Category Archives: Five Questions

Earlier this month we were joined by friend and Grand Rapids artist, Christina Mrozik. After the two hour workshop we were blown away by her humble spirit, teaching posture, and (needless to say) genius. One of my favorite things about our guest artists are the lack of pretension. Thursday’s are chock full of honest conversation about the paths behind us and the way they shape us as artists, designers, poets, accountants, farmers, or whateverers. Anyways, back to Christina – seriously unbelievable. Have you seen her work in person? Have you seen her show at Madcap? If not, then geesh…do it already. Until then, here’s this month’s installment of Five Questions with one of the most insightful humans you’ll ever get the chance to meet – Christina Mrozik.

1. Talk us through the creation of a piece from concept to finishing touches. 

You know, each piece is pretty different. Sometimes I get an idea and I can visualize it finished, floating in my head without putting a mark down. This could happen while reading, or sitting in my car, or falling asleep. Other times I am working on a sketch and I let it organically flow and change until it becomes an idea I can get behind. Needless to say, I have notebooks everywhere.

When I begin to put the idea down on paper, I usually start with the face. I sketch it out first because I want to be sure that I can capture the right feel and emotion, and if I can’t get it down, I don’t want to start over after investing 50 hours. Once I have that down, I could go anywhere with it. I don’t work in order… sometimes I finish one part entirely before I even have laid a light pencil sketch down for another part. My rule is keep working. So if I don’t know how one part of the drawing is going to turn out, or what I want it to be, I work on the part that I do understand. This helps keep me from dawdling.  Any drawing takes me between 20-140 hours, and are typically done with ink pens, markers, watercolor, and sometimes acrylic. I layer them over on another until the drawing looks as if it was made with one tool. When I finish a piece, sometimes I’m adding marks and I just know when to stop, while other times I hang it up on my wall and live with it for a couple weeks to see if I notice any changes or finishing touches that need to be added. Then I scan it, and try to find it a home!

2a. During our workshop you said that “everything we make is essentially a self portrait.” Explain?

We can only be ourselves, and because of that we can only make work that describes ourselves (our thoughts and perspective) in any given situation. Whether we are trying to understand something, to cope with something, or to grow in something we are never actually able to separate from ourselves entirely from the task at hand. I was noticing that there are times when I find myself making images that I can’t immediately explain, but when I look back on the piece, I always see a theme that somehow correlates to the different types of emotional, physical and psychological relationship that was directly part of my life when I was working on the drawing2b. Where do you see yourself in your work?

This is a probing question, and maybe a little personal, but completely correlates to what my work is about; inter connectivity. I often feel that I am metaphorically the main character of my drawings. Lately I have been creating animals that are physically linked to each other and their connection is both their life force, and their demise. I think that this is probably expressing different battles that are waging within myself and helping me see the good and bad within each struggle. For example, the war between what my mind wants to accomplish, and what my body is physically capable of doing. The strive for perfect love through faith and yet the unseverable tie to human fault. The need to grow independent yet also remain in tune with my family, even when that’s hard. We people are complicated, and beautiful, and irrational and changing. It does not matter our ethnicity, age, location, or gender, we are all constantly weighing questions trying to magically control or figure out our future. I think right now I’m making work about the struggle of being in between, and realizing that while my I am within every piece, so is everyone else.

3. What’s one thing you wish you would have known as a high school student?

Having questions is okay. Questioning leads to seeking, and seeking is one of the most important things we do in life. There will always be unknown paths and I know that we often wish we had things figured out, but it’s okay to question and grapple with the hard things in life. If you aren’t quite sure where your going, that’s okay. Just make sure that you’re working toward figuring out one thing at a time, even if it’s simply what to eat for breakfast. And when people ask, just tell them what you know, and don’t worry about the rest.

