Blizards, Brownies, and Cardboard.

Seasons Greetings everyone!

Joy is in the air as well as mass amounts of snow and Mellington with Cabin Fever. I have been stuck inside for 5 days straight due to an unusual amount of snowfall in the Pacific Northwest area as well as all over the northern top half of the USA.

Lots of ice and crazy car accidents are happening in my area since nobody around here are use to snow and the max amount of snow we get in a year is about a foot. In the past week Olympia, WA has about a foot and a half of snow! EEEKKK! Luckily the never-ending rain will come and answer out prayers with more overcast skies, steady damp downpour and what seems to be a long and dark winter..... which I personally love!
So you may think me masochistic for this thought? Well... not so much since every rainy day I have I view as yet another attempt to be productive indoors and not distracted or made sleepy my the happiness of sunshine.

I love sunshine, don't get me wrong! However I notice that whenever it comes out I have this strong urge to stop whatever I am doing (working, making art, cleaning, driving a car, being responsible, putting out fires, etc.) and run out into the sunshine, lie on the grass and do NOTHING! ....which is fine for a day or two... but weeks of sunshine not only get me sleepy (from lack of sun at all during Northwest winters) but the also put me into super lazy auto pilot.

With that said... snow, pretty and bitchy, rain dark and damp but productive. wheee!

Recently I have given myself a couple days off and a self-inflicted lobotomy by downloading old TV show series that I missed while living overseas. Yep... I sat in bed and lost 3 days of my life while eating brownies, cookie dough ice cream and glasses of rum eggnog. I think I am on a campaign to get fat since it's winter and my body is way too rock hard from exercise... :P

When not excercising the "inner" tummy muscles I have begun a new series of cardboard houses. Once upon a time in Thailand my little niece looked at my tattoo of cities and roads and buildings and asked "what is in the houses" I said... GOOD QUESTION!.. I think there's lots of storage boxes full of junk and presents." And ever since then I have been talking to myself about what is exactly inside those little buildings I have been making.

....and for some reason the insides really want to be made of cardboard! So I have been working with my jewelers saw and cutting our cardboard doors and windows and and tiny shapes and patterns. When my mother saw my work she screamed "not more bird houses!" and I had to calm her nerves with a cup of tea....


Hope everyone is doing well and you are all safe and sounds and with friends and family, or alone escaping it all... Happy Holidays!

-Mellington Cartwright

Snow storms, new work, and general ramblings...

Greetings!

it is snowing... and I am stuck inside. I guess I should thank the snow since it's canceling all my plans for me that I have endless amounts of time to prevent cabin fever by making art!

The past couple of weeks have been super crazy busy for me (when is my life idle?) and I thought I would post some visual results of the past couple weeks:

Below is a new piece I made called "In God We Trust?" I have been wanting to do a series of chatelaines for quite sometime now, and figured that I could use this as a jumping off point. This one, although conceptual, and kitschy helped get my juices flowing...




I would like to thank the Affliction of our Economic times for lending itself to me.


Also, I have been motivating myself to do some proactive marketing and commission work via my electronic storefront on my ETSY site.

This week I completed this custom made design for one of my first online orders! horray!!This order was also helpful since it made me run around and make some necessary purchases... and now I finally have my own soldering set-up, which I am very proud about! yay! The Studio is growing!





The website is also growing... thanks to my awesome new webmaster Madelyn Medieros out in Boston. (Thanks for all your help and rapid updates Maddy!) Maddy has been currently working for God and updating his website at a local Boston church, however she has been wanting to strike it out on her own and do some web design freelance work, so if anyone out there is looking for web design help at reasonably prices shoot me an email because this chick rocks! (sorry for the shameless plug! had to!)

Tomorrow is a day of being stuck in the house, and beginning work on a series of paintings and 3-D wall reliefs made out of cardboard! It's weird... for some reason everything I think about recently has to do with cardboard fabrication. I am always knows for my roads and buildings which you usually only see the outer edifice of.... now I think I am interested in finding out what is on the many inside walls of the structures I make...

...more on this soon! For now though.... some hat pin dioramas!





Happy Holidays everyone!

-Mellington Cartwright III

I NEED A CLONING MACHINE!

So I have recently decided that I am not that much of a consumer (okay... except for shoes and cute top hats... and art supplies) BUT the one item I would not only buy regardless of the cost, but treasure probably more than life itself would be a fucking cloning machine!

People have always thought that I was so directed, even as a young teen--that I knew what I was doing in life since I had so many goals. Wrong and Right! See I'm always have so many goals and am always going 10 things at once, but it's not because I am on some direct narrow-hallway of a path (boring!) but rather I am trying to do enough in this lifetime to fill two lifetimes. However if cloning technology existed I would then be far less stressed out since I would be able to have 5 of me around!

What would I do? IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES!


1 would do chores and have fun with the domestic of life (cooking, cleaning, etc.)
2 would be an avid reader, absorbing nook knowledge like a sponge
3 would be an excellent world traveler physical risk taker and all around anthropology nerd! She would also spend her down time studying an array of foreign and dead languages
4 would be THE goldsmith/artist... the shit. From apprenticeships to long studio hours she would spend 98% of her life honing her skills at her craft.
5 would be off re-learning how the play the clarinet, juggling fire, doing aerial conditioning and being the giant exhibitionist social networker she is.
6 (ok I know I said 5) would be committed to dreaming. ....and then making sketches of all her dreams she saw behind her eyelids...



