I’ve been a key member at a community print shop in Providence, RI for over a year now – the AS220 Print Shop.  The Print Shop is run under an umbrella non-profit organization, AS220, which supports the creative community of Providence (and beyond) through various spaces & services including workshops, galleries, artist studios, music and performance spaces, and more – all in a unjuried and uncensored environment open to all.

To help raise funds for the shop, we run a Print Lottery every other year: 200 pieces of artwork are collected from artists from all over the world, and 200 tickets are sold.  During the actual lottery, each ticket is matched with a piece of art, so the monetary donors help the Print Shop continue to sustain itself – and they are then gifted with a unique and one-of-a-kind print or work on paper.

Please if you’re able, purchase a ticket to the Print Lottery.  Tickets sell for $100 and there are only 200 tickets, so there’s only a certain amount of spots before they’ve all been taken!

Please take moment to watch this beautiful video about the shop which I was happy to be a part of… you can really see what an amazing place it is from watching it!

{video by Timothy Whitney}

Today is Monday, which for everyone can be a tough day to go back to work – but I can assure you that it’s even more difficult to try to get anything accomplished when you’re still daydreaming of the amazing vacation you just came back from.  New Hampshire with my family was a dream.  It sort of feels like we just woke up from this magical dream, and my husband and I were thinking, “Did it really happen?  It went by so fast!”

The house was incredibly gorgeous and everyone was able to relax and enjoy each other (without feeling, “oh my god, I’m with my entire family for a whole week in one house” – really, at all).  We ate wonderful food, explored the woods, rivers, lakes, and sights together, and just enjoyed being a family.  Played Uno, put together puzzles, played bowling on my brother-in-law’s XBox (which I can assure you is sure to please 4 generations of family!), and just hung out together.  It meant the world to me to see all my nephews running around the house playing together – it really reminded me my own childhood and spending time with my cousins (who are still some of my dearest, best friends to this day).  I got to swim for 5 days in a row (my husband could not get me out of the water!) and spent so much time just relaxing at the gorgeous house my parents treated all of us to.

I’m sitting here honestly trying to get work done, but I keep looking back at all of our photos and it’s becoming really difficult to do much of anything… too bad that I have a full work load this week!  I’m really hoping that we can do it all over again next year.

{images shown via my Instagram @letterandlark}

I’m headed off with my entire family to the White Mountains of New Hampshire for a full week!  I’ll see you all back in this space on August 27th… have a great week while I’m gone!

{image shown from my Flickr of a previous trip to New Hampshire}

I’m so excited to see the first book from Twigs & Honey!  I’ve been following Myra’s work for many years now and it’s been wonderful to see Twigs & Honey grow leaps and bounds.  Congrats to you, Myra!  I’m definitely adding this to my Amazon wishlist!

{image shown belongs to Twigs & Honey}

These photos from Swedish photographer Hilda Grahnat are making me really excited for our family trip to the White Mountains this weekend!  Hoping for some good hot, summer days to go for swims (& and picnics to accompany them!).

{images shown belong to Hilda Grahnat}

I’ve been anxious and excited to finally share my first collaborative piece: a five-color limited edition print between Letter & Lark and my husband & artist, Jeffrey Ellse.  Jeff is a talented draftsman and painter, and his more recent work explores various forms made of line or value.  After seeing one of his line drawings, I asked if he could create more of them – and after much discussion about how I’d love to print them, we decided to work on a collaborative piece (which we’ve been wanting to do for the almost 12 years we’ve been together!).

Jeff prepared more line drawings which were then given to me for my part of the process.  I scanned the work and decided on the layout and composition, as well as the general color palette of paper and inks.  I wanted these geometric forms to interact in various opacities, which created delicate line work that formed multiple intersection points throughout the piece.  Jeff was surprised with my layout decisions, saying he wouldn’t have decided on that himself but still really liked my composition – and I said I loved working with the forms, but could never imagine creating the line drawings.  So it was really satisfying to know we both brought something to the project and helped the other person’s work get to a different level than if we worked alone.

We were able to print the piece together which brought about even more collaborative work, not just in the actual printing of the piece (it really helped to have someone grab the prints as we silkscreened!) but also in fine tuning the color of each ink.  Jeff is a master of mixing colors from his painting background, and we would go back and forth fiddling and subtly changing each ink till we were both happy.  We found the final process of the project, the printing of the piece, to be the most exciting part – we bounced ideas off of each other for future collaborative pieces and were able to really listen to the other person’s constructive feedback to change things once we were printing.

The final piece is a 11″x17″ four-color silkscreen and one-color letterpress print; each has been signed by both artists and numbered in an edition of 40.

You can find them available in the Letter & Lark shop!

{images shown via my Instagram @letterandlark}

We got back from camping last night and it was an interesting trip to say the least!  Unfortunately the weather wasn’t the best and we dealt with down pouring rain, a tornado warning, hot and humid nights (the hottest, muggiest weather to try to sleep in), and even more rain.  However, most of Saturday was just partly cloudy with glimpses of the sun and we were able to enjoy the outdoors while we could.  Sunday was my 30th birthday (it still sounds so weird to say that!) and we met up with friends for afternoon tea, trying a new place I’ve never been to.  I was a memorable weekend and above all, so incredibly wonderful to spend 3 whole days with my love (we’re like two ships in the night lately with our schedules).

Unfortunately for my workload, I’m going away again this Saturday to spend a week up in the White Mountains with my entire family – it should be interesting with 10 adults, 3 kids and a baby all in one house!  So I’ll be blogging this week when I can (I have a lot of 2013 calendar printing to do!) but will be absent from this space all of next week.

{images shown are from my Instagram @letterandlark}

I’m taking Friday off to go camping down the Cape with my husband for the weekend, get some much needed rest and time with him, and celebrate the end of my 20′s (gulp).

Next time I talk to you all, I’ll be 30 (the sound of that still has to set in)!  Hope you have a wonderful weekend!
– Colleen

{image shown from my Flickr of another summertime visit to Cape Cod, a few years back}

I’ve been a big fan of Cynthia Warren for some time now, and one of my favorite pieces of hers is an intricate wreath illustration she did for a wedding several years ago.

I was super excited to find in the recent summer issue of Martha Stewart Weddings that she teamed up with Moontree Letterpress (love their work too!) to create a custom piece for the magazine, based off of the earlier illustration.  Love the new take!

{images shown taken by Rebecca Kutys of Moontree Letterpress & borrowed from Cynthia Warren; magazine copyrighted by Martha Stewart Weddings}

Excited to announce that Letter & Lark will be one of the vendors at Rhode Island’s Festival Fete East Greenwich Art Festival on September 1st & 2nd, 10am–5pm both days.  The festival will be held at New England Tech Campus, 1408 Division Road, East Greenwich, RI.

If you’re in the New England area, definitely stop by for this unique event – a wonderful way to wrap up summer & get ready for fall!

{image shown belongs to Festival Fete}