making marks
Posted: March 8, 2013 Filed under: atelier k, crafts, DIY, events, Koshka Zine, zines | Tags: atelier k, Chicago, Chicago Zine Fest, collars, crafts, fabric, friends, John Misfit, kaitlin kostus, koshka zine, My Life is an Open Book, Newcity, patterns, shop, textiles, tote bags, Two Cookie Minimum, zines Leave a comment »Tomorrow is Chicago Zine Fest! Sadly, I didn’t have enough time to finish the new zine I am working on, but that’s okay, I’ll have loads of other stuff, including the fabric goods pictured here!(with fabrics available on their own at my Spoonflower shop)
Also very cool–the always lovely John Misfit included me in an article in Chicago’s Newcity paper about the My Life is an Open Book show! Thanks so much to John for writing this!
“Slipstreams” patterned fabric, available on my Spoonflower shop.
march madness
Posted: March 1, 2013 Filed under: events, Koshka Zine, painting, zines | Tags: art, Baltic, Chicago, Chicago Public Library, Chicago Zine Fest, drawing, feminism, folk, kaitlin kostus, koshka zine, Latvia, Lincoln Belmont Library, My Life is an Open Book, paper, personal, perzine, University of Chicago Library, zines Leave a comment »This month is a bit crazy, and I have a lot going on, a lot to prepare, and events!! Here’s what you can attend!
Women’s History Month Exhibition at the Lincoln-Belmont Chicago Public Library Branch
March 3rd-31st, 2013
1659 W. Melrose, Chicago, IL
Artist’s reception and talk with Audrey Schlofner on Thursday, March 7th, 6-8pm
I’m showing my series, The One Who Rises which was shown at Woman Made Gallery last spring. Audrey is showing some works she created while in Ireland, and so both our talks have a bit to do with travel and other countries/cultures. The work is up at the branch all month, and you can view it anytime during regular branch hours.
Day of Jani, acrylic gouache on paper, 2013. By Kaitlin Kostus.
Chicago Zine Fest
Exhibitor tabling, Saturday, March 9th, 2013
Columbia College Chicago Conaway Center
1104 S. Wabash, Chicago, IL
CZF is super fun!! I’ll be tabling with Koshka Zine and a super-new personal zine, as well as some fiber goods made from my recent fabric samples. It’s a great day to walk around and check out the best in zines, and walk away with cheap and fascinating reading material. There’s also other events happening for Chicago Zine Fest!
My Life is an Open Book exhibition
University of Chicago Library Special Collections Research Center Gallery
January 14th- April 13th, 2013
1100 E. 57th St., Chicago, IL
I’m extremely proud to be a part of this exhibition exploring the perzine through a female lens! It was quite a surprise to me that I was included since the collection picks things up from time to time but you never officially hear about it. My zine from 2005, Ugly Cutie, is included. Sometimes I feel a bit embarrassed about works that old, but this work continually comes back to me. I think its topics really resonate with people for a number of reasons. If you’re outside of Chicago, there is also an online gallery here!
fun on the job for Valentine’s Day
Posted: February 14, 2013 Filed under: collaborations, drawing, illustration, painting | Tags: acrylic, Chicago, cold hands, creative windows, drawing, hot tea, illustration, job, marketing, merchadising, shop window design, tea, warm heart, window painting, work 1 Comment »Happy Valentine’s Day!!! I’m not very obsessive about holidays but I like Valentine’s Day a lot, despite it being really fake and corporate and over-advertised and all that stuff. This is mainly because A) I love chocolate, B) I love red hearts, C) I love making valentine cards for my friends, and D) Rob and I eat a fancy dinner, but never ON Valentine’s Day!! That would mean being in an overcrowded restaurant on a terrible night for quality food and service–so we always go sometime before or after, because it’s for us anyway and we don’t care.
The past two years I haven’t had much time to make valentines, which is a bit disappointing. Last year I was busy with my thesis and this year I am busy working and organizing my post-thesis existence. However, I was given a chance at work to have a little fun and create a Valentine’s Day window painting. I used acrylic paint, which was the suggested medium. It was odd using that on the inner side of the window, but apparently it will be removable. It’s likely coming down tonight or tomorrow night but maybe I’ll have a chance to do another window in the future.
NOTE: The pics aren’t great because it’s hard to photograph a mostly white window drawing while the lights are still on in the building. The text reads, “Cold Hands, Warm Heart…Hot Tea!”
post-hiatus, and a giveaway!
