Paper snow flake and poetry project

I’m currently doing a collaborative project with poet Heidi von Wright. Last week her poems and photos inspired me to draw, and the drawing is also available as prints, mugs, T-shirts etc. on my Society6 page!

  

Immersion illustration

Aliette de Bodard‘s short story Immersion has been translated into Swedish by Johan Anglemark and published on Enhörningen. I made an illustration for it, and it looks like this:

A very fun and fulfilling assignment (especially as the author herself expressed that she liked the illo), and part of my ventures into SF illustration and expanding my portfolio. More projects and collaborations with Enhörningen are to come!

Aliette de Bodard is also a guest of honor at this year’s Finncon in Helsinki in July, where I’ll also appear in a discussion panel on Friday.

Conference presentation on new materialism

Yesterday I presented my initial thoughts and experiments with illustrating and drawing dance at the conference New Materialisms IV: Movement, Aesthetics, Ontology held here in Turku (always very convenient when interesting conferences are held in your own home town). I got some very helpful and inspiring comments from the session (Material processes, artistic practices) participants. A big thanks for this, if any of you happen to come by this post. I have a lot of food for thought now. The organizers had also done a very good job with the conference. It’ll be interesting to see how the conference series develops.

I think one of the bigger themes of the conference was to discuss what makes new materialism new, and I heard many interesting comments on this. It was also valuable for me to get more experience and information about artistic research practices: an area of practice that I find both fascinating and provoking. But anything that is provoking is also alive and developing and interesting.

I’m not sure what direction my drawing dance-project will take after this, but it will probably keep ricocheting between art and research. Hopefully I will find a target somewhere in between that is fruitful.