Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 57
Posted on August 11, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
— W.B. Yeats
Inspirational artist of the week: Cornelia O’Donovan
Cornelia O’Donovan was born in 1981, and trained at the Royal College of Art, London.
O’Donovan plays with old folklore and poetry, but in a loose and dreamlike way. She draws particularly on tales native to the British Isles, and especially Celtic poetry and myth – from the tale of Prince Llewellyn’s grief at the sacrifice of his greyhound Gellert, to the figurative ballads of Ellen O’Leary and lines from WB Yeats.
Her paintings are flat, stripped of all perspective or realism, their surfaces hazy and meandering like an old tale retold a thousand times. Roughly rendered yet delicately arranged, she creates patterned compositions reminiscent of old tapestries, into which she plants naïve pre-Modern motifs. Outlines of old figures, ancient heralds, esoteric herbs and familiar animals all appear like inherited objects worn smooth by the touch of innumerable hands.
They retain the homespun quality of medieval rustic artworks, flowing across the canvas like a stroll through a country garden.
Hand lettering artist of the week: David Schmitt
David Schmitt, born on March 11, 1994 in Bamberg, Germany is a self-taught painter and printmaker. After studying Graphic Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg he moved to Barcelona to pursue his career as an artist. In his work, he combines an archaic and childlike aesthetic with bold visual presence and commentary, highlighting texture and rough shapes to capture a timeless simplicity.
“I have always been drawn to a certain aspect of storytelling in painting, I think of it as a crossover between Folk-, Pop-, and Cave-art so for me it feels deeply human. There is so much beauty and truth to be found in traditional craftsmanship and old tales of folklore. I hope that we can continue to maintain our appreciation for the involvement of the human hand and mind with all its imperfections as preserving these practices means preserving the soul in the world that surrounds us.”
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 56
Posted on August 4, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.”
— Thomas Merton
Inspiring artist of the week: Petra Börner
Petra Börner (b. 1973) is an award-winning artist based in London, building her artistic universe with a signature line. Translating ideas into series, paired or mirrored artworks; repetition, movement and energy is ever-present in her practice.
Obsessed by exploring methods and materials in new contexts; intuitive work also transform into animation, prints, patterns and take sculptural form; all playful to the eye. Often inspired by natural themes, her Swedish roots ingrained in her intimate work.
With over twenty years of expertise collaborating with a world wide clientele, paired with a unique ability to successfully combine her signature line with tailored projects, she creates timeless, yet eye- catching design.
Hand lettering inspiration of the week: Allen Crawford
Allen Crawford is a graphic artist, naturalist, and author. He’s worked on a broad range of independent projects over the course of his career, including advertising campaigns, editorial illustrations, animations, videos, packaging, product design, logos, identity systems, typefaces, and books.
He and his wife Susan Crawford founded Plankton Art Company in 1996. They work independently in their own distinct styles, but they occasionally team up on larger projects. Their shared background in biology and conservation has enabled them to work with many prestigious science and education-based institutions. Their most notable joint project to date is their set of identification key illustrations for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The 400 illustrations of corals, invertebrates, crustaceans, fish, and mammals have been on permanent display in the famous Milstein Hall of Ocean Life for over twenty years.
Allen is currently a part-time trail steward for the New Jersey Park Service and has recently received his wildland firefighter certification from the NJ Forest Fire Service. He is also a member of NJ Fish and Wildlife’s Venomous Snake Response Team.
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 55
Posted on July 28, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.”
– Walt Disney
Inspiring artist of the week: Maria Prymachenko
Maria Prymachenko was born in 1909 into an artistically talented rural family in the village of Bolotnia. Her mother did embroidery, her father was a carpenter, and her grandmother painted Easter eggs. Just like another outstanding female artist—the surrealist painter Frida Kahlo—Prymachenko suffered from polio as a child, and she also wore long, hand-embroidered skirts to conceal her paralyzed leg.
She learned to draw, paint, and embroider at home. Even though she never acquired any artistic qualifications and had just four years of primary education, she became a professional embroiderer at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. For the next few years, she worked in nearby Ivankiv until her talents were discovered in 1935 by Tetiana Floru, a textile artist and embroiderer linked to the Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art Museum in Kyiv. Some say she was impressed by Prymachenko’s embroidered shirts on sale at an Ivankiv market. Others claim that Floru was sent out by the Soviet authorities (initially, USSR cultural policy welcomed naïve folk art) to travel around the villages in search of folk artists and was enchanted by Maria’s embroidery on display at a cultural center.
