oh Yeah, OR Top Chef Finale!

oh Yeah, originally uploaded by lauren minco.

This is a painting for an upcoming show at Machines With Magnets Gallery in Pawtucket, RI. I might try to do one more, piece, but I'm not sure! There's so much to do...

WARNING!!! SPOILER ABOUT THE WINNER OF TOP CHEF SEASON 5!

On another note, I was super angry to see Casey sabotage Carla's chances of winning Top Chef season 5. No, Carla! She lost for a reason! So of course, the first dishes that were 100% Carla were well received by the judges, but anything that Casey touched fell flat (or bubbled if it was the souffle). I was hoping Carla would "hold onto the love child!", but in the end she was swayed by Casey and made some bad decisions.

Hosea was my second choice to win, mainly because I dislike Stefan. My friends and I agree that Stefan is uber talented, but we just didn't like him as much due to his cocky attitude (and it oddly mirrored Kenley's lasting negative presence on the most recent Project Runway. Bad attitudes just turn us off I guess). So in the end I tip off my hat to Hosea, but I hope Carla wins the $10,000 "Fan Favorite" prize.

In the words of Carla: "and he wants PEEEEAS!".

Future Products (give me your awesome opinion)

Even though my Etsy store has all originals right now, I have been inspired by other friends/artists to try making professional prints through iolabs here in Rhode Island. I was printing them myself in 2008, but after a while the operation was too much to fit into my daily life. Sooo, I am making a small run of a few prints and deciding which images should be used for journals! Yup, wonderful spiral bound notebooks will hopefully be in the shop soon as well.

I would love to get some opinions on which images you are attracted to- either as prints, journals, or both. This is just a sampling of imagery, and feel free to visit www.laurenminco.com if you would like to nominate one off my website! Thanks so much for the help everyone.

Sticker Preview, Mudpuppy Press

Hey ho everyone. Here is a sneak preview of my sticker book for Mudpuppy Press in New York. The book will contain about 40 stickers on 4 pages repeated twice, so 8 pages total. 

  I feel like a lot of artists talk about what it's like to work from home and have your studio nearby, but I thought I'd give praise to my mate who deals with living with an artist who has her studio smack dab in the middle of the apartment! He's more of a neat freak, too, so the fact that he was okay with small paintings and my scanner all over our office floor was appreciated. My laundry was drying on chairs for five days and we ate frozen pizzas quite a bit! So thank you, babe. I'm happy to say we had a home-cooked dinner last night and he's enjoying a much more relaxed girlfriend now that there are no more stickers to work on.

Providence Monthly

 I have been gone a loooooong time, but thankfully the stickers are done! I'm hoping to post a couple of them soon for a sneak preview. I've been told the sticker book will be at the gift shows in August and will be officially available January 2010. So, I definitely won't have them for a while, but I can be patient.

On another note, I'm doing a piece for Providence Monthly Magazine. It's a spot for mineral make up, and the AD was nice enough just to let me do pretty much whatever I wanted. I've been curious to try a more monochromatic sketchy look. The sketches are below- I think I'm leaning towards the one with just the brush and no container (less bulky).