake their hand, blurt out “HI, I’M ANNA-MARIA, IM GETTING PRINTED AT THREADLESS!” while blushing and behaving all like a groupie. And what was even more awesome was that the founder of Threadless asked me to sign his Threadless book! I drew him a little Godzilla and I didn’t mess up completely! Then I bought my copy and got it signed by him (see picture). I am all proud but I also feel slightly disgusted by being such a show-off sometimes. I also met Kristen, who models for threadless, works the social networking there (like facebook), and run a workshop at the DUMBO artsfestival on how to turn your shirt into something new. I made a really sloppy tank top out of one threadless shirt, I am just so impatient when it comes to crafting things…
(Foto below: The aorkshop to turn shirts into something new; AT the very right is Kristen, who works for threadless - you might now her from some of the shirt fotos in the shop)
(Foto below:This is Jake Nickell, one of the founders of Threadless. I signed him a copy!)(Below: my signatur from Jake Nickell for my copy of the book)

(Below: The questionable result of what I did in thw workshop. Unfortunatly the shirt lost 1 inch on each side by cutting and re-knotting it which made it a bit smaaaaallll....)
Since we are already talking about it, score on my latest design on threadless, will ya?
Polo...with dinosaurs is up for scoring!