Hand lettering inspiration of the week: Rolly Crump
Rolly Crump was born in Alhambra, California, and joined Walt Disney Studios in 1952. Initially he worked on inbetweening, before becoming an assistant animator on movies including Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, and One Hundred and One Dalmatians. In 1959 he joined WED Enterprises (later Walt Disney Imagineering) and became a designer of some of Disneyland’s attractions and shops, including The Haunted Mansion, Enchanted Tiki Room and Adventureland Bazaar.As well as his work at Disney, he designed innovative and satirical psychedelic posters in the early and mid 1960s, including several for the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band as well as logos for the band’s singer Bob Marley. He also designed guitar string packaging for Ernie Ball.
He was responsible for designing many of the Disney attractions at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, including It’s a Small World, and its Tower of the Four Winds marquee. In 1966, when the attraction moved to Disneyland, he designed the large animated clock at the entrance that sends puppet children on a parade.
He contributed to early designs of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida, and worked on designs for NBC’s Disney on Parade in 1970, before leaving Disney to work on outside projects including Busch Gardens, the ABC Wildlife Preserve in Maryland, and Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Circus World. In 1975, Knott’s Berry Farm opened Knott’s Bear-y Tales, a dark ride designed by Crump.In 1976 he returned to work for Disney, designing the Land and Wonders of Life pavilions at the Epcot Center, before leaving again in 1981 to design the proposed Cousteau Ocean Center in Norfolk, Virginia, and to set up his own business, the Mariposa Design Group, which developed projects in Oman, Las Vegas, Denver and elsewhere. Crump finally returned to Disney in 1992 as executive designer at Imagineering, working on EPCOT Center.
He retired from Disney in 1996, and published an autobiography It’s Kind of a Cute Story in 2012.
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 54
Posted on July 21, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“Play is the highest form of research.”
— Albert Einstein
Inspirational Artist of the week… Isabella Ducrot
Isabella Ducrot (b. 1931, Naples, Italy) is an artist and writer with a career spanning four decades. Ducrot’s oeuvre is deeply rooted in an extraordinary and enduring interest in fabrics, that is central to both her pictorial works and writings. Sourced during extensive travels over the course of her life, Ducrot has amassed an exquisite collection of fabric that spans centuries and bear origins from across Asia and Eastern Europe – including Russia, Turkey, China, India and Tibet. She considers these fabrics as an art form in and of themselves, to which she has dedicated herself to many years of focused study and views essential to her education. Employing diverse media – including pencil, pastel, ink and watercolor, which she applies to rare papers – her works compress an array of cultural references, ranging from philosophy to folklore and textile weaving. At both intimate and expansive scales, her work reflects a fascination with repetition, form, and color, informed by the rare textiles in her collection. Ducrot’s work was the subject of a recent solo exhibition, Profusione at le Consortium Museum, Dijon and her installation, titled Big Aura was featured at the Dior Haute Couture SS 2024 runway show at the Musee Rodin, Paris. Ducrot has presented solo exhibitions at Petzel Gallery, New York, Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Sadie Coles, London and Standard (Oslo), Oslo. Ducrot lives and works in Rome.
Handlettering artist of the week: Valeria Molinari
Valeria Molinari (she/they) is a multidisciplinary creative from Venezuela, with a diverse practice that includes textile work, video installation, editorial illustration, art direction and community organizing. Experimenting with different mediums is one of her favourite things in the world. For the past roughly ten years, a lot of her work has existed in the cross between art and activism, dealing with the language surrounding feminism. Using fibers as her base medium, she likes to incorporate calligraphy and hand lettering to display her messages. Her practice involves self-examination and research, trying to remind the viewer about the power of words, of concepts, phrases, and lines that have been unquestioned by people for generations, helping to perpetuate thoughts and behaviors around gender, class, race, and sexuality.
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 53
Posted on July 14, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“Maybe we can release the birds from our chests and chase them straight into the lives we’ve always held inside us anyway.”
— Victoria Erickson
Inspirational Artist of the week: Peggi Kroll-Roberts
Award-winning artist Peggi Kroll-Roberts was trained at Arizona State University and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.
Peggi worked as a fashion and advertising illustrator before transitioning to fine art. Her artworks are featured in the Laguna Beach Art Museum and the Pasadena Historical Museum.