Posted: January 31, 2013 Filed under: atelier k, crafts, DIY, illustration | Tags: atelier k, canatloupe, crafts, crushed grape, fabric, fabric design, fat quarter, fischaugen, fish, free stuff, German, giveaway, illustration, kaitlin kostus, ocean, patterns, seafood, sewing, Spoonflower, textiles, watercolor 2 Comments »Hello there! It seems it has been awhile, but my life gets more busy and complicated by the minute. I spent most of the holiday season working like crazy between two jobs, and I continue to work like crazy whilst trying to eke out time when I’m not completely exhausted to develop art projects. It’s been a rough go so far and the work doesn’t seem to be letting up. While this is great because I need money badly, at the same time it confuses me more than ever, and instills how much I wouldn’t want a 9-5, 40 hours-a-week job in my near future.
One thing I did finally get done: I added a fabric design to Spoonflower in three colorways! I was a bit skeptical of how the print quality would end up, and if my watercolor strokes would show up in proper gradients, but in the end it was utterly fantastic quality! Getting the sample fat quarters was very satisfying.
The design I created is called “Fischaugen”, which is German for “Fish Eyes”. I’m kind of obsessed with fish since I began eating them; only now do I suddenly have an interest in preparing a live creature for cooking. It feels odd to suddenly have an interest in gutting and filleting, but I would rather be knowledgeable about things I eat rather than just never wondering where it comes from, where it lives, what its organs are like, etc. Anyhow, I’m excited by fish parts, and those strange eyes were the inspiration for this hand-painted design. I made three colorways because I’m a color whore and can never make up my mind, but I also needed a good range for testing print quality without using their vector color scale directly. It comes in cantaloupe, crushed grape, and ocean (or orange, violet, and sea green if you’re a square). You can buy it here! If you make a project with this fabric, or decide to wallpaper your entire bathroom with it, PLEASE send me pics!! I’d love to see it and show your credited projects on the fabric’s listing…and here!
Now, I’m sure many of you saw the word “giveaway” in my post title, so here we go…leave a comment on this post as to whether or not you eat seafood and why, and you’ll receive my sample fat quarter of Fischaugen in the crushed grape colorway! The giveaway will end on February 14th at midnight, central time, and a winner will be randomly selected. Consider it my Valentine’s gift to you!
happy hunting!
Posted: November 23, 2012 Filed under: atelier k, crafts, DIY, drawing, events, mail, politics, shop | Tags: AOL chatroom, art, atelier k, crafts, Cyber Monday, drawing, Gudrun Gut, koshka zine, objects, personal, sale, shop Leave a comment »I’m having a little sale in my shop this weekend, even though I support buying as little as possible, we still want lovely things! My most-wanted thing right now is Gudrun Gut’s new album Wildlife on LP! Til then I just must indulge in this video for “Garten”:
I’ll be offering 15% off on all items in my shop from Saturday, November 24th until Monday, November 26th at midnight. Just use the coupon code SNOWGLOBE!I’m juggling all these projects in my head but because I have stuff everywhere I would love to have other people own my things and get them out of my house. So you’ll help me clean my house, pay my bills, and support me in general as an artist! If you’re in the US I’ll send things Priority Mail if you’re concerned about giving it as a gift for Christmas, but I can’t really make any guarantees for by-xmas shipping internationally. First Class shipments that I’ve sent lately for Ebay buyers have been pretty fast though.
Consider this my “Cyber Monday” sale, even though I can’t stand that name because it reminds me of being in an AOL chatroom in 1996 and getting an IM that just says , “WANNA CYBER?”. Bleh. In one way, Cyber Monday is great for small businesses and independent artists to offer the same incentives to their supporters that huge corporations can, but in another way it is a bummer because technically most of us can’t afford to selling things for less, even though we want to for our clients or to move older items. So it is a double-edged sword, but I’d much rather people bought on Cyber Monday from independents than on Black Friday! Plus my shipments always include friendly notes and I try to reuse all packaging as much as possible.
i wish life in the US was on sale.
Posted: November 23, 2012 Filed under: crafts, DIY, home, politics | Tags: artist life, Black Friday, Chicago, collars, crafts, crap tv, fabric, food, friends, herringbone, home, knitting, Latvia, laundromat chairs, Marimekko, personal, sewing, Thanksgiving, Tommi Musturi 1 Comment »Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving, if you are American and celebrate it. Mine was pretty low key but nice and fun, and I of course ate a lot which is murder when you have GERD and feel like rubbish the day after. I admit, I was tempted by the barrage of high percentage sales in my inbox this morning, but I told myself, “no way in HELL!” and instead am observing Buy Nothing Day. The concept of Black Friday is so foreign to me, and yet when I see photos of one store a few neighborhoods over with people lined up around the block at 8pm last night, I realize this means I’m in the minority and that more people than not take advantage of Black Friday. I’m not going to say that you’re evil if you take advantage of it; we all like deals and if you need a big, important purchase it could be the cheapest it’s ever going to get. But this year there have been so many big issues around worker’s rights just before Black Friday, what with Papa John’s, Hostess, and Wal-Mart and all, that it seems particularly tasteless to attend Black Friday. And as far as internet sales go, people still have to work to fill those orders, so even though you don’t see them, it’s still a problem. Mainly, I just don’t NEED anything right now. I really wanted to get jeans for 60% off today, but I can’t warrant the purchase of another pair, no matter how cheap. It doesn’t help that last night my Oma was telling me that her first apartment in the city of Chicago after immigrating from Lithuania/Germany had no tub and no hot water–I have weird internal immigrant guilt even though my parents were born here!
