What is that?
Well, the link gives you tons of details but long story short, the Rochester Contemporary Art Center has an open show (meaning anyone can send stuff, no jury) but the catch is your art has to be 6x6 in size. Any medium (except no glitter or unfixed charcoals/pastels) but it needs to be 6x6. If it's smaller you need to put it on a 6x6 mat. Bigger? Don't even send it, they only want 6x6.
They collect up the art and then have a big show and each piece is available for purchase ($20 each). The funds go to the art center.
How fun is that, right?
When this crossed my radar my first thought was PATCHES!
I've had two patch ideas in my head for a while but no real reason (no, making them just to make them wasn't reason enough for me, sadly) to make them. But with this opportunity, the time was right.
You can submit up to four pieces. I made three. Two of them were the patch ideas I've had for a while.
Here they are:
"We Come in Peace"
I've wanted to make this patch for a while. Ever since I made the Lizard/Spock patches and the "Oh My" George Takei patch. I needed to make an Uhura patch using the funky peace loving alien fabric I bought just because it was fabulous (oh, how many times I've used that reasoning to buy fabric. . .that's why my stash is so freaking fun!).
Super simple. Just heat and bond Uhura to the sweet alien fabric, add some embroidery (and some machine stitching) and add some beads to Uhura's ear area (to mimic that giant ass communicator thing she used to have to wear on her ear. . .that thing was NUTS!). I gifted off all of my peace symbol fabric (I think it was all of it) so I used some funky flower print for the back
"The Caged Bird Sings"
Yes, that is a farting cat. Yes, I've wanted to make this patch ever since I used this same fabric and made a similar patch (only without the fart, if memory serves). I think the original patch was a cat with a fish in its stomach and one with a bird and I called it Fish or Fowl. But when I was making that patch I noticed the butt in the air cat and immediately thought he was cutting a fart and those other cats were talking about how nasty he was.
This one was even SIMPLER. I just added the button, embroidered the music notes (and fart lines) and that was that. I used some scrap fabric for the backing.
"I Want You"
This one was thought up when I was gathering the fabrics for the other two. Of course once I started thinking about the Uhura patch I remember how awesome the "Oh My" (George Takei) patch was (it had a sexy man's torso with the Sulu image from the Star Trek fabric looking at it and the catch phrase "Oh My!" embroidered on it. There were also french knot nipples which amused me because deep inside I'll always be a 14 year old boy) and how great that sexy man fabric is. (let me pause for a moment to note how the entire line of beefcake boys fabric is fabulous and more risque then you notice at first. . .I love when I find it at Joanns because Joanns just feels like such an uptight old church lady store and there are bolts of fabric with shirtless men with pubey happy trails. . .HAPPY TRAILS! yeah, that amuses me a lot)
So I really wanted to use some more of my patriotic beefcake boy fabric. At first I wanted to be less subtle and take one of the shirtless men and put the rocket pop in his hand. I even had one guy who was playing a flute and I wanted to put the rocket pop in his hand instead of the flute but I was worried that might be too R rated for this event (even though there's nothing in the submission info that you have to keep it "family friendly" but I didn't need to work blue, really). I was also worried it just wouldn't look good (like it would look stupid, not just silly/fun).
Then I noticed the fully clad sexy uncle Sam beefcake. He's looking all cheeky. The way he's winking and pointing. Yeah, he knows what you're thinking when you look at that rocket pop with its glistening red tip. Oh, he knows and he approves. God bless America, land of the free and home of sweet phallic treats.
I debated for a second about using the text from the fabric (under the sexy Sam image it read "I want you to love yourself". . .I think that's what it said) but that seemed too obvious, too. And there really wasn't room for the "I want you" text. I didn't want to cover up his pointing hand so I saved that bit of text for some other project. Less was more with this one.
Super simple, too. Just heat and bond Sam to the rocket pop fabric and that was it. Then I used some of my very favorite heart fabric for the back.
I also did something I never do with my patches and I signed them all on the back. I made little iron on name tags and added them to the back. Hey, if someone wants to follow my instagram because they saw my silly patches, that would be cool.
I really hope someone buys them. I think they're cheeky and fun enough someone (with a glass or two of wine in them) would unroll a 20 and buy one. It would be cool if the art center could make $60 off these silly things.
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