Back in Action!

Hey there, I'm back and in 99% fight mode after my surgery two weeks ago. I'd had surgery done on my left wrist to take care of a problem I've had for a few years. They feel the surgery was a success, and I'm looking forward to full mobility in my wrist soon. :)


I have several pieces in a show coming up this week at Space 242 (242 E. Berkeley St. in South Boston). The first opening is this Friday, April 30th from 6 - 8, and the second opening is next Friday, May 7th, from 6 - 8. I hope to see you there! RSVP here!!

I've also been working on a few more pieces for an upcoming tattoo design book I'm apart of. Here's the linework for a sailor's grave illustration I had done.




ONE LAST THING!!! Tomorrow, Wednesday April 28th at Blick Art Materials, we're celebrating our 100th year anniversary by giving every customer 25% off their entire purchase. I'll be there with bells on (and sweet boots), and we'll be giving out free food, prizes, coupons, balloons, and Starbucks/Chipotle! You should come visit and let me dazzle with your knowledge of art supplies!!

Oilhead: Finished design

Hey guys, I just finished the t-shirt design for my friend Britteny's band Oilhead.

I'm really happy to have gotten to do some apparel design, and I can't wait to see them printed. It was a nice challenge to have to work around the printing process (whites under colors to make sure they pop out on black) and solving some technical issues via Photoshop. Did I mention how AMAZING it is to work on a computer that works?? 600 res files? Pshhh, my computer can handle that. In fact, it can handle several.


I also finished that mural for Blick - if you happen to be in the Fenway area in Boston, you should stop by my store and check it out! It'll only be up for the next week or two, but I'm really pleased with how it came out, especially the mum. (Don't pay any attention to the wayward maple leaf...)


Thanks for looking! More art updates soon.

October is Art Month

New window mural sketch for Blick for a contest.

This will be approximately 12 feet by 12 feet on the middle glass window at Blick, facing the street.

I also made little cutouts of leaves that I'm going to hang from the ceiling on the sides. I think it's going to look pretty!


It'll be started and finished tomorrow, so come by Fenway and check it out!

Thanks for looking!

Back from the Grave

Hey everybody, I'm back from my leave of absence. Lots of things have been going on, including adjusting to full-time at Blick and learning to bike 50 - 60 miles a week without wanting to die. (I'm getting muscles!)

I've been doing a lot of prepwork for pieces, but I'm still working out the main compositions for a lot of new pieces. I've been collecting old wooden panels for the last 6 months off of ebay, from goodwill, second hand stores, outside sales, antique stores, craft stores, and yard sales. I've been painting and sanding and spray painting and ruining my lungs as much as possible.

I got to do a quick demo at Blick for the Blick acrylic paints - I had 5 colors to work with, and I had a ton of fun. I got to talk to a lot of pre-art school artists, and it was nice to get a first-hand feel for a product I sell. I really like knowing the ins and outs of art supplies - I've got all the information I would ever need to do art-related stuff.

Now I just have to make more art!

More updates over the next couple of days. Thanks for watching!

This week, I proved myself. (long-winded)

This week, I proved myself to my boss that I'm reliable, and I proved to myself that I'm committed to my work and meeting deadlines outside of school (not like I had a bad track record before). I showed my boss and myself that I'm unphased by being told, "No, this won't work," and instead can take that as an opportunity to push myself a little harder and create something better, even if it's work that I wouldn't normally do myself.

I make fliers for Blick. I paint the 30-foot long windows for Blick. And I'm usually given about 1-3 days to think up an idea, sketch out a composition, work it out in my head, and make it happen. The windows that are up now aren't my favorite - an octopus with art supplies in its tentacles isn't my idea of something mindblowing and newage and compositionally clever, but my boss liked it, and with time restraints, that's what happened. (I wanted munnies and dunnies painted like famous artists and papercraft monsters doing art, but oh well.)

So here are the fliers I made this past week.

This was my first attempt at our Midnite/Midnight/Moonlight Madness sale flier. I wanted to have a lot of fun with this one, and I've been working in the past year to have fewer text elements and work more with creating my own texts (like Mark Reusch and Dan Blakeslee and Brian Butler). So I had a lot of fun with this one, and it was quirky, and I got to use a million half-tone patterns like I love to and it was good. Hand inked.

But the problem my District Manager had with this is that... it has nothing to do with art, or art supplies, visually. And once I realized that, I kind of smacked myself in the forehead. I had gotten so carried away with doing something I thought would draw college kids in that I forgot to add elements that would be relevant to the content the flier was advertising.

So my boss was worried that I'd be upset when I heard what the DM had to say. But I sat there as she read the email and just started thinking. We thought of ideas that would have it please all sides. My boss told me that she was proud of me for being such a big kid about it and being so willing to fix/change it. That meant a lot to me.

So this is the flier we chose.

Not so visually interesting it will make you seize, but it gets the message across, clearly, sweetly, and it's still in my style (with lots and lots of delicious half-tones). My boss loved it, the DM loved it, and now there are a thousand copies of it circulating throughout Boston. Once again, I forgot to put my signature on the flier, but I'm just not used to signing my artwork yet. People will realize I did it later, hopefully.

