Amanda Bradway

This week I worked on the second in a small series of characters with floral headresses. Sometime this summer while we were in Portland, I was inspired to make these characters with petals taken from the flowers that were in bloom. It felt incredible being somewhere green and lush coming from the Oklahoma summer where we see little rain and the everything turns yellow by June. I also made some stickers to prolong the longevity of the piece. It’s sad to put so much time into a piece only to have it sell and you never see it again. Thinking about doing this with all these ladies…

Working on a new body of work and have some really great momentum going. I will be showing this latest series at a gallery in Portland, Oregon next spring (more details later). It’s taking on a kind of shamanic, supernatural, spiritual theme. I spent a lot of time this summer reading about alternate dimensions, meditation, tarot, crystals, ancient civilizations etc. and have noticed a lot of that has inspired these new works. Really excited, kinda nervous back to work I go…

Here is a preview of the piece Im working on for the group show in September called Fringe. Because of my workload this will be the only piece I can get done for this first show so Im putting a lot of work into it. The concept behind it goes something like this: Women are my heroes in general. A few months ago I was driving around and heard an NPR news piece on women in Afganistan who have started setting themselves on fire to commit suicide or escape their home environment. Self immolation has been used as a form of protest for centuries, but in this case, women are using it as an act of desperation to escape the injustice and hopelesness in their marriages. In this piece I would like to communicate their suffering, not by portraying their oppression, but by creating an atmosphere of beauty, hope and strength which is the essence of these women.
Yeah the whole person transforming into a pheonix is probably not that original but I needed to paint something with hope. Lately, Ive been trying to deal with some of the negative aspects of our reality in life, not by dwelling on the negatives that ultimately allow the same feelings to build within me, but trying to create some beauty and hope from them.

Ive been super busy with store stuff all year and feel like it’s just now calmed down enough to concentrate on my work a little more. Earlier this year I worked on a self portrait stacking doll set. Each doll was an animal that represented a part of myself/aspect of my personality. It showed at Momentum 2011 this spring. The next update is that I probably wont be doing any solo projects this year. The store takes up a lot of my time and I really feel like you can only do one thing at a time and do it well, so until it gets to the point where I can step away from work more, this is my reality and I am ok with it. I had the privilege of being asked into a sort of women’s art group in the spring. The group consists of many local artists of all ages and backgrounds that work in all different kinds of media. We will be having our first group exhibit at the end of September so more on that later. Other than that commission work is on the periphery things like designing a sleeve, a set of longboards and mural jobs 2011 has been good to me.

For the past several months my life and all creative endeavors have been put on hold to work on a house we just bought a few blocks from the store. It has taken a lot of hard work over the summer but we haven’t lived in our own space in 3 years and have never lived in a house so every minute of it has been a mixture of excitement, urgency and anticipation. I imagine once there is a place to setup a permanent studio the combination of being settled and having a permanent work space will make a large impact on my creative process.  In the meantime, I haven’t been painting much, but since we (the store) got into the Girlie Show this year, I have been working on a new Oklahoma graphic. The last Oklahoma themed shirt I did was last year around this time and it was sort of a rushed job. Although it has sold pretty well in store I’ve never really liked that it was a half hearted attempt so this one will have a lot more detail and time put into it. I will also have a piece in this year’s 12X12 on September 25 and have almost completed a new piece for our 2 year anniversary longboard deck show. This piece is a lot different than my other works but I’ve been wanting to make some of my female characters with black hair to see how the colors contrast.  These colors were inspired by the last few minutes from “March of the Penguins”.  My dog approves.

So last month we had a spot open up in the gallery that ended up being an unexpected blessing. Dylan and I are actually going to use the space for a small showing of our own work this month. Im putting together a few small works that will be inspiration for bigger pieces later on and Dylan is printing shirts that will be available for sale at the opening. If we dont run out of time, we plan on collaborating on a 2′X4′ panel available for sale at the opening.  The show will be May 14, during the Plaza’s 2nd Friday from 7-11pm.

Here is the first design of the spring/summer line. I was going to wait and debut these at the dustbowl artist market later this month, but I cant wait 3 more weeks so we put them in the shop in time for second Friday. It takes about a month or more to design, draw, clean, and print each graphic and I cant be that patient when they are here in a box staring at me.

The Octo girl is a reprint from last fall with different colors. We are making lots of changes around our space converting our small building into just retail and work space. Being uprooted is cutting into production and art making time so Im setting small workable deadlines for getting things done. Growing is fun, painful, and time consuming.

The gallery section of my site is about to feature some small works from late 2009. Some have asked where all the work went from previous years. Ive decided to keep it off for now, since Im going through a complete overhaul creatively. It’s been so long since Ive actively worked on my own art so to me the difference between 2 years ago and now is pretty drastic and I want to keep the seperation until the newer work is built up.

Here is the finished Fish lady that is the companion piece to the bird. It’s difficult to get the detail on camera, but there is metallic purple, green, gold, and silver around her head and glittery green scales on her legs. I took a break from the jewelry to finish it up and work on graphics for some spring/summer apparel. So far 3 graphics are in the works and I’m reprinting the Ocoto girl that’s been in store since October onto some tank tops. I’ll post the 1st new graphic next week.

These past couple weeks, Ive been working on some jewelry in anticipation of a trunk show maybe sometime this spring/summer. Here are a few samples of designs Im playing with. Necklaces come first and the bracelets will be next. The fish lady will be finished sometime next week and I hope to get it into Momentum OKC. The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition staff and network are incredibly supportive people. When we first started getting involved in the art community they had invaluable information to share like ways to volunteer, apply for grants, a database of local artists, and several exhibitions to apply for during the year. Momentum is the most exciting event of the year both to participate and volunteer in. If you’ve ever asked yourself where all the artists in Oklahoma City are hiding go see it yourself, you’ll be blown away and encouraged by the numbers of artists and variety of work.

I started this next lady with a fish theme and she will be sort of a companion piece for the one in my last post.

This week I’m working on some new pieces of jewelry to put in the store for Valentines day. Bracelets are the most fun because you have more surface to work with, it’s like wearing a small painting around your wrist. Here’s a link to one of my favorite artists, Ive been wasting some of the day looking at all the new stuff he’s added Darbotz