The Art Work of Heather Classen
The concert poster for the season premiere of the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra visually balances the light and dark of the musical program. I used the method I worked out from the April chamber concert poster playing with illustrator’s path settings. My intent is to use this theme for all the posters this year, changing the colors and mood depending on the pieces we play for each.
Join us Saturday, November 5, 2016 at Kresge Auditorium at MIT.
In 2015, I decided to go in for purchasing Adobe Illustrator since I’d be using for both CSO posters and my knitting pattern diagrams. Like everything, it was an educational process since I’m the type to jump in and get a tool working, rather than take the time for a class.
I set up a workspace with “artboards” for the whole season. This way I can see, compare, and use elements across the group of posters and ads. And what goes on the first poster tends to set the theme for the season.
There are always head-shots of the musical guests, along with a lot of text and sponsor logos. I like to pick a color scheme for the text to draw attention to the soloist. In the case of the Mahler poster above Indra Thomas’s beautiful photo has a lovely green-grey backdrop that I wanted to work with. And as a new Illustrator user, playing with text appearance was the most fun, so I decided I had my theme for the season. All the posters would have roughly the same layout with the “Cambridge Symphony Orchestra” text working with the soloist head-shots.
Here for “Holiday Pops” I chose Adobe’s subtle sparkle effect for the CSO text along with an already festive head-shot of Jennifer Sgroe and a happy photo of Cynthia Woods.
The Family Concert in January always features are remarkably talented young musician, this year was no exception. Visually, I loved that Yoo Jin Ahn’s cute head-shot has a white background. The CSO text illustrator fun for this concert was the bright pastel colors from the Illustrator “graphic styles” library.
Doing this for a couple of years now, I have to say the March concert always throws me for a loop for the color scheme. If I use springtime green it makes people think of St Patrick’s Day which is almost never the concert theme, and especially since the program for this concert is “The Russian Masters” I had to work with something else. I went with a color theme in the red and blue spectrum since using the grey in the soloists head-shot would make the poster too dreary, giving the CSO text a circular blue gradient glow.
The Chamber players need a poster from time to time, and I could go off the season’s theme trying something new. I played with Illustrator paths to create a fun swirly violin, and I loved this effect so much it is going to be the theme of the 2016-2017 posters.
This Firebird show with the accompanying ballet ended the classical season with a bang. The concert was a labor of love for many, with the dancers and musicians using their creativity to bring this event to the next level. I contributed with the painting “The Prince and the Firebird” that I was able to work into this poster format. Having too much fun with color and design I created this surface design line at Spoonflower.
And finally, for the end of the season I had some more Illustrator fun, creating warped text for the title. The CSO logo is still recognizable with the SYMPHONY portion shown in bold. The entire image has an under layer of crumpled paper to portray a summer-of-love type vibe to it. I used color picker to pull the color from the sponsorship logo to use for the background and lettering.
Often the tools used and project restrictions dictate what the posters will look like. The limits, I find, help the creative process, if only to keep projects from being over-designed.
The one most important thing that I have learned in this post-tech artistic life: designing is decision making.
“Hello World” is a short hand term for projects techies create while working on a new platform. My new platform? Spoonflower.
The “Hello World” idea is similar to the Minimum Viable Product, “MVP“, for people that know something about marketing, where the learning process involved in getting the first item/program/project/design out into the world takes most of the work. Theory being that once you get this first one done, the rest will follow much easier. I mean, think of all the learning involved with any new thing you’ve tried to do. Procrastination can get the best of you, but giving yourself the one goal to push toward, the “Hello World”, the first product, the first class, etc, you have something achievable and worthwhile.
I started by drawing up a design in Adobe Illustrator.
Getting the repeat right is the crux of the design process. A lot of good information is available on surface design repeats on YouTube.
Once I had my MVP design ready to go I uploaded it, ordered my proof, and waited by my mailbox.
When it arrived I opened up the package and inspected my new fabric, and oh no, a subtle problem: there was a light “aliased” outline on the right and bottom edges of the repeat. It may have been mistaken for wayward white thread if I had left it as it was, but it would bother me not to fix it.
Spoonflower support was very helpful, told me I could edit my file to remove the white outline, re-upload, and release it for publication.
A little Pixelmator, and boom, done.
So now I’m literally in business.
Please leave a comment if you have any experience with Spoonflower, either sewing or designing with it. And please watch this space for more upcoming designs.
Nerd On,
Heather
I never wrote a blog post about the Squam Art Workshops before, though I’ve been attending since 2011. I suppose I never knew how to put it all into words: meeting great people, taking intriguing classes, dodging “woo”, and, well, the food.
So, how about some photos…
This was on the way to the dining hall, though not done by @supgup and @sierca as I wrote on my original caption.
Working at home later.
I also took Gudrun Johnston’s Short Row class, which was really helpful – I really had no idea there were 4 different ways to do short-rows, and that the one way I knew – turns out I was doing it wrong. I took no photos in this class, as it was a knitting circle, basically. Her designs are beautiful, she had a container full of them where she showed us where she used short rows. Such an inspiration.
But, then, it ends. We say goodbye to everyone at breakfast and we go.
So to console myself on the way home there was a stop at Mr Mac‘s, which really needs to be a national chain.
But, I mean, this.
thank you, Squammies, for being awesome,
H
After this most difficult winter, we Bostonians have Patriot’s Day. Since mid-April is when we can finally step outside without suffering, here it comes, the celebration of Massachusetts’ contribution to the creation of the United States of America. So glad they waited to start the revolution ’til the weather got good.