4. What’s inspiring you / piquing your curiosity right now?

Right now I’m trying to form some hobbies. Art was my hobby, but now it’s my profession! So I recently got a banjo, and am going to become a bluegrass star.  Just kidding, but I do love singing and have been trying to incorporate more music into my life. It’s a simple idea, but I believe the more venture’s I try, the more common ground I find between different modes of thought. It also helps me learn a lot more about myself!

5. What’s you’re favorite place in West Michigan?

There’s this park near Cannonsburg that I really love to go to, especially in the fall. There’s a creek that runs through it with little rock bridges and it has nice patches of hike-able woods and picnic-able grasses. I find it’s always a place I can center myself, and for some reason, cinnamon doughnuts taste way better there.

This past month at Ambrose our workshops were dedicated to the foundation of the modern word: letters. We were lucky to have Drew Melton of the Phraseology Project design this month’s tee and share what he’s learned thus far in a student workshop on typography. Drew’s self initiated Phraseology Project started with the simple goal: allow people to submit phrases they love and turn them into type candy. The results? Since it’s launch in February the project has drawn 16,000 submissions and 55,000 unique visits. Ballin’. After our workshop with students we sat down with over a bowl of ice cream to learn a little more (five questions specifically) of his story.

Ambrose – Have you always nerded out on typography? How has your interest in it shaped your work over the last few years?

Drew Melton – Actually, no! At least, I didn’t really know I was “nerding out” on typography for a long time. All through college I was completely unaware that people actually worked with letters as their full-time job. It just seemed to be a natural by-product of graphic design. Over time, I have become more and more focused on just the letters themselves. Typography reflects the things we do, the objects we use, our moods, etc. That’s what I love about it now. The amount of communication you can pack into a word or phrase just through the style or the color. It’s wonderful.

Take us through a Phraseology project start to finish. What’s your process?

Well, we have a large database of submissions (somewhere around 16,000 right now thanks to our awesome visitors) and when one catches my eye or I feel like I have a good idea for it. I select it and start sketching. Almost right away. I have found that the sooner I commit to getting the phrase down on paper and playing with it. The better I can understand the letters and how they need to work on the page. Sometimes the piece comes together quickly. Sometimes I have to rework my idea endlessly.

I try to get my pieces to a level of detail high enough so that I can scan and start outlining in Illustrator right away! Normally my time in Illustrator is the hardest because I create so many lines in my work. So there is a lot of the Pen tool. Almost everything I make in Illustrator is the pen tool, actually.

Once I get to a point where I feel like the forms are looking good I start playing with color, which is a lot of fun. At this stage I am always surprised at how color exploration can totally change the look of the piece. I love it. I end up posting the piece soon after. Posting the piece or sending it to the client quickly keeps me from thinking about my work too much or from moving on to a new piece. It is far more productive for me to create a new piece than for me to tweak a current piece.

We’ve gotten a lot of requests for prints so recently we’ve started doing a limited runs of hand pulled screen prints and offering them for sale on the site. They’re printed on French Paper (which is made in Niles, MI) and we work with local printers to get the ink colors just right.

What’s inspiring you these days?

I am very inspired by process these days. Everyone’s is different and I love that. I am also inspired by the amazing community of people on Dribbble who are putting out excellent work all the time. I can’t say how much that community has meant to me. I also try to keep my eyes open whenever I’m running around in new places. Letters are so ubiquitous they can sometimes seem invisible but if you’re aware of them you start spotting little diamonds everywhere. There’s such a rich history of typography in package design sometimes just walking into an antique store can yield a ton of inspiration; that’s one of the things I love about technology – having a camera always available is priceless.

Any advice for young designers dipping their toes into the world of graphic design & typography?

Start drawing now. Most of the time the only way to do something great is to do it the hard way. Don’t let failure dictate your value as a professional or as a person. Don’t compromise doing what you love, you will always regret it.

What’s next?

Well I am hoping to do a lot more Phraseology pieces and pretty soon I am hoping to get some power behind a book (shhhh). After that? I am working on a lot of lettering commissions and I have a few more projects that I just need time to start up.