(sub)Urban Projections

I'm excited to be doing an installation/durational performance piece as part of this year’s (sub)Urban Projections festival at the Hult Center in Eugene, OR this Thursday, April 29th. This piece will combine the  biofeedback/LED suit I have been building, recent sculpture/installation work, a sound score, and butoh-inspired movement.

The theme for this year’s festival is “ritual,” which is particularly fitting for my work. I’m aiming to create a living altar that can only be visible with the light emitted from my heartbeat -- we will see how it turns out. Looking forward to performing again and debuting the biofeedback project in front of a live audience!

A couple of snapshots of current projects around the studio. Lots of stuff going on -- its shaping up to be a very busy spring!

I have been so very busy this winter! As a bit of a belated update, I FINALLY completed my MFA in costume design this December (which feels wonderful.) Since then, I’ve been building a new body of work weaving in some costume & fibers stuff, but also venturing into more mask-making and video....and maybe something that is more like an installation or sculpture (which is a realm I have never explored before in an "art" context, so I feel shy using those terms.) I’m also taking an Emerging Technology class and getting to play with biofeedback sensors - a long-time dream come true! If you are curious, you can learn a  little bit more about that project here.

Above are some snapshots of what is currently up on my studio walls. I have more images, but have yet to edit them, so stay tuned for pt. 2.

More studio experiments!

A couple of studio in-progress shots from the new year.

Every year, I have dreams of creating my own Winter holiday card to send out to all my friends and family, but alas, thus far, it has been impossible with other projects. This year, I painted this festive scene, though much too late to get it onto greeting cards. Oh well, there's always next year! 2015 has been a BEAST of a year - I've learned a lot, but I'm happy to see it come to a close. Happy Wintertime from the original tiny house! С наступаюшим!

Moonface drawing in my sketchbook....maybe it will become a mask...

My friend Richard McConochie stopped by my studio a couple of weeks back and took some lovely in-progress images of my work. I'm really enjoying creating all of these distinct objects and seeing the story that they begin to tell together...

Super excited to share this with you! I've been experimenting with various ways of getting my artwork onto fabric recently, and as part of that, I've set up a PAOM store with some of my illustrations on various garments for both men & women. You can find the full collection HERE PAOM makes each garment individually in the US (and I get 20% of the sale.) First-time customers also get $15 off of their order, which is kinda nice, plus these garments all ship within 2-4 weeks (just in time for the holidays! ♥)

Here are a couple more images from the gold & black series I've been working on lately!

Its been a busy autumn...one of the things I've been working on is a series of black/gold/white images. A friend let me play with a piece of clayboard (which is something I have never used before), and I was very happy with how much detail I could get on that surface. Here it is, along with some close-ups of the process!

Summer Travels

I am back from my summer travels to Eastern Europe, and wanted to share about my experiences while everything is still {relatively} fresh in my memory.

I was deeply impressed by the Costume Design at the Turn of the Century exhibit at the Bakhrushin Museum in Moscow, and so delighted and honored to be part of it, that I will start there. Truthfully, I did not know exactly what to expect -- I had never been to the Museum before, and only knew that a multitude of international curators had been working on this project for a number of years. And truly…it was magnificent: almost the entirety of the museum has been dedicated to costumes, renderings, videos, and other artifacts showcasing the work of many designers I've been admiring basically my whole life. This is truly the first and only exhibit of this kind, focusing exclusively on the vision of the costume designer-as-artist.

The Museum has multiple locations throughout Moscow, but our exhibition was held in the main building: the former home of famous merchant and theater-lover Aleksey Aleksandrovich Bakhrushin.

Most of the main building of the Museum had been dedicated to the Exhibit, with three large halls on the second floor, a vast gallery on the first floor, and an entire separate building (also called the Carriage House) for original paintings and renderings. All of the work was arranged by country in alphabetical order. Here is one of the walls of the United States section of the exhibit -- what an incredible experience to see my work up next to so many other amazingly talented artists! Sadly my camera didn't really like the lighting inside the museum, so the pictures are not in total focus, but its better than nothing

Yours truly next to my pieces during the opening. I was so overwhelmed by the sheer size of the exhibit, the quality of work, and the number of people present, I have to confess I'm not entirely certain what happened, but I was very happy and grateful to be there. The Museum also put together a beautiful bilingual catalog of the exhibition, which is something that I think I will treasure for a very long time.

(Maria Thomas and Aurelia Cohen from Rusalki. Photos taken by Noah Huber in 2009. You can read more about the story of the Rusalki project here.)

(Two designs from an unrealized production of King Stag from 2013. You can see the full set of renderings here.)

Although I took lots of images of other people's work, many of my photos came out quite blurry, so I won't bother putting them up here. Instead, I recommend checking out the Exhibit's website, which also serves as a full online gallery of all of the artists featured in the exhibition. If you are an artist, costume/character designer, scenographer, performer, or educator in those fields, I guarantee you will find a tremendous amount of inspiration there. A huge thank you to the Museum and the curators of this wonderful and deeply ambitious project!

Wanted to do a quick in-progress post of a photoshoot I did recently -- these are just off of my cell phone, but I'm too excited about them to not share! It has been ages since I've had a chance to do a shoot for fun, and now I'm wondering if this character could spawn a whole performnece piece (inspired by pollen and bee demons/gods, naturally. Hmmm.) Model is the beautiful birdskull studios, styling/photo-ing is by yours truly. Sooo much gold pigment/paint/etc, etc, etc. If you wanna catch more snapshots of my shenanigans, find me on instagram @natalya_chaos. Final edits coming soon!

Kikimora Comforts Her Sister I’m really quite happy with this drawing – a couple of weeks back, I was thinking of the Russian folklore character called “Kikimora“ and that I would like her to inhabit this fairytale world/story that I’ve been working on for a little while (I’ll write more about this project some other time.) It is inevitable that a Kikimora would fall in love with the wrong type of man and end up heartbroken in a milky pond while her sister braids her hair. At least in MY fairytale, anyway. Wikipedia describes Kikimoras as mostly house spirits, but where I grew up (Siberia), Kikimoras were known as wicked, mischievous swamp women – kinda like the Rusalki, but less attractive and with a better sense of humor. I liked drawing Kikimoras so much that they may end up with their own story. “Будет и на нашей улице праздник” is a Russian idiom that translates to “there will be a holiday on our street too, one day.” Haven’t we all been there…?

recently had a chance to play around with the Tyvek suits and some LEDs with birdskull studios. these kind of remind of ectoplasm photography from the turn of the century...always a good direction to venture in...