Anyways, I spent my Black Friday enjoying my great apartment filled with colorful things that make me happy. Isa napped by my feet while I caught up on trashy television and worked on a knitting project with some chartreuse yarn I bought in Riga. I haven’t knit for ages but I picked it up again quickly after realizing that it is important to look up knitting stitch instructions in English Style–I cannot knit in Continental Style and most directions are as such. It’s a teeny square now but I want to make a braided head/earband for cold days when I want to pin my hair up while it is growing out. If I wear a hat, all the pins get stuck in it!
I also took some nice quality photos of some things around the house and recent projects.
Amazing laundromat chairs that my equally amazing friend Hillary repainted and gifted to us! Hillary just landed upon Seattle to start a new chapter of her life; I’ll miss her a lot but I hope to visit her as soon as I can!
My White sewing machine which I love to death. It was a gift from my dear friend Lauren’s mom, and it is a sturdy, all-metal machine! The new plastic machines weird me out. This thing is a tank!
A friend asked me to create some collars for her sisters for Christmas (I hope they don’t read my blog, hence why I haven’t named any names!). I’m quite happy with how they turned out; the herringbone one is super cute and I may need to make more. The yellow one is made from Marimekko remnants and is reversible!
This one is for me, made out of a Marimekko holiday remnant (to wear at work, I don’t get into “holiday” themes so much).
A knitting project on some Marimekko fabric next to a Tommi Musturi book.
embracing rubbish
Posted: November 15, 2012 Filed under: crafts, DIY, illustration, mail | Tags: artist life, Baltic, crafts, home, illustration, Latvia, Latvijas Pasts, lo-fi technology, Martin Margiela, objects, Rick Owens, scarves, sewing, shop, soft jewelry, textiles, Vitamin D, webcam, winter Leave a comment »Each day it gets a little bit colder in Chicago, which makes me happy! I might be the sole person in the universe that loves winter and snow. Darkness appears around 4pm though; I’d say that is the only part that can be trying on your health. Vitamin D capsules exist for a reason!
Lately all I want to do is play with textiles; it’s that “permanently indoors” feeling that has me attracted to anything with tactility and warmth. There was a bunch of jersey in my fabric bin, so I decided I would play with cutting and minimal sewing to make some scarves. Granted, I need more scarves like a hole in the head, but I came up with this, which I call “The Gill Scarf” because it reminds me of fish gills, seaweed, and other stringy oceanic things. The fabric is very similar in feel to the wool-based jersey Rick Owens uses in his RickOwens.Lilies line, with a bit of Margiela feel as well (he did stringy scarves some time ago, except with narrow knit tubes). So, consider this my Rick Owens and Martin Margiela rip-off scarf, ha. I’m keeping this one because I like the rust color, but I have tons more jersey so perhaps some will end up in the shop (and then never sell, like all things in the shop, hahahahaerrgghh…)
I like how it is less a scarf, more “soft jewelry”.
…then you can stretch it all over your face like you’re in a Fever Ray video.
Tightly twisted two times, it keeps you warmer and messes up your hair perfectly.
Yes yes, crappy webcam photos once again. It’s odd, I was looking at old photos I took in Photobooth and they aren’t remotely as gritty. Either this thing has seen its day or my studio is really dark with too-yellow lights (probably this). However, there’s a quality I like to shit photographs, and now that every single photo from all bloggers ever must be extra perfect and professional, part of me wants to embrace quick, crappy photography. Besides, embracing crappyness has been a big part of how I make art since forever, really. High gloss is really cool but there’s magic to be had in making the worst work for you. Not to mention I have zero money for a DSLR right now, and my actual, free-standing digital camera isn’t much better. Viva la dinosaur technology!
Oh, one last thing…I totally got disqualified from a Latvijas Pasts stamp design contest because I’m not Latvian! This was in no way mentioned in the contest rules, but they totally dropped my ass when they saw that my name wasn’t Latvian. I guess I don’t blame them, it would suck being from a small country and have someone from the US win your contest, but it was a popular vote decision anyhow, so they coulda tossed me in. Just wait til I become a dual citizen once Rob can apply in January! WHO’S NOT LATVIAN ENOUGH NOW?! 
This was my stamp design, a variation from my holiday card design. I’ll probably make this into a Spoonflower fabric soon too!
