MyWondrousHandbook

MyWondrousHandbook

All rights reserved. No part of this book my be produced in any form without written permission form the

copyright owner.This book contains original work created in my first year of MFA-ILP program form 2012-2013.

Contents

* Introduction

* Archival

* Sketchbook Project

* Image Harvesting

* Workshops

* Reaction Piece

* Publishing Project

* Art Market

* Hand Lettering

* Pattern and Personal Project

* Made & Sold

* Words on Wheels

* Stop Motion Animation

* Conclusion

Valeria Molinari MFA-ILP ‘14 is a Venezuelan Designer/Illustrator with a degree in Animation and

Motion Graphics from the Art Institute of California. She is a founding member of a collective of artists “Colectivo Proarte” based in Venezuela. She is known to approach

illustration in a very whimsical and colorful way.

As the first year as a grad student wraps up I can’t help but look back and reminisce, with a sense of nostalgia, but also of accomplishment and determination. In a year that seemed so removed from the real world activities, where I had to deal with clients, students, exhibits, non-profits, and trying to schedule time at my studio; now all of my time has been dedicated to create, imagine and explore, it felt freeing, and overwhelming at the same time, although is it easy to adjust to something so wonderful.

During this highly creative time, and being a part of various workshops pushed and challenged me to expand my concept of illustration and my studio practice. Every single one of these workshops helped me open up, dust off, and expand my mind and ideas, helping me realize how I could bridge the gap between many artistic practices and my own illustrative process.

Experimentation, and application has been a big part of this year, and because of it my goals have changed, evolved, and taken unexpected but exciting turns. Through thorough examination, I have realized what is most important to me, as a woman, as a creative, and ultimately as an illustrator. What I want to show the world, what I want to be a part of, and how my work can contribute to the ever-changing concept of illustration.

The second half of this year has become the catalyst of creative transformation that I had hoped for. It has helped me realize how important it is for me to keep an interdisciplinary studio, to wear multiple creative hats, and keep adding new tools to practice in order to add to the conversation of the future of illustration.

Introduction

Archival

As any good artist knows, the archival process is crucial to maintaining an organized practice. In the MFA-ILP program we use Adobe Lightroom as a system for archival, personally I use Adobe Bridge be-cause I have easier access to it, the principle is pretty much the same, and I can export content from one to the other. The most interesting feature of both programs is the ability to embed information into you images such as metadata, and copyright content.

Sketchbook Project

The first project that welcomed us into the program was “The Sketch-book Project”, an initiative started by the people of the Art House Co-op in Brooklyn, NY. The project consists of receiving a sketchbook with your name and barcode on it, and fill it with any kind of data that resembles your “theme.” Everyone in the program was assigned one sketchbook and one theme, and we had to swap every week so we got to work on almost every theme; mine was “atlas” and it was quite interesting to play with it, but also to dabble in mystery, documentation, dinosaurs, lists, diagrams, among other.

The Curious was an exhibit inspired by our sketches for this project.

Image Harvesting

Historically when people talk about illustration they generally talk about it in a two-dimensional format, as drawing or paintings accompanying articles in magazines or newspapers article, and describing words in children’s books. In the present I know it means so much more, it can evolve in its applications even if they are all two-dimensional.

This project invited us to go back into our older work and extract bits and fragments that could evolve into pieces of its own. In my case I mostly pulled away individual characters, and imagined them being applied onto objects like bedding, prints, ceramics, plush toys and other fabric materials. It wasimportant for me to potentially see these characters in a place where people could interact with them in their every day lives.

Personally one of the most important parts of two-dimensional process is sketching your ideas, having them evolve on paper before they become a reality in whatever format they will happen to live in the future. One of the most important parts of this project was relying on my sketches to tell the future sto-ry that those objects will lead.

Merry Mountains started as one of my 10 ideas for the image harvest project. It grew from a mural I had done earlier in 2012. The vision for this project started as an interactive art installation that would be plushie and sweet. I decided to experiment in a small scale to familiarize myself sewing, and embroidery, and the idea of seeing these objects finally come to life. The result were whimsical mountains of different colors that could be arranged to create a range.

