lina @bonesandgold
a download of some of co-founder lina’s favorite projects, as we enter *year four* of overall creative!
1. favorite mural in general that you designed?
One for an “undisclosed tech company” in Oregon. It was one of the first times I had a client challenge me to mix my two styles - the colorful pattern and the crosshatching. Their direction was clear and decisive and pushed me to design something that is still my favorite over a year later! There are a few design elements that feel like a flip flop of my styles, like the dalmatian pattern that has hints of the black and white crosshatch drawings I love to do while also having layers and layers of color followed by a phthalo blue (my favorite color!) crosshatched fern. It was also just a great experience overall, to be in sunshine-y eastern oregon in december, audiobooking and painting with the most vibrant color palette.
2. most fun assisting an artist with their own install?
Helping Fox Spears paint a mural for Meta. They are one of the most funny, relaxed and wonderful humans I have ever had the pleasure to work with. Having not painted many murals, Fox needed help with the procurement of supplies, set up and painting. Every interaction was just SO CHILL, from choosing paint colors to mixing paints to playing on-site. Wanting to help but not take away from the detailed magic of Fox’s textures in their screen prints I followed their lead on the very playful, and organic way of painting the mountain scape. It looked something like ripping up blue tape to feather edges of the painting and taping them in a random pattern to show all the little dips in the Earth’s texture.
This install was mixed media, so one of the days we spent watching movies and beading felt that was glued to red triangles. We both learned new skills together, like learning to use a nail gun, and to ALWAYS double check the hose otherwise it’ll flail and almost impale someone. We laughed so much during this job from inside jokes, fake accents and sharing personal stories that I cannot wait for the next project we work on together. Top notch collaboration.
3. favorite sign painting job? since you’re a sign painter now!
Might be the first one with tiny letters I had to tackle myself. I’ve always leaned on sign painters around me to tackle the hard parts and we were working on a multi-component / many wall project for UpLift Northwest (previously known as the Millionaire’s Club) in Belltown in which we took each day as it came. And then, the day for the tiny letters came - and I just started painting without thinking about it. Years of watching my mentors and Seattle’s most known sign painters had finally paid off and I was so proud of the two inch letters saying “hello” in 6 six languages that I painted that day. Having had the foundation (levels, tape and a good ol sign painting brush), and the confidence of my line work, it was surprisingly easy - with minimal frustration on my part! Not going to lie though, the pressure of the public realm was gone and I was able to back paint with our background color where I needed to! But having had done this, going into the next sign painting jobs wasn’t daunting and it’s a really fun component of the work we take on!
4. favorite time where you managed a creative project?
I loooooove working with Sarah Robbins (always!), and I really love giving things a second life. So a collab between a good friend and shopping at every GoodWill in the greater Seattle area to find an exact amount of black, gray and white cassette tapes for an install at the Blackbird Apartments in Redmond, WA was a dream come true. I spent three months rummaging through Goodwill music sections to open every case and count cassette tapes to get exactly 1488 cassette’s that would be glued in the mail room to spell out “Blackbird.” I had boxes in my den where I counted and organized the tapes after every shopping trip to know the goals for the next one. This whole process was very satisfying as I grew up organizing and counting anything I could get my hands on - towels in hotel rooms, stones in my parents jewelry shop or books on our bookshelves.
Also, because I love a fun fact - did you know black cassette tapes are by far the hardest to find? Seems like they all come from Canada and the US was keen on producing the gray ones that were in all our parents cars growing up.