In the Studio

Sculpture of an eye on a sparkly tear pedestal

Using Dall-E in the process of developing the walking crying eye sculptures

“Sculpture of an eye on a sparkly tear pedestal” DALL·E 2022-11-01 14.21.09 A recent meditation on grief and perseverance produced ideas of “an eye standing on a pedestal of or walking on legs made of its own tears”. The language snippets were put into Dall-E and here are some of the results “Textile sculpture crying eye embroidered iris glass tear support” was the text and the AI is having some difficulty here with the concept … >> read more

American chestnut Castanea dentata as a prince in a throne

North American native hazelnuts, acorns, chestnuts, and plums photographed in the garden studio

Native American plums and nuts arranged as a mandala for curing in the garden shed that doubles as the photography studio, when such beauty is present. This mandala features nuts and fruit all native to north eastern North America and is possible through the work and generosity of PJ Chmiel who for the last decade has been restoring the soil and planting a native food forest near Kalamazoo, Michigan. A visit earlier in the week … >> read more

Adspace Oasis

Adspace Oasis: imagining a truly public online space without advertising

Adspace Oasis – art instead of advertising Imagine an Adspace Oasis in your fav online hangouts! Real public space where we and our  friends could be served art of our choice vs advertising. #adspaceoasis There is no truly public space online to hang, only malls, private livingrooms, lobbies of trading floors. Rather miserable. In times of the plague, I really missed walking through crowds, in a city or at a festival or beach and hearing … >> read more

Garden studio with green coffee burlap and cats

Working with green coffee bean burlap bags in the garden studio, with cats

Cats having a snack on the project burlap, with the cat fort in the background. Cat assistants were in full snacking and supervision mode in a recent outdoor studio session in the garden. A sunny weekend of high temperatures saw us drag our projects out of the basement studios and onto the circle lawn. Such a strange experience, to have such a warmth and angle of light but with no leaves on trees! Marc works … >> read more

Happy Sleepy February Rain embroidered art toy

Happy Sleepy February Rain hand embroidered textile sculpture

Happy Sleepy February Rain, wool and cashmere coating, cotton embroidery by hand, fusible interfacing, polyester stuffing, 2020 Happy Sleepy February Rain – the name of this little soft sculpture and the blue embroidery dashes on a grey cashmere background tell a story of the end of winter 2020 by the Detroit River. February accommodates well hunkering down to do some hand embroidery, both to pass the winter and to rescue the mind with creativity and … >> read more

Crystal King Chocolate Milk painting digital sketch by Happy Sleepy

Crystal Kings new paintings digital sketches

Crystal King Chocolate Milk Here are work-in-progress images from the making of a new set of Crystal Kings paintings for Nuit Blanche 2018. This series of art objects is a combination inkjet print on canvas, 24K gold foil, and acrylic gouache on some of the colors and for all of the velvety black. The final paintings are 18 inches wide by 22 inches tall and 3 inches deep. These images highlight the front face of … >> read more

Adspace Oasis

Lovely geometric designs from new Crystal Kings art glitches

This set of images was generated from an accidental arrangement of shapes in the process of making new Crystal Kings digital images. The goal was to line up a few pixels, but instead all the shapes in the whole image collapsed onto each other. A tweak of the opacity and a few quick deletes to tweak the composition was all that was necessary. After that – zooming and panning and looking for treasures in the … >> read more

Embroidered mandala with blue beads

Sunny yellow and bright blue embroidered mandala details on a grey day

Here are some detail shots of one of the embroidered mandalas that were completed last year during our time in Mexico. This mandala has a face of white linen and a crisp yellow and turquoise color palette. This seems just the thing to look at in this very grey day in Toronto – April 15 and there is 2 inches of snow on the ground and a blizzard in full swing as I write this! … >> read more

Pen and ink illustration with digital color, Jewel of the Boreal by Marc Ngui

“Jewel of the Boreal”, an illustration of a sunset view over one of the bays of the futuristic city of Central Shield

When we invent the future, the most important thing is to capture is the feeling so that we can make a connection to that time space and then climb up and forward just like a mountain climber who uses safety ropes on a sheer cliff wall. So what is it like to live in the future, in Central Shield? The animated gif cartoon above was created by taking vignettes from one of Marc’s latest panoramic … >> read more