As a result of the “Image Harvesting” porject I have come to realize the wealth of information that is stored in our past work.

Weather it is random sketchbooks, or finished pieces we can continually be inspired by our own imagination.

In the end, withouth realizing it one of my ideas turned out to be an inspirtation for my thesis.

Workshops

Experimentation became an intricate part of the learning experience throughout the year. These workshops helped us embrace all these new tech-niques and materials that were foreign to most of us. Personally these work-shops became the tools with which I started to evolve my studio practice, and it felt like a good starting point on how to approach the learning/experimenta-tion process in the future.

Letterpress Workshop

Book-binding, Paper Engineering andSewing Wokshops

Reaction Piece

During the first half of the academic year we had to find a way to bring together the knowledge of all the workshops and apply them into one piece. In my case I struggled with finding the perfect way to make each component feel cohesive, and not forced. In the end I came up with the solution creating a little zine inspired by a song from The Beatles “All Together Now”. I chose to combine the workshops: letterpress, bookbinding, and paper engineering.

The letterpress component was achieved with cutting al the typog-raphy out of linoleum blocks, printing it and then scanning it. Paper engineering was used for the packaging of the product, and I used a saddle-stitch technique to bind my book.

Publishing Project

Our first residency was about self publishing and we were mentored by the couple who founded Idiots Books and Bobbledy Books. While they were here we learned all about self publishing, its advantages and pitfalls, and we had to come up with a book idea of our own, to publish an edition of 20.

We had a loose theme of lost and found, and I took it rather literally, and researched lost and found agencies around the world, and realized the most interesting, and the one with more information was the one for the London Transport. They talked about approximately how many objects they collect each year, and how some of the are increidbly odd. I wanted to play off of this oddity, and make a book that was a game for children, and could potentially become a series for transport systems all around the world.

Process of making the bookLost & Found

London Transport

Art Market

Art Market is a yearly event at MICA where students, faculty, and staff sell, and promote their artistic creations. As first years we had the opportunity to see our work in a marketplace situation. We had to research and make a creative briefs for our products, research the market, the costs, and our hypothetical clientele.

For this event I decided to sell my “Merry Mountains.” Since the market was happening in the eve of the holiday season I decided to use autumn and winter colors for the mountains to create a range that people could use as decoration or kids as toys. I also expanded my idea to create tree ornaments that would also be made of felt, and embroidered features.

This project helped me realize that I could make an assambly line for each color, and size of the mountains and

streamline my work.

Hand-Lettering

We started the second half of the academic year learning about hand-lettering. It was interesting to me to finally give this process that I had been flirting with for so long a name. I had been sketching and playing with hand-lettering for along time, but this was the perfect timing for me to dig deeper into the process, and include it as part of my illustration. During this time we had an exhibit that was all about playing with exploring the exciting facets of this art.

I relized that sketching was an important part of hand-lettering. How depending of

where you draw the letter it looks like another letter, and you might

misinterpret the message altogether.

FrankeNPoetry was an exhibit inspired by refigerator poetry. All of us were assigned words to illustrated, and then on the day we would

Pattern & Personal Project

One of my favorite experiments during this second half of the was a three-day residency with Julia Rothman. During this time, we learned to make patterns, and to apply them onto products. Thanks to this residency I re-alized how I can fuse my love for product packaging, and patterns. This is why I decided to compose packages for tea.

The personal project was a project in which we could do anything we wanted. This was very open, and I decided to re-explore the conceptof patterning and product design with chocolate and screen-printing.

The patterns for tea packaging was inspired by the texture crated by sweaters, and knitted objects to represent the warmth that comes form drinking tea.

For my personal project I decided to revisit the idea of patterning and food packaging creating the package for chocolate. I created the brand “Caoba” and made a geometric pattern, and

screen printed the pattern and label in acopper ink. This project was a dificult and

frustrating challenge, i ended up achieving only half-way of want I wanted, but it was definitely a

learning experience.

