Alaska Hot Doggies

Meet fellow Alaskan, Jodi Hughes of Alaska Hot Doggies from Anchorage, Alaska. Her hometown is Chugiak, Alaska…can u pronounce that? When she was growing up, her family managed a church camp with a beautiful lake that looked a lot like Jason’s famous killing ground. The camp was 1 ½ miles from the nearest house on a dirt road thru the woods. There were dog trails that mushers trained on that crossed the road and cars had to yield to the dog teams. By day, she masquerades as an Application Analyst for a large corporation. She takes conference calls in her jammies and analyzes code without even stepping out of the house! But in order to bring some originality into her world, away from the logical rules, she sneaks away from the phone and emails to play in marbling goop! It calms her nerves and helps her feel creative. She gets to color outside the lines, unlike her day job!

She started with simple beading projects for herself…taking apart store purchased items and re-doing them more to her liking. Her friend, Anthony, got her started shopping at thrift stores. She wanted comforter covers for the house in special colors and pre-made ones where just too expensive. When she was growing up, her mom had made her a customized comforter cover made from 2 sheets, so she did the same except she bought 2 used sheets, dyed them to her liking and stitched them together. TaDa!! Then she started dying everything! She made covers for the furniture, dyed clothes, curtains, EVERYTHING!! She dabbled in free form painting, mainly on clothes. Then she found Dharma Tracing’s website with a cool starter kit for marbling. She can’t say that her 1st attempts turned out very well but for some reason she was determined to keep trying…and she still is! Jodi has been doing this for decades…in one form or another.

Most of the time her attempts at art never turned out very well. It took her a few years to find her niche. She just opened her Etsy shop mid July of 07. This is her 1st attempt to sell her crafts. Her family, friends and personal closet space is getting over stocked with her creations! Stop by her shop and buy something so she can continue to create! In Jodi’s Etsy Shop you will find wonderful things. She enjoys marbling the most. This last month, she started moving away from regular clothes and moving towards unconventional textiles and other materials. She’s been experimenting with wood, plastic & glass which have proved to be challenging. Jodi also started marbling different paper items. She recently marbled business card stock that turned out wonderful and really make my business card standout from most. Jodi loves to watch people and adopt current color schemes into her design. Browsing thru other artist’s works is also a great way to get motivated. She’s inspired thru the use of color and diverse materials then she brings these approaches into her visions.

Stop by her shop!! www.AKHotDoggies.etsy.com

“Additional Resources”
Her work was sold at the local ‘Trapper Creek Festival’, in addition to Etsy. http://www.indiepublic.com/profile/AkHotDoggies
http://www.myspace.akhotdoggies.com/.
http://akhotdoggies.blogspot.com/ She also wrote an article for the IndiePublic library. This is a basic introduction on marbling paper. http://www.indiepublic.com/library/topic/show?id=946391%3ATopic%3A69155