Studio Visit with Mary Jo Karimnia

I visited the studio of Mary Jo Karimnia last week. She showed me around the Rozelle Warehouse where she rents space.

 

 They have lovely spots to hang and view artwork in a communal area.

 

This is the courtyard.

That sky, by the way, is exactly what I'm going for in my current work-in-progress.

 

 

But what I was really interested in was Mary Jo's space, and the process she goes through to make her work.

 

She has a very cozy studio:

 

She even made me a cup of tea.

 

Her organizational skills are amazing. In my studio, everything is all mixed up, but you can see here that she has everything sorted into tubs.

 

 

The burning question, for me, was, "How does she make large pieces out of parts as tiny as seed beads?" Here is how she appears to do it: She first makes several smaller pieces. From these she chooses the next large work.

 

Then she draws the chosen piece much larger and paints it.

After that she would apply seed beads to the enlarged drawing.

 

Of course, as she pointed out, she's always growing as an artist, and lets the art lead her, so this process may change. It seems like a very good method, and I think I will try it (in my case, you would substitute embroidery thread for seed beads).

 

Here, she is re-doing a smaller work, on the same small scale. She makes sure everything is right on the smaller scale before she makes it larger.

 

 

You should check out Mary Jo's work, she's a great artist (and a very nice person!).