Either way, I solved all of the problems that were set out before me, and I did it in an extremely short amount of time. And by short, I mean I had 2 hours to think up something, draw it, organize it in Photoshop, add tasteful text, color it digitally in greyscale, and still have it look like something I drew that I would like. So I think I did that well.



However. Because the sale is on the 22nd, the Art Institute of Boston doesn't start their classes until the 26th, so they would have to miss the sale. And instead of them missing it, we decided to have another night especially for them, where they can get the sale price on all their supplies for classes, something I thought was very thoughtful and smart of my boss to do to get business from a very prominent art school in the area. That Lisa's always thinking. So I was asked to do another flier, in the style of a VIP backstage pass. I never realized how awesome backstage pass artwork was until I looked it up - people made artwork for famous musicians just for shows, something so exclusive that only the band, some special guests, and the bouncers would ever see until ebay would come into existence. So I had a lot of fun with this one. I wanted it to be really MTV, graphic design-y, and Poison-roses-and-thorns-and-tribal-tattoo-swirls and crap. It was a lot of fun, and it helped me focus on text as the most important element on the piece, something I normally don't do. It was a switch, and I enjoyed it.

I know this piece got rather long, but I wanted to show you that aside from the paintings I've been doing and the sketches for Degree Project along with their color studies and my independent work, I've been meeting deadlines with a company and making a name for myself as a reliable artist and graphic designer. I'm more focused than I've ever been, and art has been surrounding my life and my thoughts at every turn, which I love.



So now I'm going to paint a caterpillar with a skull mask.
ALSO I BOUGHT RUB-ON HALF TONE PATTERNS AND I'M GOING TO USE THEMMMM. <333333

A woman holds her tongue, knowing silence will speak for her.

Today, I spent twelve and a half hours at work. Twelve and a half. Creating a beautiful mural with Alex Carlson for Blick. With one break. With an aching wrist and a short fuse. I remember a bunch of sad Elvis songs coming on and thinking of Jerry, which did not help my mood.

It was grueling.

But! The mural looks great. It's a new piece to put on my resume. Something that I can be proud of, something that was my design, something that will be passed by thousands of people between now and April when the new one goes up.

Was it worth it? Yes. I needed time to remember to focus on my art and to get something done without any excuse. If it didn't get done, no one else would do it. Well, they'd do it, but they wouldn't do it the way I would, the way I had envisioned it to be. So I'm proud that my design made it up there, without any half-assing on anyone's part and without just throwing in the towel halfway through because I was frustrated and sore and grumpy. I'm proud of myself and of Alex for just pushing through and getting it done. Though it was a low-paying one, it was still an accomplishment, and I know my mum will be proud of me. So it was worth it.

Between that and all of the chaos going on, I NEED to spend a shitload of time in my studio. I need to remember how much the working atmosphere does me good. It's important for me to keep producing finishes, to have work to look back on later so I can improve.


I'm feeling better about things. I'm not letting things get to me anymore. What's done is done and what's in the past is in the past. Time to move forward. I can finally focus on me and no one else so that I can become the person I want to be. I'm hopeful. I'm willing. I'm able. I'm Allison "Bamcat" Bamford.

Blick winter windows.

As you may or may not know, I paint the windows now outside of Blick Art Materials (where I work) in Fenway. There's amazing foot traffic in that area, which is a great way to get my work noticed, and there's a company-wide contest for the windows we paint in the window, and if we get picked for having the best windows, we get a party. The task of painting the windows has been passed down to me this year after two of my favorite people left Blick for different life paths, so I'm excited for the opportunity.

My boss decided she wanted a big snowglobe in the middle with Boston inside. (I wanted yetis playing in the snow, but oh well.) Each window is 10' x 10', with lots of annoying supports and borders in between, which are tricky to work around, but that's okay. This year my incredibly talented peer and coworker Alex Carlson will be helping me, but I MUST do the linework. It's very important to me because I get very few opportunities to paint large, so it's very relaxing and meditative to make long sweeping strokes with big brushes. It makes me happy. <3

Here's the mockup. Expect to see these babies done in the next week or two.

I should be asleep.

Showed Brian Butler my Ice Cream People piece. He liked it! Yay! So hopefully that'll be up soon. I'll let you know. In the meantime, check out the other entries in his gallery! They're awesome!!

Other than that, went flyering today at MassArt. Accidentally slept through my english class. Been burnt out lately. But I'm spending the weekend with my family (we're going to Salem for my sister's birthday), and we have an extra day off next week, so that'll give me more time to get my stuff done... even though I'm caught up/ahead with everything.

Also, I'm making a new flyer for Blick, for our Montana spray paint demo, which will be AWESOME. Artists for Humanity is going to be there demonstrating, and we generally have a good time on demo day. It's one day out of every few where my managers aren't stressed, the customers aren't cranky, and my coworkers are joyous. Maybe we'll have snacks again this time.
But, uh, here's my guy that I made up for my flyer. I like having a hand-done element in all of my flyers. They're becoming more completely hand-done each time I do one. I think I have a dozen or so to start a portfolio with so far. Sweet.


And yes, he has a Decepticon belt buckle. Hell yes.