After graduating, I have been taking freelance art jobs whenever possible. I posted a while ago about a fireplace I refurbished and painted. The same family had a second fireplace they wanted done, which turned into completely re-coloring their dining room.
This is the fireplace and color scheme before:
The room also had a decorative light fixture, which was just asking to be painted.
After many hours of work, this was the final product:
Last Spring, the Whoop Dee Doo crew swept into Cincinnati to create something wonderful. Much like a group of migrant carnival workers, they appeared in our city, and in just a few short days created something magical, terrifying, and community oriented.
The Whoop Dee Doo crew collaborated with a handful of students from the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati, as well as the Lighthouse Youth Program and dancers from Los Embajadores Peruanos.
The performance shown in the video (link below) was carried out five times in the course of one evening for live audiences.
Other than a seemingly endless nosebleed (the result of breathing “fog” over and over for six hours) and a little neck cramping, this was some of most enjoyable work I have ever done. (Pssst…I’m the head on the wall). Here’s a close up:
FULL VIDEO:
Lonely New World: Acrylic and Ink on Canvas 3ft x 3ft
Jaimi Ryan 2013
Working from an analysis of our cultural obsession with spectacle and wealth, as well as the obsession we seem to have with our own demise. Live fast, die young, fuck bitches, get money.
Photo quality is sub par…but what else is new?
Recently I’ve been pimping myself out as a freelance artist. I took on a fireplace restoration project, the image above being the final product.
At the start of this project, the fireplace was covered in sponge-painted purple and white faux marbling. A true gem. Unfortunately, I do not have a “before” picture because I’m only just a fool, but the photo below is a pretty close representation of the surface we were dealing with.
With the help of a scraper, steel wool, and some all-natural stripper (3 cheers for a ready-made joke), all 4 million layers of paint were removed. The stripper is called Soy Gel, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is stripping something indoors, because there are no fumes (a somewhat unusual smell, but no fumes), and it can be cleaned up easily with water and a sponge.
With all the paint removed, I discovered that the true surface or the hearth and mantle were stone, and the firebox was metal. After cleaning and sanding the stone, I sealed it with a high-gloss polyurethane. The firebox was then painted with one coat of black oil paint, and then hand-painted with turquoise and yellow oil paints to create the final design.
One last shot…ignore the fire engine.
“Serving Size: 4 Pieces” is a small-scale version of a large installation I am currently working on. I’ve posted some in-process shots of this one, so I apologize if this post is dull, as you have already seen this piece in it’s nearly completed state.
JAIMI RYAN 