Traci's Artwork

I love to create all kinds of art! I used to paint acrylic designs on all my clothes, sequin everything, paint watercolor comics of my friends (below, with Ted Narcotic of our Seattle public access show) and I loved to sculpt little nature spirit faces and make jewelry. In highschool, I made tons of beads and troll faces out of Fimo clay. Every night I would have to make a new necklace to wear to school the next day!! I used to come home from school in highschool and create a new necklace out of hand made clay beads every night. I would sit on the floor in the living room and roll the beads after dinner, bake them in the oven, then string them onto a necklace!

My first stage of necklace making, which began in highschool, was big colorful chunky beads in bright colors. I used Fimo clay to roll out each bead! Every bead you see below I rolled by hand from clay except for the shiny silver or metallic beads.

Below I incorporated a few store bought wooden beads and silver coins and also twigs I found in the forest. The colored swirled beads are made from making a rolled up "log" of layered colors of clay, (like a sushi roll!) then slicing the log into thin flat pieces for each bead. In the necklace below on the right, I also stuck many of these circular slices onto a larger round bead, and made hearts too.

My beads started getting smaller, and I loved making roses out of clay. The middle necklaces are watercolored clay beads, and guess what natural material was used to make the 2 necklaces below on the right? We had a pet bunny, and...it's funny what you can paint when you get really creative!! Ha!!

The necklaces below are real red roses from my parents garden! Plus clay painted with watercolor paint, and swirled clay beads.

In college, I loved hand sewing little purses, juggling bean bags, clay bottles for homemade natural beauty oils, and started painting on all my shoes and clothes in college. I went through a long phase of painting flames on every article of clothing! Skulls & crossbones too.

I also started doing funny watercolor comic strips to entertain all my friends & relatives. I also sewed scores of juggling bags and purses. The clothes painting period lasted all through college, the circus (where I only painted spandex) and finally petered out. Then I went through a phase where I could only wear pink. I'm pretty much still in that phase!

In college, where I got my degree in Interdisciplinary Visual Art, I did some huge, crazy projects for my art classes!! The flame cage (below), for example, is welded rebar. The professor suspended it a few inches from the floor and I sang a little song inside it for the class. I wanted to hang it much higher and light it on fire, but he said no!!

The tonguemobile was made from malt o'meal and oil paint on clay with skateboard wheels.

The flaming goatee was so fun!! I stuck huge pine needles on a painted white cardboard sheet, and sang a song about it to the class while dressed as a devil. See, the goatee was a replica of the one on my professor's chin, and the song I made up was about how his goatee snuck off his face while he was sleeping and had a wild adventurous nightlife!! There was a reporter in our class that day, and she thought I dressed like a devil every day. I thought, Wow!! That's a great idea!!

I rode the bus home that night, but no one stared too much, although I still had my horns on. The people on the bus were used to me being weird. After all, they saw me in all my different spandex outfits everyday! (I was going through a hot pink, red, and animal print spandex phase then) So the horns probably weren't too out of place!

The clown box was big enough for me to sit inside, and I popped out of it for the class, and recited a funny little poem.

The devil picture is an oil painting, and the only one I ever had fun doing!!! I loathe oil paint because it's so smelly, messy, and it takes forever to dry!! I got in big trouble once because I tried to oil paint an autumn "landscape scene" the night before it was due. I stayed up all night blow drying it, and the huge canvas was still goopy, lumpy, smelly, and SO wet when I had to take it on the Very crowded bus to class early the next morning!! More than a few commuters went to work a teensy bit more colorful I think. Once I got it to class, the professor strolled right over, stuck his finger in it, and glared at me. He was always making snarky comments about my paintings because the fruit bowl in the middle of the room that I was supposed to be recreating on my canvas always ended up flying through space, growing polka dots or sprouting wings, and there was usually a zebra or giraffe involved.

The gummy bear g-string is one of my absolute favorites!! It's made entirely of gummy bear candy strung together with red elastic thread. I had it displayed in the Erotic Bakery in Seattle for a couple weeks once. Many years later, and it still looks great!! The gummy bears are more like rock candy now, but they still smell sweet.

Here I'm wearing my Slug Suit, which is a spandex leopard catsuit adorned with some handsewn and painted slugs, stuffed with batting and little antlers made from clay, and other slugs made from a metal mold. It was a metal making class, but I was always being naughty and trying to do as little metal as possible. The fumes!!! Notice my classmates ignoring my Sluggy antics. This was normal behavior for both parties!

After college, I started my public access show and began sequining everything!! I settled on sequining bras. I still enjoy painting and inventing, and hope to start doing acrylic and watercolor paintings again. For the time being, filming, web design, and video editing have all my attention.