an artist we love…

kris chau is one of our fp girls, and she’s also a really talented artist.  she has a show opening tonight at topstitch boutique in philly (54 n. 3rd) called “puppy face” featuring some of her new works, so i thought i’d ask her a few questions!

where do you draw inspiration for your work?
i draw inspiration from the girls around me, lyrics from hilarious songs, my dog, flowers i see, and artists i admire.

who are some of the artists you admire?
yuko shimizu, zeloot, genevieve castree, tim gough, rob sato, ako castuera.

what is your favorite thing to draw?
well ladies of course. ladies, ruffles, shoes, and puppies.

with a full time job here at fp, when do you find time for your artwork?
sigh, that is a question i get quite a bit and i ask myself the same thing. i give up a lot of social things and maybe grooming to do both. my life at free people gives me many opportunities that i will forever be grateful for, and due to my lack of free time making art has become incredibly important to me. it becomes something very serious in a way, i now create things that i do not compromise, i’ve taken a less illustrative and more arty route these days. my position at free people is also creative, so creatively i feel like every week i run a marathon and i am constantly trying to balance it all.

do you listen to music while you draw? what do you listen to?
i listen to a lot of podcasts (thank you fresh air and ira glass i will send you more money) as well as booty shakin jams to keep my spirits up.

what are some of your other hobbies?
gardening and playing with my sweet sweet puppy.

if you were stranded on an island, what three things would you want with you?
my sweet tim, my sweet puppy, and a lifetime supply of cucumber soda.

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if you’re in philly stop by topstitch boutique tonight between 6 and 10pm!  a bunch of us fp girls will be there :)

also check out more of chau’s amazing work on her website!

think global, rock local

benefit concert tonight at the trocadero theater in philly! “philly rocks for haiti,” will feature the West Philadelphia Orchestra, Black Landlord, Zeppelin cover band Get the Led Out, Blood Feathers and Free Energy.  doors open at 7pm and tickets are $12 with all proceeds going to the haitian professionals of philadelphia, who will ship much-needed supplies to haiti.

for more info, click here.

paper hearts

ok so these are kinda similar to the butterfly DIY i posted last week (here) but i wanted to share them because i think they’d be such a cute project for valentine’s day! as decoration or a gift for your loved ones…and it doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to do. you could follow the instructions from last week’s post, or if you want to make something that looks more like these, i think you could just glue the hearts right onto the backing paper, leaving some flat and some only glued on one side to get that cool fluttering effect :)

these images are from sarah and bendrix’s etsy shop – check out more here.

something in the air

last week i was over in the area where our visual display team works on the amazing creations that you see in our stores, and i spotted boxes and boxes of these colorful little creatures…

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so what are they? our new store displays for spring! here’s a look at the installation in our king of prussia, pa store:

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i love it! our visual display team always does such an amazing job :)

shoot the moon

another fp girl told me about these really cool photos taken by mikael kennedy…not only do i love that they’re polaroids, i also love the story behind them.  read on for the explanation in the artist’s words.

“i had started carrying an old polaroid SX70 camera with me everywhere i went back in 1999. we had no jobs, we had no plan, we had piled 6 of us and a dog into a van and had driven straight across from massachusetts to washington for no reason other than to find a new place to live.

i told david that this was to be the plan: no plan. i said we’d ‘shoot the moon.’ like in the game of hearts, you collect all the bad cards you win, you get almost all of them but not all you lose. so i started collecting my cards in the frame of a polaroid.

and so that is what this is, it’s 10 years of no plan, of wandering around with a polaroid camera… i have always said the only reason to live is for what i would call a ‘life lived’; a life full of experiences either good or bad. so we’d win by taking the wrong way, we would wander, gather these experiences one by one and build something out of them.”

check out the full set of photos here.

philagrafika

the first ever philagrafika festival starts this weekend in philly, and it is expected to be one of the largest art events in the US and the world’s largest print-related exhibition.  this will be a recurring event that celebrates the role of print in contemporary art.   more than 300 artists will be represented at more than 80 venues throughout philly! i really like what artist gunilla klingberg has done with the entrance at moore college:

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for more info on philagrafika click here.