meredith cutler :: arts marketing :: artist

Having hauled yet another disposable plastic cheese plate home from last night's art opening, due to the shady value of "6" showing in its triangular stamp (which, in Rhode Island, destines it for the landfill), I felt that it was high time for another creative up-cycling post.

I'm a fan of minimizing packaging and paperwork on both my incoming purchases and outgoing packages wherever possible. On occasion, however, a little excess sneaks through, so I like to challenge myself to reuse these unwanted materials in creative ways.

Here's a sweet little gift package of locally-made goodies that I put together for my friend Sara's birthday gift earlier this month. A sturdy, low-profile box originally used to ship me health and beauty products breathes new life as a re-usable gift box.

<<How did I do it? Click here to find out!>>

With all of the getting married, international travelling, guest-hosting, and (of course) writing about other artists I've been busy with over the last few seasons, it's easy to overlook my own studio projects. For those who are concerned, I've become quite skilled at adapting my working process to a bi-state program, shuttling my MSPCA tote bag between Hyde Park and Providence, full of the appropriate supplies to support my works in progress.

Still, it's slow going, but I'm taking advantage of the seasons' shift to ramp up my production a bit. Not surprisingly, I'm moving on...and around back to my mixed-media/alternative fibers roots. I hope to have a good start on this new body of work to share with you very soon, thanks for keeping up with me!

It's a rainy, slow Sunday, made ever more so by the brakes of waiting; a delivery appointment for our long coveted Tempurpedic bed scheduled to arrive between 1pm-5pm. With our doors removed from their hinges and furniture carefully pushed aside, there is nothing more to do except stew in anticipation.

Time for a good read, and while in house-mode, an errant pile of documents reveals a treasure: my long-deceased grandfather's hand-written auto-biography, "Poor Little Me", penned politely in March of 1926, when he was just fourteen years old. Having re-read it for the first time since my own adolescence, I finally realize its true value. I never knew Grandpa Henry, he died when my own father was only 10 years old.

It's a sweet, genuine read, a true time-capsule, revealing a boy who aspired to become a mechanical engineer or draftsman; with a special ambition to design airplane engines in what he predicted to be known as "the motor age". I have decided I should at least make an attempt to adapt the carefully pencilled script into an illustrated book format. After all, Henry wondered aloud whether "an autobiography of a fourteen year old boy would sell as well [as that] of one of our famous men?"