Interview: Art in various forms with Kathryn!

Did you miss us? Because we did! December was a pretty crazy and busy month at BlookUp ! But we won’t let it go (don’t sing it) without an interview!

Today, meet Kathryn.  A multi-formats artist and explorer, always on the road searching for inspiration, weirdness and crazy stuff! And don’t forget to click on the images in order to see mork ore Kathryn’s work!

 

First, tell us about yourself: You, your passions, your hobbies, your projects…_____________________________

I’m American-born but found from my first international traveling days during college that I prefer being an Earthling to thinking of myself as strictly attached to any particular location or group of people. I love where I grew up on the Pacific Northwest coast of the US (near Seattle) and the culture there very deeply, but there are fabulous people, adventures, landscapes, and cities to be found everywhere I’ve been. So my concept of Home is portable and relates to where I’m happy, where I find the essentials for that happiness, like good company, welcoming surroundings, fine architecture, great food, magnificent scenery, superb music. As these are all among the things that give me my greatest joys, they all eventually find their ways into the blog. There I’m able to share my unique and idiosyncratic way of viewing and enjoying my life with my readers.

Kathryn’s famous colored glasses!

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What is your blog about? Why? Do you have other blogs? If so, what do they talk about?

Art Colored Glasses (artcoloredglasses.com) is my only blog, and serves as my personal art-and-writing journal. My clever husband suggested, after I’d stopped teaching those topics at university for nearly two decades, that since I finally had the time and energy to return to making art and writing poetry and essays for my own enjoyment, I should document the process. Blogging is clearly a convenient way to capture my progress and share the end results of my daily creative work. The site is named for the old expression about seeing the world through “rose colored glasses”—the notion that everything is tinted with an idealized point of view reflects my belief that we all see our experiences through unique lenses, and I try to share that sense in both my factual and fantastical posts.

Some drawings practiced with graphite.

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Why did you want to turn your blog into a book?

Online documentation in the blog served to keep me motivated and preserve a sense of purpose in my artistry, and it certainly offered a new and supportive community of readers and fellow bloggers and artists. But it, like all other technological resources, comes with no guarantees of perfectly eternal archiving. And it’s hard to curl up in bed with a blog the way that a physical book comforts me! So I wanted both the backup of a concrete object and the pleasure of leafing through a real book that I can carry nearly anywhere with me.

How did you find out about BlookUp?

I stumbled across a reference to BlookUp online when I was searching for alternative ways to publish more of my ‘regular’ books (not blog-sourced).

Well, cooking is a art form, they say! Experiment Kathryn’s tuna salad with cheese biscuits!

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What are the positive and negative points of the making of your blook?

The two things I would most like to see added to BlookUp’s offerings are rather simple matters of scale: I’d love to be able to easily change the size of both text and visual images to more closely reflect the ratios and relationships I work to achieve on my blog. I don’t use a blogging platform with complete autonomy in that regard; I have no desire to learn to write code or spend hours tweaking the positions and sizes of every single element I post, when I’ve already spent so much time on making and posting the artworks and writing the content, so I’m glad to use a platform that has very simple templates. But I chose the blog template I do use in order to get a particular layout and I can alter the look of it somewhat to suit the day’s offerings. If I can balance the visual layout in similar ways for my blook, it will be that much more a perfect companion to the blog.

Having said that, I’m delighted with the blook, and the ease of the process by which I can have it made. It’s a tremendous help that the content is downloaded directly from my blog, so I don’t have to cut and paste the entire thing from scratch (or, worse) to retype every word and re-import every picture). I do like being able to design and use my own front cover, which reflects this being a record of an artist’s blog. Also, the blook’s paper quality, its crisp and clear printing and accurate color capture, and the ability to compile a section of my years of blogging output into one compact archival resource all make me very glad BlookUp is available. It will take me a number of blooks to archive over 1600 posts, but it’s always good to have a new project to challenge my creative impulses, and even better when the end result is so attractive.

Do you enjoy the final result? What do your family and friends think about your blook?

Everyone’s impressed with this project!

Kathyn’s Blook cover! There is a very nice touch to it, just like best-sellers in libraries!

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Would you recommend BlookUp?
Absolutely! I already did, and I will again. 🙂

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Thank you, Kathryn, for this interview and for allowing us to share your thoughts on BlookUp! We wish you a (late) Happy Birthday and invite all our followers to visit your blog in order to wish it to you as well!