A Garden for Winter

Hey Everyone!

I finished up this new mural last week, but was waiting for better pictures before posting. The whole sun-dappled thing is nice, but its not cute when it's on the mural you're trying to photograph. Luckily, the mural-owners snapped these while it was perfect light :)

Would you be so bold as to allow me to paint directly onto the outside of your house? These clients were! And they gave me a lot of freedom with the design, too. The purpose was to have this garden area bright and beautiful year-round, even in the winter when all the plants in front of it have died. And BRIGHT it is! Hooray for bold and brave clients. So much fun!! And technical note to self: painting directly onto wood siding was nothing to be worried about. Can. not. wait. to do this to my own house someday. Only, potentially on the ENTIRE outside and inside. Oh hey, future neighbors ;)

Happy weekend!

Sunnies in Progress

Hey everyone!

While I usually wait until I'm done with a project to post it here, I thought I would share a little in-progress action, just to keep up the blog momentum. My last two commissions have been small (in my world at least) works on 4 x 5'-ish panels. After those, I worked on fixing up a mural that another artist made in someone's home. I was also out of town for 3 weekends in August. All that leads to not having had a wall all to myself in quite a few weeks. So my current project just feels really, really good to work on.... I needed a wall fix! There really is just something about painting BIG BIG BIG that is like a drug to me. The bolder, the brighter, the better. This wall most definitely qualifies as bold and BRIGHT! Here's what I instagrammed the first day:

 That bottom picture is my photoshopped sketch proposal. Except I'll be swapping out some hummingbirds for those butterflies. :)

That was after day 1.

This was yesterday's progress. I probably would have gotten farther along, had it not been for an end-of-summer heat wave we've got going here in Portland. It was hot hot hot and I was trying to hide on the shady left side the whole time. This photo makes it hard to see all the bright purples in the shadow areas, but that was the last thing I did to it, and my current favorite part about it. Can't wait to get back to the wall! Stay tuned - I'll post when it's finished. 

Getting my head and hands back in the wall-painting game, combined with meeting with a realtor this week, has got me dreaming sweet homeowner dreams.  I know that my future home will be full of murals.... but how will I ever decide where to start when it's my OWN home I'm working on, and the client is ME?! Something like this might be in order. Whatever it is, it's gonna be BRIGHT and BOLD. :) Can't wait.

Happy weekend everyone!

Corie

Cuter Electrical Panels!

Hey everyone!

Hope you guys are out enjoying the weekend as much as I have been! Friday was a full day of painting, and yesterday was a full day of fun. I am so so so so happy to work 4 days a week at my J.O.B. and one day a week mural-ing. My new schedule has really been helping me to divide my time between the 9-5, the hustle, and the rest of my life and the people I fill it with. Just feeling very very grateful. *end gushing*

Anyway, this is what I did on Friday: covered two boring grey metal electrical panels on the outside of an apartment building, with flowers and cuteness. It's just such a pure and simple happiness to be able to brighten up these teeny tiny corners of the world and make them a little more sparkly. I like art that "MEANS and SAYS SOMETHING", but I also very much enjoy making art that is simply about making things prettier.

A couple weeks go I started this project - all I had done was the big pink flower on the left, and started the roses. Then on Friday, made a push to finish the rest of that whole panel, plus the other one in the last picture. I realize I paint fast. Clients remark about that a lot. I have to say though, that it's definitely not necessarily a good thing. Working a tiny bit slower is actually one of my current professional goals - in painting murals, and in my day job as a graphic designer. I can be impatient. I want to see the results, and quickly. I want to see the images I have in my mind come alive on a wall (or electric panel, ha!). I also want to get to my favorite part of the painting process sooner (everything that happens after the first layers of paint are already down). But I'm trying this new thing where I take more time to think about what I'm doing. Who knows, maybe it's the NOT thinking that will be better after all, but we shall see. #goals Ok, less ramble, more pictures. Here's what I made:

 

Happy weekend everyone! 

<3 corie="" p="">

Flowers and Money!

Hey everyone!

I just finished this mural less than 2 hours ago and I'm already posting it! I'm never that on top of blogging and yet here we are :)

This one was in a laundry room for an apartment building with "gardens" as kind of their whole building theme. I was happy to get such a bright, cheery assignment. Just simple, colorful, beautifying of an otherwise un-exciting space. Can't wait for residents to be surprised when they do their laundry! Scroll to pictures or read on for a completely separate story... ha!

