Sunday, November 22, 2009

DesignerCon and the Pasadena Museum of California Art

Dan and I took a little time off and went to Pasadena on Saturday. The first stop was DesignerCon at the Pasadena Convention Center. DesignerCon (aka DCon) started out as the Vinyl Toy Network Show. The name was changed to cover all aspects of design including plush/fabric design, apparel, print media along with vinyl.


The show was much larger than the show in May of 2008 so there were more vendor and artist booths to see. We purchased a Domo Kun figure, Some Spider Booms as well as a couple of Do-It -Yourself Quees that I will eventually customize. We also purchased a set of small prints from Hyperactive Monkey and an original water color painting of Mr. Toast from Dan Godsell.

Here I am picking out some Spider Boom blind boxes.

Our last stop was the Custom Yoka Show, an exhibit of customized Yoka figurues. It was hard to see all of the designs as it was crowded and everyone was trying to take photos of the figures. Dan managed to take some photos before we left to get some lunch. Here are photos of one of my favorites that was painted to look like Edvard Munch's The Scream and Dan's favorite of the Pancake Yoka.

After Lunch we went to the Pasadena Museum of California Art to see the Wayne Thiebaud: 70 Years of Painting exhibit. Thiebaud is one of my favorite artists so it was great to see so many of his paintings in person. Many of the paintings are quite large so I spent a a good while just looking and getting drawn into them. Naturally I bought the book on the exhibit!

There was also an exhibit of color block prints by Frances Gearhart which was excellent. It featured illustrations from a children's book, Let's Play, as well as many wonderful landscapes. The bookstore didn't have a book for the exhibit yet but will have one soon. I'll have to pick one up the next time we visit.