I try and clean my computer up every so often. Sorting out my art folder is the most time consuming, but I always find a little bit of gold.
In 2007- 2008 Gene and I had a small business called “I Like Things”. We had a studio in Fitzroy, Melbourne where we would just stay up all hours sewing, drawing, printing.. It was such a creative time in our lives. We had just formed our relationship and didn’t really see anyone else. (We would also go for very late night coffees of Brunswick Street or cook ‘breakfast dinners’.. Yum!.)
It was an amazing studio/ home. It used to be a funeral home. We had a studio, recording studio, theatre, heaps of bedrooms up stairs. In fact recently it was featured on a Melbourne blog about Fitzroy, called Fitzroyalty. The article can be found here: From Undertaker to Home
Anyway, I found some images that we created in that time and I thought I’d share. This was of a time when I was just obsessed with cartoons, comics and bunnys. (And now I am obsessed with etchings, zombies and squirrels) I am pretty sure I did the first two images in 2006.
I first drew this one in a tiny water colour sketchbook using pen and ink. At the time I was doing a lot of images like this, of a very small size to put into box frames. I did one before this called “Miss Josephine”, but I didn’t take a photo of it.. I regret that. She had little wire flowers I attempted to make with fake pearls. I hope it has a good home and isn’t in a bin. (That’s the risk you take with birthday presents and weak friendships.)
Anyway, Handbag Critters was and still remains to be Gene’s favorite image. I spent over a year doing others, but he always loved this one. The girls I used were mostly from the Fruits books. I really loved Japanese fashion at the time.
Whisker Wars is also from the same little crappy sketch book. I have her on a t-shirt too. We used to screen print t-shirts, make bags and badges. It was a fun hobby.
This is one of my favorite images from the later series we did. I can’t remember the full title of this one!
We also used to have a website. Gene designed it, as he designed my current site and our good friend Bron Bron made the magic happen and put both of them online.
Here’s the homepage:
I did this when I took a year off form University. It was a good experience. It taught me what I do and don’t want to be doing. I also got time to just really get to know the most amazing man in my life, Gene Bear. x