In totally other news, I know a lot of you that read this thing are my friends or parent's friends in real life, and some of you may have recently supported a dream of mine. This post describes the art show benefit event I held back in March, where I displayed all the paintings in my Madagascar series, and sold prints to benefit an organization that works there, and all over the world. So print sales have been trickling in since then, and I'm happy to tell you guys that I was able to donate $875 to Population Services International today! So grateful to those of you who bought a print, came to my show, or told me to break a leg. It's been an idea that's been in my head since Peace Corps in Madagascar, and I'm so happy it happened. Thank you guys so much for your support!!! It means more to me than you know. I also wanna just say something else real quick, cuz I'm feeling blog-y:

This past weekend, I had a friend visit who was in the Peace Corps with me, and we were talking (obviously) a lot about Peace Corps. She said that when she helped interview candidates for Peace Corps back where she lives, she hears a lot of people express concern over their college majors, or area of study - "but I'm just a theater major.... can I really be of service?" First of all, you will learn a bunch of stuff during Peace Corps training that will be helpful and relevant, but also, everyone can use their skills to be helpful in the world. You could (and people in Madagascar did) help organize a play in your village to explain why it's important to protect the forest and not eat lemurs!

Anyway, point is, you can use your skills to do good things. When I was younger, I thought painting was kinda silly in comparison with more "noble" careers, and wouldn't actually help that much. Now that I'm smarter (haha), I've been able to find ways to use my art to be helpful. So don't listen to people - or yourself - who say you can't be helpful by doing your "thing", whatever that is. Ok now pictures :)

The Cow! and murals-to-be

Hi everyone!

I finished and brought this little painting to it's new home last week. Nope, not a mural - only a couple feet wide and tall! Client told me she wanted: a cow, painted in an abstract-y/unrealistic color type of style, with a tiny red barn in the background. DID YOU SAY MAKE IT EXTRA COLORFUL?!?! Let's do more like this, forever! Client was happy, and the little calf that I took the liberty of adding, turned out to be meaningful to her as well. This was a reminder of childhood memories and she said "Thank you for painting my story". That's literally, my mission statement as a muralist/artist-for-hire. 

 And speaking of that, here's a few new ideas/photoshopped sketches for murals of the future! Can't wait to get painting these babies!! Seriously, I actually can't wait. PAINT ALL THE WALLLLZ! Stay tuned to see how these actually end up - because improvising! Have a great week everyone!

My Grandma would like this.

Ok, this is the craziest: I’m on a business trip! For my business I made! For doing this thing that is my #1 favorite art thing to do for other people, but people will also trade me real money for, that I can buy real things with!  That’s the craziest to me. Is this real life? This job is huge for me for a couple of reasons: #1, I’m making more money/hr. than I ever have or probably ever will again, which is awesome because money, but also #2, this means that someone (who is not friends or family) is telling me they find what I’m doing valuable and will treat me as a real professional. Which I guess is what I am. That feels good.  

I drove up here to Walla Walla, WA (GORGEOUS drive through the Columbia river gorge) yesterday after working a half day at my “real” job (also in love with that), and settled into my guest room at a retirement community here. The next morning, I had breakfast with the owner, and we took a tour of the building’s murals (they are everywhere and amazing). The muralist before me sadly died of cancer not too long ago, so here I am, the replacement. They built a brand new memory care unit right next door to this community, and that’s the building that I’ll be filling with murals. So after the morning meeting, this is what I made:

I’m happy with it, especially for a one-day project. The texture of the walls is PERFECT, and my instructions are to paint “impressionistic” with relatively low detail. Which is totally my jam.

While I was painting, I kept picking up brushes that had either, “Florie Gussis” or “FG” written on the handles in sharpie. My grandma labeled all of her art supplies with her name. I inherited these after she passed away, and now, I use both her brushes and her really nice acrylic paints (I only use those on canvas though, not walls). My grandma had Dementia. Now I’m using her brushes to paint a mural in a memory care facility for residents to enjoy, who have what she had. Something just feels so “full circle” about that. I know she would be proud of me right now and I miss being able to call her and my Grandpa to tell them about these exciting life moments. But I’m happy to have inherited her creative genes - she is with me always. 

Stay tuned for more... I’ll be here mural-ing all week. ;)