West Coast Whimsy: Roxanne Daner and Jill Bliss

Roxanne Daner via her blog

::sigh:: It seems like just yesterday I was writing to you all about how lovely it was up here.  Well, psych!  I fooled you!  It's not lovely.  In fact, it's damn near apocalyptic.  Seattle is entertaining us with its usual game of back-and-forth, warm-and-cold, dry-and-wet, and it's citizens are running around like hipsters with their skinny jeans cut off.

But the fact of the matter is this: it's almost July.  It's so close to July, I can taste the coleslaw and hot dogs, and you know what?  I'm so fucking tired of talking about the weather.  So I'm making you a promise:  No more weather talk.  That's right!  I'm done.  From this point forward you will not hear me complain or rejoice about what the weather is or isn't doing up here.  This is a HUGE promise, you guys, because the weather is all anyone thinks or talks about right now.  But still, no more.  Donezo.

You're welcome.

"All of the Girls" by Roxanne Daner via her blog

So!  With July quickly approaching, I am thinking a lot about art and artists I love, mainly due to the upcoming Urban Craft Uprising—a free, weekend-long event where artists and crafters of all kinds gather at the Seattle Center and sell their goods.  This event happens twice a year (summer and winter) and it's probably the Seattle-thing I look forward to most, because the idea of discovering new artists to ogle over fills me with tingle-y glee.

But more on the UCU after I've gone and spent too much money.

I've purchased several art prints before and as my taste in art slowly develops, the more eager I am to invest in some original pieces.  (But why art gotta be so expensive, yo?)  I've written a lot about the kind of art I'm most drawn to (here and here, mainly), but when I look at the items I've actually laid down money for, I tend to see a trend around charm and whimsy. 

"The Market" by Roxanne Daner via her official site

I want to talk about two artists in particular today, starting with Roxanne Daner, an illustrator/designer out of LA.  (That's all her work ^ up there!)  If you're a regular reader of Design*Sponge like I am, you might have seen this little piece yesterday about Daner and her lovely art centering around hair.  Well, I saw the article and have been obsessing over all of her other art for the past 24 hours.  She has a lot of different sources for her work (blog, Web site, Tumblr, Dribbble, the only place to buy prints, Society6, and a separate site for her design work, Ludlow Kingsley), which made searching through her portfolio quite an adventure!  (Plus, it took me about .78 seconds to recognized her boyfriend, Adam Goldberg, from his stint as Eddie on Friends—Joey's wacky, goldfish-eating roommate.  Teehee.  Aww, celebrities.)

"Lion" by Roxanne Daner via her Tumblr

There's a kitschy-ness to Daner's style that I absolutely adore, and I was seriously this close to writing her a Twitter message yesterday saying I would send her $100 for an original piece of art that could be of ANYTHING she wanted... but I chickened out, 'cause I don't wanna seem cuh-ray-zee, ya'll.  But I digress...  She is lovely and her work is lovely and I'm excited to see her breadth of work as it grows and grows.  I'm looking forward to having something of hers framed on my wall, and if I could ever find her at an art show selling her original work, I would be most pleased indeed.

"Portland Homes" by Jill Bliss via BuyOlympic

Next on my obsession list is Jill Bliss, who captured my heart a year ago when I met her in person and bought the above print at the UCU.  Not an original, but she did sign it for me.  Like Daner, her work is all over the Web (official site, blog, Flickr, Etsy, and third-party sellers Buy Olympia, to name a few), and her personal and artistic style has been featured on Design*Sponge and Apartment Therapy, among others.

"Pacific Octopus Shoreline" by Jill Bliss via BuyOlympia

She so totally rocks, and her art encapsulates the things I love about the Northwest and the West Coast.  Plus, she has her art available in prints that are meant to fit inside a cheap IKEA frame.  (She told me this and it was one of the things that officially sold me.)  I mean, who has the time or money to go and get a $20 art print custom framed?!  Not me, that's for sure.   I'll get to see more of Jill's work at the UCU this summer, and I'll definitely be writing about whether I walk away with another print.  My current yearning and nostalgia for California means I've been eyeing this print for several months now:

"California Poppies" by Jill Bliss via her Web site

Are there any particular artists or art prints that are your favorites?  Have you gone to any art shows recently and thought about purchasing something way out of your price range?  (Jon and I almost spent $200 on a painting of a naked Native American child in a canoe at a charity art show—true story!)  What kind of art (if any) do you like having on your walls?

I will definitely be sharing more deets about artists I love in the near future.  Apparently that's where my brain is at.  So be it.