An interview

 

Today we will hopefully get to know my friend and fellow artist Erika N. better.   Of course, many of you know her as BioArtGal. 

Please be aware, all art today belongs to Erika.  Please DO NOT pin any of her art from my blog.  If you like her art, please visit and/or follow her blog and pin her art there.

Elizabeth: Your blogging profile shows you were a high school biology teacher for 35??? years.  I enjoyed seeing your retirement journal.  However, the art is what we know less about. When did you start making art and what did it entail? 

Erika:

I taught for 35 years at my last school, and my first year teaching was at a different school, for someone on maternity leave, so that made it a total of 36 years. I made my retirement journal for a couple of reasons. One, I brought home lots of bits and pieces when I cleaned out my work desk, and in many ways that process was quite traumatic. 

 I think it would have been easier had we not been in the early throngs of covid and I wasn't the only one in that part of the building while cleaning. An empty school is too quiet and a bit like a ghost town. 

 You can imagine the kids in the hall and half expect one of them to walk in, but of course, when I cleaned out my room, no one was there. And I couldn't throw out those bits and pieces because that felt like I was throwing out a big part of my life. 35 years at a job is a very long time and you do become a part of that place (even though it was the right time to move on to other things). 

 The other reason I made that journal was to help process leaving that job after 35 years. It was a way to close that door and step out into the future. 

 And a way so I wouldn't forget those years, but to put them behind me.

Even though my educational background is in biology and later education, I've always loved being crafty and making art. My mother sent me to sewing classes when I was 10 years old, and by the time I was a teenager I used to make a lot of my clothes. But strangely I really don't like making clothes. Clothes making was in a way stressful because you have to be exact about certain things. When I was learning to sew my mom, who was a former elementary school teacher, used to come watch me from behind, and that always stressed me out. Even though I still like to sew, 

 I'd rather do my messy stitching.  Or messy painting or messy whatever. Maybe messy isn't the right word. Maybe I should say less exact 

because it is always fun to see what happens if you try something rather than knowing exactly what will occur.  

I didn't really focus on any one type of art or craft until my daughter was young and I started scrapbooking. 

You have to do something with all those photos you take. 

(And I love taking photos. My uncle gave me my first camera when I was 8 and I've been snapping ever since. I may not be the best painter or be able to illustrate books but I can take photos.) 

When I was scrapbooking was when I discovered  rubber stamps. Rubber stamps lead to paint and then to stencils and before I knew it my scrapbook pages were more like art journal pages rather than traditional scrapbook pages. 

 I was hooked making anything I could with those newly found supplies.

Elizabeth: You used to show a lot of altered books.  When did you switch to making (or calling them) art journals?

Erika:

Altered books seemed like the next logical step after my scrapbooking changed. I could altered a book with photos or bits and pieces of a story I wanted to tell. 

I still make a few altered books because I love them. Maybe mine have gotten more like journals. My logical science person comes out when I make altered books or journals because I like the book to have a theme and tell a story. 

Themes are something altered books usually have too, right?  Or maybe its just because, as you know, I love to read too. I think as I made more altered books I learned that a theme can be really broad and so then my books became more of a journal, rather than a tighter idea.

Elizabeth: I see you have been published a lot in the past. Please tell us a bit about those publications (stamping, card making, etc?).

Erika:

Back before I did a lot of blogging, I would send out art to some magazines. 

 Mostly I was sending out cards and some 

sewn work like some sewn journals. I didn't send out paper journaling because it was still too much of a scrapbook and therefore more personal than I wanted out there for the world to see. 

I became an on call artist 

for a few of the Somerset Studio publications

 for a few years. I think it was just that the editor at that time liked my work. When the editors changed, I stopped getting requests. That was OK because by then I had started blogging. I love having an art community and blogging makes a much more interactive one than being published in a magazine. I also was getting more confident in myself as an artist versus a scrapbooker and I realized I was just happy making art. So I haven't sent out art for a long time and I would much rather have an online art circle, which for me is blogging. 

Elizabeth: As an aside, that amazing purse now belongs to yours truly.

Elizabeth: Could you tell us a little about your creative process today as opposed to previous work?  What do you enjoy creating most? 

Erika: 

I used to work on one page at time, gathering what I needed for the page. I would work on a scrapbook in a chronological fashion. Now I work on multiple pages, and a page can take me awhile to finish. I might paint or stencil several backgrounds, and then use them as inspiration arrives. 

And sometimes I know what I want to do but have to wait for something to dry or the next piece to come to mind. It's rare I can sit down and make an entire page in one setting. 

I love making journal pages and making books. I love taking a theme and coming up with way to interpret that theme. It is so much fun.

Elizabeth: From reading your blog, I know you have a dedicated art space. Please 
describe what you like and don't like about it.  How do you make your 
space more inspiring and inviting? 

Erika:  I use the spare bedroom as an art space. 

 It was a weird space because the people who we bought the house from put in a big walk in closet, 

 making the room rather L shaped. 

 We've since removed that closet.I like that I have a space, and I like that I have a skylight which gives part of the room some nice light. 

 I also like the  wall shelves my husband built for me, and some antique wall cubby units I found and bought several years ago as they both make good storage.  

 I like little drawers and little storage cubbies, and  I've been collecting them over the years I have been making art. They work great in the new art space redo.   

