Please Stay, LBMC Loves You

One of my dreams was to work at a summer camp, a little odd, I know. I just always wanted to go to a place where I could impact a large amount of children in one place and what better place to do that than camp!? After applying to several camps I chose Lake Bryn Mawr Camp (LMBC). What an experience!

Throughout the summer I, along with 3 other photographers, took photos of about 380 young girls everyday with the goal of making sure each one had a daily photo. Mid-way through the summer one of the campers was home sick and dealing with the loss of her grandmother. She was going to go home, but we wanted her to stay!

As a parting gift a staff member came up with the idea of putting a book together with photos of this camper and her friends. I thought the idea was great, only I didn't think printing them on white paper and stapling them was the best idea. With the help of the Web Office (Jackie, Kaylyn, Rachel, Matt, Karen and Dallas), we worked non-stop to make this vision come to life. When I say non-stop, I mean straight through lunch. The ironic part of it all was that for the longest time we actually thought that this camper was someone else (horrible, I know). But after this day that wasn't an issue, obviously.

We had 4 hours to sort through thousands of photos, print them, and make this compilation for a 3D collage. I have never seen team work like this ever in my life! The white poster board was for photographic purposes only!

Our efforts worked because she ended up staying :)

Gill Sans and Me

I mentioned in my previous post that I used letters from my font to make a composition, but that's not the first time I used that technique. The first time I did this was with the font Gill Sans. Little did I know that someone else had the same idea with the same font until I began researching it's origin, uses, etc. and found Mrs. Gill (I can't find the original sketchblog, but this is the image). After meeting Mrs. Gill, I played matchmaker/Creator and made Adam aka Mr. Gill (he took her last name).

In my research I learned that many companies use Gill Sans in their logos. Most people are familiar with companies such as Wikimedia, Philips (electronics), Saab Automobile, Nintendo (with Pokémon trading card game text), Firedog, House (TV series) and the only reason it (Gill Sans) even exists is because of: LNER (London and North Eastern Railway, a British Railway).

There are a few spreads that I came up with from my Gill Sans exploration. One was a tribute to Saab Automobile. Each element of the car once again is a different character from Gill Sans. I also recreated the logo (on the left) in Adobe Illustrator to match the illustrated look of the rest of the composition.

Signature Piece, Ejoy330 and Panda

This is probably the best introduction of my work, if any. I don't really feel like only one of my pieces sums up Elaina Hamilton as an artist, but I suppose starting with my font works.

I created a font: Ejoy330. In addition to creating my own font, I composed what I call Panda.

I have this recent fascination with Asian culture. I think it started when American Idol went to Japan. I realized, maybe for the first time, that they, Asians, are beyond the world artistically. Forward movement, like most things, comes from thinking outside of the box. They do just that.

Ejoy330 was created April 2008. My intention was to give each stroke the illusion of an Asian character, this can be seen mainly in portions of the letters t, k, f, v, x and a few others.

"Panda" is meant to be a reflection of Ejoy330, hints the Bamboo and Panda Bears. If you pay close attention to the elements of the piece you will see that the bamboo, pandas and the fence they are sitting on are all made from a letter of the font. I used mainly commas and the letter "i" for the trees. A few more of my pieces have the same technique, you will see.