My friend, Annika, is, among many things, one smart cookie. Well read, diverse interests, college and worldly educated, quick to make connections, gets the big and small pictures. I love to hear her talk "technical" about her work (she's an awesome letterpress artist) as well as her thoughts and opinions about the art process overall...which is why when she points to one of my creations and makes a comment about it, I PAY ATTENTION. Having graduated from a REAL art school and having an intuitive eye for design, the girl knows what she's talking about.

One day I was at her studio and she mentioned how much she liked my pieces with "negative space." Most of what I know about art I learned through graphic design classes. In graphic design, "negative space" is more frequently referred to as "white space." They both mean the same thing ~ Annika just sounds more CULTURED than I do when talking about the effect (and I don't mean that in a pretentious way...trust me, she is the furthest thing from pretentious...just that is sounds SMARTER). Regardless, I still prefer the term "white space" simply because "negative space" sounds so, well, negative! And it also sounds like I'm EXCLUDING something. When I create these pieces, I actually feel like I'm INCLUDING something ~ I'm USING the white space, not ignoring it.

You say toe-may-toe, I say toe-ma-toe.

Anyway, she was on my mind when I decided to practice more with white space. Like with the circle theme I talked about a few days ago, I've dabbled with white space before. This time though, it was more about CREATING than EXPERIMENTING (well, there's always an element of experimenting when it comes to marbling).

I'm really pleased with the way some of these turned out. They, of course, look better in person (it's really HARD to photograph large pieces). Over the next few days, I'll bring you a few more highlights ~ and some of the so-so's ~ of my White Space series. Hope you enjoy!