So what am I trying to say? YO! LOS ALAMOS LAB SCIENTISTS: GET TO WORK ON MY CLONING MACHINE DAMNIT! it would be the best selling item on the market! Think of all the endless time-saving possiblities!!! (think damnit think!)


...for now I guess I will just have to settle for trips with Shannon to the Vacuum Cleaner Museum....


-Mellers*~

The Business ART of Internal Conflicts

See the problem with me being an artist is that I find it a bit difficult to produce a simple design that could be considered for a large scale production line. It’s not that it’s difficult for me to actually think of something like this, nor the energy it takes too make, but rather me actually wanting to use brain power to make something simple since most of the art I am passionate about simply is anything BUT simple, and in fact is not only, most unusually visually complex, but also chocked full of goodies such as subtle narrative and frequent jokes of surprises.

I need to just sit down one day and shove my brain into “simple” “sleek” “chic” drive, which is doable I guess, and figure out some items that may be lower price points that will be appealing to galleries… find a way to connect with people from all ends.

I think another aspect that is hard for me in doing this is that since I love to make interactive work that brings people together- intentionally or unintentionally- it’s hard to make wearable pieces sometimes that are just waiting to be sold for the base of adornment.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense at all, but I guess it’s something that is always difficult for artist to make sense of since it’s so hard to sometimes place monetary value on things that are sometimes tangible and sometimes not tangible.

…hopefully all the business classes I’ve been taking will help. I mean they already are since recently I’ve only been eating sleeping and breathing business marketing and management terminology…hopefully after my last finals all of this can be over for a while and I can fill everyone in with a decent creative journal entry. I have tons to blog about in terms of the going-ons of the inside of my brain that I can’t wait to share with you all, it’s just a bit tough to not be dreaming about the difference between price floors, ceilings, just-in-time systems and intensive distributions….. ACK!!!!!

Did I mention that most days I hate thinking like this!?! Can’t I just make romantic and totally intangible travel art all the time instead?!?!

…I think I’m going to take a nap.

-Mellington

Update #2:

I feel kinda silly as of recent since I actually am just posting yet have not released this site to anyone yet. I've been rather busy this week due to my full-time business classes and finals, and other art show deadlines. I've also been involved with a top secret hush-hush traveling art project that I will be posting about later on this season that you all WILL SIMPLY LOVE! I guarantee!!! (anywho who doesn't love it will get a consolidation prize... i promise!)


So between studying for finals and freaking out about deadlines I've had time to finally do a couple things:

1) Updated my blog bio as well as my main website: www.mellingtoncartwright.com

2) Create an electronic storefront: www.MellingtonCartwright.etsy.com

3) I'm currently in the process of working with my web designer Madelyn Medieros to update images, give my pages a face lift, and finally connect my whole network from blog to main site to electronic storefront which should be coming later this month.


Now some of you are probably wondering, "wow! wait... I though Mel was in Thailand living in the rural countryside, learning Thai, hitchhiking Korea, etc... and now she's settled down?!?!"

yes. Long story short for those of you not on my mass mailing list:

-I came home, went to Burning Man, had a great time and decided to enroll into full-time business classes and live at home for 3 months to spend time with the Mom unit then hopefully get back to Asia.

-10 days after Burning Man I landed a dream job as a laser welder technician and bench jeweler at a custom jewelry store in downtown Olympia, WA called PRECIOUS METALSMITHS.
LOved Loved LOVED my job until a tons of weird shit went down that resulted in contractors throwing a box of my art work away on site after a show I had, management mis-communications, no one wanting to accept fiscal responsiblity then the store owners attempting to retalitory fire me when I asked for reimbursal of my damaged property I decided to leave the situation loosing more money from the loss of my art than I made. (Disclaimer: Now I'm not saying don't shop there, since they do great custom work and am happy to promote their custom quality. I think we just didn't agree on certain management and employee matters. )

-Between researching my own artist right and studying proper management methods I realized that I kept getting orders for work from friends and other clients as well as classmates. That is when I figured it was silly that I didn't just put my balls to the wall and try and be an artist. So I officially registered myself as a business on Nov. 17th, and now am officially Mellington Cartwright Studios!!! Horray! I also have a sub-trade name called "Crunchy Balloon Designs" which will be the future home for more of my production line work which I still plan on keeping in only small editions.

-Since then I have been in full-time Management Marketing, and Business classes and making my own work.


So there you all have it. Is should be posting some items for sale on my current electronic storefront. So please do keep checking my Etsy account as well as my blog to follow along in my artistic endeavors!

Happy Holidays!

-Mellington*~

Finally I am going public!!!

Dear world,

I have finally realized that I really must get off my butt and make a blog! I have been writing mass emails to a select group of 300 people I have picked up along the way in my travels and realize that I get very active responses from everyone I keep in touch with. I have been asked multiple times to create a blog so others can publicly share my travel stories, and internal musing.... so without futher ado.... TA DA!

Alright more to come in the present. But I need to currently find a way to archive all of my travel stories and postcards from the open roads of the past year of my life... this is my current project and I will be posting links on my blog as well as my website: www.mellingtoncartwright.com

Updates soon to come!

-Mell