  Oh and I have a great work bench that I got for my birthday several years ago. I didn't like how the closet cut the room apart, so my husband and I  updated the room. We took out the wall that separates the room from the closet so it became a bigger more useful space. I also didn't like the old carpet in the room, that was wall to wall, and it was time for it to be pulled out. It had been there since 1991, and we've had 4 dogs and 2 cats since then, plus it used to be my daughter's room, so you can imagine how smelly that carpet could be in hot weather. Now it's gone, 

 and there's a nice new floor and lots of wonderful sunlight through the skylight in the whole room now the closet is no more. I like a little bit of clutter, and I am messy when I  work, but the room doesn't interfere with anyone other than me. I don't really decorate it much, but mostly with little bits and pieces from trips or from other events in my life, things I can put on the top of shelves or hang up on the tops of the walls. Those items are inspiring to me, and even a little mess is inspiring. (But not a big mess. That just gets me frustrated.) I know lots of artists like to display their art in their studios, but I don't do that. I do put art out elsewhere in the house though.

Elizabeth: You know I have a dislike for my gelli plate, but you seem to use yours a 
lot for backgrounds.  Give those of us who are gelli challenged some of your secrets so we can appreciate ours more, too. 

Erika:   OK, when I gelli print I don't ever clean off my plate. 

 I like how you get ghost like layers of colors that way. And I will pull a print, let it dry a bit, 

 and then go back and repull that print again so that adds more layers. I keep doing this until I get a print that I like. I also gelli print a stack of pages at once. 

 I might take out 2 or 3 stencils and maybe 5 or 6 colors of paint and make a stack of 20 prints. 

 Then I may not gelli print for a couple of months or until I want some different colored or different stenciled prints.  I also have a couple of plastic rollers with designs in them, and I will roll them over the plate to create designs too. I also like to cut out paper shapes and images and lay them down to create some white spaces in my print.

Elizabeth: I know you love to take trips.  Even though we are unable to travel 
outside the country right now, what are some of your most memorable 
trips that you shared with us on your blog?

Erika: I like to go places. Every trip is different and it is hard to pick one that stands out more than the others. 

 I learned to love traveling from my grandmother who I was very close to and who I actually used to travel with

frequently both when I was a kid and when I was in my 20's. 

I loved when my daughter was younger and we could travel as a family. 

 And I like traveling with my husband because he is pretty flexible and low key so our trips are very relaxing, even if we are on the go. 

 One thing I love is visiting National Parks. I visited them here in the US and in a few other countries too. Here in the US 

 I buy an Interagency Pass and that gets me into any National Park, Historical National Park or National Monument for free which is really nice. 

 And if I don't get my money's worth I feel like I am supporting the parks. There are 423 parks within the National park service including 63 National Parks themselves. I've been to 30 of those 63 National Parks and about 140 of the the parks within the National Park service. I love how there are beautiful and each unique places that belong to all of us here in this country. One of my favorite stories goes back to  when I was in my 20's and my husband and I were going to San Francisco to visit his family friends. (The same ones in the desert we visited this past trip. They lived in San Francisco then.) I wanted to visit Yosemite National Park, and although my husband agreed, he complained practically the whole way there that we were doing all this driving to go look at nature. Then we arrived and he was stunned by the scenery. At that time, he would have rather checked out the city. Now, he would rather visit a park and skip the city. I have to laugh because now when I suggested a trip (he never suggests trips) he asks how many parks we can visit, and the only trip shopping he will do is at the park store. 

Elizabeth: Halloween seems to be a favorite of yours.  What are some of your favorite art pieces and memories from that holiday?  

Erika:  I love autumn, and Halloween is just a lot of fun. I am definitely not someone who likes to be scared, but it is fun once a year to be a little bit freaky. Mostly I do that in my art because I am not very freaky in person. At all. 

 It takes me several years to finish any Halloween journal, but it's fun to play around with ideas like a Witch's Ball or a Ghoul Circus. Christmas is also a lot of fun to create art about. I've done a Holiday A-B-C book and a 

 Christmas in Paris altered book too. 

Elizabeth: Before we go, please tell us a bit about your family.  I understand you 
had some good news recently about your daughter.  Please share anything 
you think is appropriate.

Erika:  If I talk about my family, I must say I am surrounded by engineers and teachers. 

 I have a brother who teaches Civil engineering at a college in Boston. His son is a civil engineer. My husband and daughter are both civil engineers (my daughter doesn't work in the field though). 

 My daughter's fiance is a civil engineer.  My husband's family has lots of engineers in it. 

 My mother was a teacher. I have cousins who are teachers. One of my sisters-in-law is a teacher.  I think I ended up in teaching because I didn't want to be an engineer and at age 20 I figured that's what I needed to try. My dad was an architect so now you know where I get my detail obsession from.  Probably the biology background adds to that too. Sometimes when we are all together, I feel like the artsy flake (Not that I am a flake) but I am the only one who can't add a lot of details to the engineering discussion. 

Elizabeth: Is there anything you would like to add that I have not included? 

Erika: I mentioned that I have always been crafty. Besides journaling (in paper and cloth format), there are other crafts I love to do. 

 I go through phases when I do a lot of knitting. 

 As you know, 

 I like to bake too. 

 And as you know, I also love to garden (it's another craft for me). I'd love to be a better painter. I am good at entertaining myself, and I'm not a loner, but I do like time to myself. 

Thank you for thoroughly answering these questions, Erika.  Also, thanks for allowing me to choose the art and photos that exemplified your answers.

Once again, I'm asking you to respect Erika's art.  If you want to pin something, PLEASE ASK HER, and do not pin from my blog.