You can’t swing a dead cat around these parts without hitting a Revolutionary War Reenactor.
But I have to say, my favorite thing about all these re-enactors is when you see people in historical clothing mixing in with modern-times. For example, my boyfriend has a photo of a minuteman carrying a leaf-blower, which he really needs to have online somehere.
Or like Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow.
Here I have this sneak-over-the-shoulder #selfie thing: Minutemen, in line for a port-a-potty.
Priceless. There should be a name for this mash-up of modern and 18th century, a hashtag, something.
so anyways
I had driven by Munroe Tavern, where the British set up their field hospital after that first night of the Revolutionary War, a hundred times. This time we finally stopped in. Here are some iPhone photos that I took. (Aram’s awesome photos are here.)
Red coats getting ready for the battle re-enactment at Tower Park
After the war President George Washington visited the Munroe family for tea, to thank them for all their troubles during this battle. The family saved everything he touched. He sat in that bigger chair in the middle, and the cup he used is in a display case nearby. Gotta love the love people had for the pertinence of these items.
I would be remiss if I didn’t post a photo of the flax spinning wheel. Making linen from flax was important in the avoidance of buying British cotton goods in the 18th century.
Inside the Munroe Tavern.
And here are the lobster-backs getting ready for their part of the re-enactment on the front lawn of the tavern. This Tower Park battle today (Saturday) actually took place after the famous battle of Lexington Green (Monday), they just do it on this Saturday beforehand to get everything done in the weekend.
So much fun nerdy stuff going on around here right now. Can’t miss it if you try, get out there and see some of it.
Thanks for reading and Nerd On – H
P.S. And if all this isn’t marvelous enough: we finish on Monday with the The Boston Marathon.
<3
The theme for the posters of the 40th anniversary season of the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra is: the players.
6 posters. Big season made tiny to fit in this space.
Photos by Susan Wilson and Aram Comjean
A respin of last year.
Bring the kids, they get to conduct.
At Sennot Park in Cambridge.
For the last masterworks concert of the 2013 – 2014 season the CSO is playing the lovely peaceful Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copeland.
Mountains. Forest. Quiet.
Maybe I have a photo that would suffice. Like something I took at Rockywold Deephaven Camps while attending the Squam Art Workshops.
Yep, it was just like that. Peaceful.
This mini one for the newspaper.
Opera
I didn’t think I would like it, but I’d give it a try once.
So back in the late 1900s I saw there was a performance of The Marriage of Figaro performed by marionettes. Thinking, ‘yeah, I like marionettes, I’ll give marionette opera a try. There’s subtitles, it’ll be fine’.
Imagine, if you will, wooden people bouncing around on strings singing “Figaro, Fig-a-ro, FIG-aroooooo”, with their only emotional expression coming from how high or low their skinny arms are pulled.
“La,” wooden hand up, “lalalalalala“, wooden hand down, “LA“, wooden hand waving in flourish, “laaaaaaaaa“.
Bad.
Since my Italian grandfather loved opera and his sister sang opera, I wanted to give it a fair chance. Fortunately, I caught a modern adaptation of Don Giovanni with subtitles on PBS and LOVED it. Later on I even saw a live production of Cosi Fan Tutti in Boston with real human beings in it and enjoyed that as well, if only cuz of it’s “Three’s Company” farcical style plot.
I wish my grandfather and his sister were around to see our Cambridge Symphony Orchestra production of Tosca on Sunday March 16.
So, the poster… what the heck do I do?
I was stumped at the enormity of the task as I knew how excited everyone is to get this right. I was frozen trying to come up with imagery that will dignify the event.
I started with doodles in my engineering notebook during a meeting.
I doodled up a dagger with a hilt that looked like a violin sound hole. Thought, hey cool, and was on my way. I spent the weekend in my art space in my basement with India inks, acrylic paint, tissue paper, and cut paper. Spent some time figuring out how to draw an art nouveau font, and came up with this.
And then, thinking the concert will be in springtime I decided to make the red pop by putting it on an aqua background.
All the while I’m working on the clever dagger idea this is sitting on the easel behind me.
In 2012 I’d taken Flora Bowley’s ecourse to get back into painting, which I hadn’t done at any length since I was a teenager. Her approach has you just painting a bunch of gobbledy-gook with fluid acrylics, honing and fixing, until you work it up into something truly unique… as you had no idea what you were going to paint when you started. She wants you to have messy underpaintings.
This is the underpainting for what became the final Tosca poster.
Embarrassing, a bit, to show it here, but I wanted to show that I was going for an angry red busy unsettling vibe when I painted it.
Then, in the ecourse, Flora suggests going big and bold, draw a big image, make a big change, be unexpected. I painted a big face over the angry red background, I wanted a pretty face, but where you could still see the messy disturbed underpainting in the eyes.
And there she sat for months, in my basement, I didn’t know where to take it.
With this painting behind me and the cheery dagger painting in front of me I rented a Tosca DVD and figured I’d let the story percolate so I would have a better clue of how to make this right.
Here’s the TL;DR of Tosca: Tosca has a painter boyfriend, she’s jealous, she’s pretty, creepy guys are into her, and she would kill a man if she had to.
And her name is Floria. Floria, come stai?
Now I knew what to do with the painting.
Come to the concert… find out what happens to her.
Our first concert of 2014, the Family Concert where children are invited to enjoy the big music.
Not a lot of insight into the design of this one.
It’s about baseball, I went literal.
Thanks to Aram for the feedback, as always.