- Tiny Stories
Paper illustrator Laura Homsey creates lighthearted and joyful scenes with Petit Paper Stories, a small illustration business she started in 2020 at the peak of the pandemic.
“I didn’t intend for it to become a business,” says Homsey, “let alone take off so quickly.”
But it did, and in the three years since she started, she’s met people with great stories that she’s told through her art, has worked with students in workshop settings, and has grown her own skills with paper. She did all this while creating art that people gravitate towards and has sentimental value.
One piece that sticks with her was commissioned by a local woman who wanted Homsey to illustrate her best friend’s elderly parents, an homage to the friend’s recently deceased father. She wanted them illustrated in the family’s happy place, their kitchen.
“Her father had a special recipe he was known for, so I had the pleasure of not only seeing the recipe in his handwriting but the love that went into making it,” says Homsey. “It sticks with me because that was my first time illustrating someone who had passed.”
Since then the daughter, who was gifted the piece, commissioned Homsey to do other pieces for her in-laws and the daughter’s own family, so it’s really a gift that keeps giving and speaks to how meaningful the work is.
A more carefree and playful commission was for a woman’s retirement from a school district. The woman was known for dressing up and leaving props in her place to scare her coworkers, so Homsey was asked to illustrate her pranking nature as a lasting gift.
Homsey’s work truly captures the imagination and taps into a range of emotion. And her creative process is no easy feat, with each illustration taking hours and days to construct, compile, and complete. The first step is to paint and hand texturize all the paper using texture tools, acrylics, and watercolors. Matching skin tones, hair colors, and other characteristics from reference photos takes time. She has to study the faces and then replicate them with paper. Then the cutting happens. She uses what she refers to as her “teeny tiny scissors” for certain things like snipping facial features, then on to medium and large scissors for studier pieces of paper and large shapes.
“I don’t trace: I free hand cut, so it takes awhile,” says Homsey. “A tiny face and body can take me around two to three hours to make.”
It’s that dedication to the details that have led to hundreds of commissions, which have included family portraits, album covers, holiday cards and magazine and newspaper covers.
She currently offers two portrait sizes, 11″x14″ and 16″x20″. The smaller can take three to five days and approximately fifteen to twenty-five hours to complete, while the larger ones will take a week (thirty-five to forty hours). And when the piece is complete, she enjoys hearing about the buyer’s plans for it and how excited they are to give it to their loved ones.
Homsey says that these pieces are made to last a lifetime, so she wants to make sure it’s something you’d like to look at every day.
“If someone’s wanting a piece but might be hesitant due to not having a clear idea, I’d say as my mom says, let it float,” says Homsey. “I can always work with you to determine what subject matter would work best for the situation, but I want you to be happy.”
A lot of work and love goes into every piece she creates, so she says don’t rush. When an idea comes to you that you’d like memorialized in paper, get in touch.
For more information or a commission piece of your own, you can follow along on Instagram at @petitpaperstories or visit petitpaperstories.com.
- FLX West Food Fest 2024
Get ready for a culinary adventure at the FLX West Food Fest on March 3. The festival, now in its second year, offers guests the opportunity to try dishes by local and celebrity chefs. Wash it all down with beer from local breweries or wine from some of the many area wineries that will be in attendance. The best of the area’s food scene will be onsite, so visitors will get to sample the broad range of the area’s available culinary delights. Local vendors will also be selling crafts and gourmet food. The festival will be held at the Geneseo armory and starts at noon and ends at 5 p.m. For further information, please visit livingstoncountychamber.com.
- RoCo’s Annual Members Exhibition
With more than 300 artists contributing per year, the annual Rochester Contemporary Art Center’s Members Exhibition returns to the gallery space on East Avenue and runs through February 10.
For the team at RoCo, the annual exhibition is incredibly meaningful and brings together a beautiful, eclectic, and diverse mix of artists and artworks.
“There’s nothing like it,” says Bleu Cease, executive director and curator. “It connects so many people and has a reputation for artists showing their newest experiment or what they’ve been working on lately.”
Not to mention the economic windfall the exhibition brings to local artists.
“It has grown into a major economic boost to the local arts ecosystem,” says Cease. He says that artists received $17,000 last year.
Cease adds that yearly it’s a terrific crosssection of the visual arts community in the region. During the run, RoCo offers additional programming, including “The Days the Artists Spoke,” a series of short, back-to-back artist talks that serve as a great opportunity to learn more about the participating artists. The talks take place on January 13 and February 9. And on January 26, RoCo will host “WELCOME III,” an event that highlights a range of artists from dancers to photographers to musicians and focuses on those who recently moved here or have returned to Rochester.
Displayed works are also eligible for numerous awards, including the George Eastman Museum Award, Student Choice Award, Members Choice Award, Landmark Society Award, Visual Studies Workshop Award, and more.
For more information about the exhibition and programming, visit rochestercontemporary.org.
- What does your cell phone mean to you?
Have you ever thought that that cell phone in your pocket could end up in a museum? Or have you considered the history of how it even got into your hands in the first place? Cellphones have become essential to our personal networks as one of the fastest spreading technologies in human history. Beyond the texts, calls, and apps, they are the often the tools of an unseen global network of people, labor, and infrastructure that support all the functions we’ve come to rely on for connectivity in our personal and professional lives.
In a new exhibition, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History dives into Cellphone: Unseen Connections. The exhibit opened to the public in June 2023 and spans the entirety of cell phone history, complete with interactive displays, video installations, and other multimedia experiences. The special exhibition runs through 2026 and, with more than 750 objects from around the world, takes visitors behind their screens and into the deeper story about the ways people are connected to the earth and to each other, with a chance to learn how the elements and minerals powering their phones have been utilized. Visitors are also introduced to more than thirty people, including the innovative engineers making wireless communications possible, youth campaigning for more diverse emojis, and Indigenous activists utilizing language apps to revitalize their mother tongues.
And the exhibition has a local connection.
In 2020, Brockport-based electronics recycling company Sunnking received a tip that the museum was working on a cell phone–based exhibit. The team knew this was right in their wheelhouse, so they emailed the curators, explaining their mission and the scope of their business and offered materials. Sunnking recycles thousands of cell phones each year and were surprised when the institution responded to learn more and discuss the possibility of working together.
“It took until early 2023 to get everything finalized and send over hundreds of locally recycled phones to be used throughout the exhibit and spotlight profiles on our employees,” says Robert Burns, director of communications at Sunnking.
Sunnking’s contribution includes involvement with a display about the responsible disposal of electronics and their components. It serves as a reminder of the importance of reducing e-waste while highlighting the company’s efforts to provide a responsible and sustainable solution. Since 2000, Sunnking has been committed to providing secure, efficient, and environmentally responsible electronics recycling and data destruction services to clients around the US.
“We’re thrilled to contribute to the Smithsonian’s exhibit and to share with their guests the importance of responsible electronics disposal,” says Adam Shine, president of Sunnking. “As a company committed to sustainability and e-waste reduction, it’s an incredible honor to have our history, story, and community be a part of the celebration of this exhibit.”
For Sunnking, being involved with the Smithsonian has meant a great deal to the company, and shines a spotlight not only on their work but Brockport and Rochester as a whole. The company believes that the partnership allows them to continue to promote the mission of a renewable and sustainable future to the more than four million guests who visit the museum annually.
“This museum is a home for famous diamonds, dinosaur bones, and now Sunnking,” says Burns. “That’s pretty cool to think of.”
To learn more about the exhibit, visit naturalhistory.si.edu/exhibits/cellphone-unseen-connections.