Made & Sold

In the middle of our second year we had a weeklong residency with London based artist Tomi Vollauschek inspired by his book “Made and Sold.” We had to create three projects that intertwined with each other. Every day we were given a different assignment as a surprise, and not knowing what would come next was exciting and frightening at the same time.

First we had to design a poster with at least 4 colors, then we had to deconstruct the poster to apply its components onto any other surface we wanted, and lastly we had to create button badges in black and white based on the same poster idea.

As a welcome to Tomi Vollauschek a group of us inspired by his book 3D Type, decided to spell “Willkommen” in his native Austrian by making each letter as 3D object.

I chose to do two 3D letters an M and a W. I wanted them to be very different from eachother, so I decided to make one look like untouchable like a cactus, and one that looks good enough to eat. So I worked with push-pins and acrylic

paint.

My project was inspired by typography, and how people translate sound into

words. My project was called “A Type Made of Sound”

For the second part of the project we had to translate the poster work to work on a

3D surface, I chose to make a line of ceramics. As for the third part we had to

create buttons that were also derived form the first poster work. I decided to chose extreme close-ups of the type and make

four distinct buttons.

Lastly, I a physical copy of the poster, so I decided it would be a great idea to translate it into a screen

print.

Words on Wheels

A word on Wheels is an initiative started by the Baltimore MTA. The project pairs up talented children poets from inner city Baltimore schools with illustration students in the MFA-ILP program to give images to these wonderful words. Ultimately the chosen illustration/poems are displayed in the MTA busses for a year.

This was quite an experience because we blindly get poems assigned without ever meeting the children until the day of the unveiling. The poems are very intense for such little kids, but it is a fulfillingexperience to transform words into images.

A Joint Project of:Baltimore Montessori Public Charter SchoolKIPP: Uiima Village AcademyMaryland Institute College of ArtMidtown AcademyThe Mount Washington School

A Joint Project of:Baltimore Montessori Public Charter SchoolKIPP: Uiima Village AcademyMaryland Institute College of ArtMidtown AcademyThe Mount Washington School

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The top poem “I Used to, But Now...” was the one chosen to be displayed on the bus. My concept for the poem was to show everything this little girl overcame as badges of honor on show and tell at school, but after much consideration I decided it would be

much more effective to show it on the backpack she carries with her everyday.

This was the final piece for another poem that was not chosen, but it was still very fun to work on.

Me and Ann, the little girl which poem Iillustrated.

Everyone at the MFA-ILP class at the Words on Wheels event.

Stop-Motion Animation

This was the last of the residencies in first academic year, four full days eating, breathing, and living stop-motion animation. Our mentor was Melinda Beck, and we had to develop a story that could be animated in 30 to 90 seconds. I enjoyed the fact that we had to have our hands in the entire process, from pre to post production; it felt very fulfilling.

I had never dared to play with the tools of stop-motion even if my background is in animation, it always felt intimidating to me, but as soon as I started getting “my hands dirty” I learned to appreciate it. This was a huge learning opportunity, and a bit of a challenge, but all and all it became something I would definitely go back an revisit with more time.

My first try at puppet-making with the main charcaters of the animation.

During production of the short I was able to play with hand lettering in a very whimsical way.

Conclusion

To wrap up this past year in a few words is bit of a challenge, but I don’t look at it as closing chapter in the grad school experiences, but as an open-ing one in the book of my start as a creative.

This year left me with a wealth of tool on how to explore my work to identify little gems in past ideas, to always explore, and never to be afraid to try new techniques because even if they seem far fetched and impossible to connect to your practice, they will always allow you to explore something difference that might lead you into a new path.

As I imagine what the second year of grad school will bring, I realize how much I accomplished and learned so far. How every workshop, and every tool has contributed to develop my practice, and a clear idea of what illustration means to me, and how I see my place in its future.

Fin

Thanks to everyone in the MFA-ILP program.My mates who inspire me and challenge me every day, and especially to Whitney Sherman and Jaime Zollars for their knowledge and support.

You Rock!

Valeria Molinari2013