collage

Falling Into Art: new work and updates

art education, children's illustration, fine art

DotDayHenderson2015Fall is off to a great start here in Brookline! For one, I’ve begun year two at the Henderson Inclusion Elementary School in Dorchester, MA as an Art Teacher. I’m so excited to continue working with students old and new, and try out new projects and techniques! We just finished celebrating International Dot Day, culminating with a Dot Tree by first and second graders (shown above)

Some highlights of projects I’ll be doing with students include Tree Weavings with Third graders, Andy Goldsworthy inspired nature art with pre-schoolers, shape monsters with Kindergarteners, and Leaf People with First graders.

We are making murals on the bulletin boards around the school as a part of the after-school program, and students chose to decorate the lunch room boards with the phrase “Falling Into Art”. We still have some work to do, but it’s coming along:

FallingIntoArt15

In addition, I’m diving into my fine art and illustrative work. My illustrative work has been on a pause in lieu of Spit and Sticks launching in 9 days, and school starting. My fine art work has been developing since early summer, and I have two pieces in a faculty show at Brookline Arts Center. They are on display until October 16:

Both pieces are sold/on loan, but I have more pieces on the way that are for sale, and will have postcards and greeting cards of my Found Houses series available for holiday craft sales soon.

The Brookline Arts Center also launches their Artistic Migration Installation project today at Brookline Day! I was excited to be a part of the project marketing by creating a postcard and map depicting where the bird sculpture we are creating will travel to and from. Check out the postcard below, and click for more details on how you can be a part of the project:

Birdweb

Co-Pilot Adventures continue…

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Now that Spit and Sticks is complete (to be out in June 2015!!) I have more time to spend on my original stories and portfolio. Darwin and Emma, as always, are dancing around in my head, and so is their story about airplanes and being co-pilots. So I combined the idea with the Fall theme, and came up with this little ditty:

Watercolor and digital collage CoPilots in the Leaves web

Also, Darwin in his homemade airplane:

Darwin Plane webYou’re welcome!

Work from Fall coming soon!

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Beginning my new year long teaching position at Henderson Inclusion School has me super busy. Between schoolwork, teaching, and having a life, I have less time to update my blog. However, this does not mean I’m not creating work!! The 2 hours of back and forth commute each day have me drawing and inking in sketchbooks constantly, and I’m trying to get as many new ideas down on paper as I can.

Back in September, I had this idea to illustrate some sassy ballerinas. Here are the results (white-ish background, and collaged background. Watercolor original)

Ballerinas White Back webBallerinas web

Halloween Costume inspiration…Rosie’s Girls

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Spoiler alert..I am going to be Rosie the Riveter for Halloween this year! It’s a perfect costume because I own all the components already, plus, I have the hairstyle for it. I did a little picture research for how some others have done the costume, and came across some great looking youngsters. I was inspired to create an empowering picture of young girls embodying the Rosie pose, hence why I’m calling this one Rosie’s Girls. Watercolor and digital collage:

RosiesGirlsweb

New work added to Fine Art!

collage, fine art, inspiration, painting, printmaking

 

The past few weeks have found me embracing, and loving, my fine art studio practice once again. I love that my program at Mass Art gave me such a wonderful opportunity to practice as a professional artist. It was a daunting, but prolific three weeks. Click the image below to see my new body of work: collage mono prints!

 
Nicole.Gsell.001l copy

 

 

All work subject to copyright. For purchase information, please contact me directly!

Artist Equation

collage, crafty, fine art, Mass Art

For my Concepts and Processes class at Mass Art, our homework was to create an artwork that involved a famous artist. We could “add, multiply, divide, square root”, i.e create an equation between us and another artist. The artist I chose was Pepon Osorio, a Puerto Rican artist known for large scale installations.

The piece “Tina’s House” was particularly inspiring for me, provocative and mesmerizing.

In an Art21.org article on Osorio:

“My principal commitment as an artist is to return art to the community.” A recent example is “Tina’s House,” a project created in collaboration with a family recovering from a devastating fire. The house—a tabletop-size art piece—tells the story of the night of the fire and those affected, and is traveling the country in a series of “home visits”: a home visit invites a new family to live with the art work for a period of at least one week, allowing the story of “Tina’s House” to be told in many homes and environments.

Nicole + Pepon / Nicole X Pepon = “Another Little Incident”

For reference, this is Tina’s House (referenced in the quote above):

Halloween with Darwin and Emma

autumn, character sketches, children's illustration, collage, darwin, mud pup, pumpkins for pippa, sketches, watercolor

It’s October, and Fall is my favorite holiday to paint. This Halloween is dedicated to Darwin and Emma. Here they are in a few quick sketches I’ve done in between other projects:

Several of my pieces have gotten a new boost of promotion recently.

First, the wonderful folks at Literary Lights for Children used the image I provided last year for a bookplate for their “Save The Date” cards, sent out to the honored guests of the kidslit community to join this reception honoring 4 prestigious children’s author/illustrators:

I am so honored to know that my artwork continues to provide the look and inspiration for the Literary Lights for Children project.

Also, a few months back my agent – Kristy King from Writers House – and I put together a sweet little postcard announcing our partnership. I posted the sneak peeks of this piece awhile back, but here are the final images:

I always appreciate the collaborative process of creating artworks that have been crafted with care and thought. Thank you to these fantastic people who help refine my vision, and give my work a place to live and be seen!

character sketches, children's illustration, freelance