Amy Ruppel’s deer chaboo has found a home in Venice Beach, California.  Yes, there are deer in Southern California… well… now there are.

1 block from the beach!  Not bad

One of my favorite artists and certainly the sweetest, Amy Ruppel has created a unique custom painting for my office.  I still had the 1/4″ MDF template that we used to make her deer chaboo (shown below) and I had her paint it.  Its hard to believe but its her first time painting on an irregular, non-rectangular canvas.

In this painting she combined digital printouts with hand etching and covered the whole surface in white wax.  I love the delicacy of the deer form and her composition is of course, uncanny.

Check out her website here to see her other work. She does a lot of digital design work but can also work by hand.   She has done work for big companies such as Burton snowboards and Target as well as for us little people  Shes one of my favorite artists because she has a spirit and attitude of fun and warmth.  Thanks for a great painting Amy!

Check out this experiment by my friend Amy Ruppel.  She took some laser samples Joe Mansfield made her for Project Chaboo and backfilled with white wax. So cool!

This is the lasering on her chaboo inlayed with laser cut felt.

Id like to experiment with backfilling cracks in wood with colored wax.  More on that coming soon….

Amy creates these paintings with paper, oils, and a beeswax/resin mixture.  The image above is from her state bird series where she painted every single state bird!  I love the concept.

Designer/artists extroardinare Amy Ruppel is doing a deer chaboo in a collaboration between myself, her, and Joe Mansfield.  She approached me with some drawings of using a cutout deer silhouette as the center spline of the chaboo and some hand cut felt placed on the chaboo.

Joe had told me about an idea last year of  inlaying lasercut felt perfectly into a laser cut recess so that the felt lays flush with the surface but we had never actually done it.  Realizing this technique would be perfect for Amy we headed to Joes laser shop to discuss.  Hes the best at doing weird and fun things with the laser!  Here are Amys drawings for her chaboo.

Project Chaboo is such a great excuse to do cool experimental things that we never get around too cause we’re too busy trying to make money.
radiusing the deer from Ken Tomita on Vimeo.

I had Amy make a template for me out of 1/4″ MDF.  I then used a straight bit with a bearing to copy that form onto 3/4″ baltic birch plywood.  Here I am radiusing Amy Ruppel’s deer with a 1/16″ roundover bit on the router table.

Amy taking off with her deer.  Bring it back please!

Amy steals the deer from Ken Tomita on Vimeo.

Deer adventure to be continued…

I had the chance to go to the opening last wed at the Mark Woolley gallery featuring two chaboo artists, Amy Ruppel and Evan B. Harris.  The show was to feature their individual work and also some collaborative pieces they did.   I had never seen their work in person nor met them before so I was psyched to go.

The arrangement was such that you could see each artist individually and the collaboration in the same space.  Amy’s work on the left and Evans work on the right.  In between those two was the series that they collaborated on- Amy did the rabbit and Evan did the flora into the wax around it in this example.  The work was… well it speaks for itself- beautiful!  The energy that collaboration can create was really showcased here and encouraging for me.

It was great to meet them and get an insiders scoop on their process and inspiration.  We talked briefly about their chaboo ideas.  Amy wants to do something with thick pieces of felt and Evan wants to build and paint a ship motif onto a chaboo.  Ambitious! Im in! Their enthusiasm for trying something new is awesome.

The show continues through Feb 28 at the Mark Woolley gallery.  Check it!