Using intense color and value to accentuate her subject, she moved into fine art with a bold palette, a love for small paintings and a very loose style that achieves a lot with a few very energetic brush strokes. She prefers to suggest reality rather than render it.
Peggi paints animated figures, and breaks away from conventional still life with playful paintings of everyday scenes: cosmetics, the occasional coffee cup or slab of butter. Peggi’s work gives us a new appreciation of daily life.
Peggi’s realist impressionist and expressionist styles are striking, and she has won multiple fine art and plein air awards in addition to the Blackwell prize in painting.
Hand lettering inspiration of the week: Margo Chase…
who I once hung out with for a day YEARS AGO…and when researching her… found out that she died in a plane crash while piloting at age 59. SO sad to hear this.
Margo Chase (February 20, 1958 – July 22, 2017) was an American graphic designer known for her eclectic and experimental design style. Chase was prolific – with a career bridging the graphic design field’s transition from the analog to the digital era, working with clients ranging from Selena and Prince to Mattel and Procter & Gamble.
With a portfolio of medical illustrations, Chase found work at a small advertising firm in Long Beach, designing packaging for the Ralph’s grocery store chain. She was soon hired away by Rosebud Books to design a series of tourist guidebooks. During this time, Chase met Laura LaPuma, who would go on to give her her first album cover design job at Warner Brothers Records. As she accumulated more design work, Chase set up an office in her Silverlake home, hiring Nancy Ogami and studio manager Robert Short to assist in servicing clients such as Geffen Records, Virgin Records, and others.
Chase designed logos for Prince’s Lovesexy, as well as his Paisley Park production company. Attracting enough positive attention, she was asked to design the logo – and eventually the packaging – for Madonna’s 1989 album Like a Prayer. This opened the door for other high-profile projects such as Cher’s Love Hurts, the poster campaign for 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and others.
Chase’s work from this period of her career was quite distinct, taking inspiration from a wide variety of sources – calligraphy, illuminated manuscripts, and medieval architecture – leading publications to refer to her as the “Queen of Goth.” Wary of being aesthetically pigeonholed, she took on work for linen manufacturer Matteo. What initially began as a logo and stationary design project morphed into full-blown textile and product design. During this time, Chase expanded her studio – hiring designer Terry Stone to help her launch into motion picture titles, as well as market her typographic work as a separate venture called “Gravy Fonts.” After working with clients across the entertainment industry, Chase decided that she was a print designer at heart and turned her attention to packaging design, stating, “What I like about designing print or packaging is that when the job is finished there is something physical to show for it – it’s timeless. With the broadcast work, once it’s been seen, it’s already old.”
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 52
Posted on July 7, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainty.”
— Erich Fromm
Inspirational Art of the week: Mud huts in India
In various parts of India, particularly in rural areas, mud huts are often painted with intricate and colorful designs. These murals, often found in tribal communities, are a form of traditional art that reflects cultural identity and beliefs. The materials used for the huts and the paintings are typically natural and locally sourced. The paintings are created using natural pigments derived from minerals, plants, and other organic materials.
Hand lettering artist of the week: Yunizar
b. 1971, Talawi, West Sumatra, Indonesia. Lives and works in Indonesia
Yunizar spent his formative years at the Indonesian Institute of Arts in Yogyakarta – a school of national pride in the heart of progressive art-making in Indonesia. Yunizar’s training reveals itself in his sophisticated expressive style, articulated through a playful composition and subtle palette. Executed primarily in acrylic and pencil, his works stand out in terms of texture, colour, brushwork and rhythm. A restrained palette of cool colours – yellows, browns and greens- is deliberately dirtied and smudged in his working and reworking of the canvas. The result is a highly tactile work that entices the viewer to feel the piece.
Coretan, Yunizar’s solo exhibition at the National University of Singapore Museum in 2008 became the cornerstone of the artist’s signature style. The repetition and technique in scribbling marks a desire for meaning to be limitless in perspective. The spontaneous lines are a reflection of the artist’s inhibition with the constricting form both text and image sometimes takes. The works are composed of illegible scribbling in lines across the canvas, appearing as fragments of text that struggle to find form or intelligent representation. Working with limited colour, mostly monochromatic, his works reveal a play of lines and textures coming together to create clear rhythms and strong composition. The simplicity of visual elements within his works, according to Yunizar, is the result of a personal aesthetic judgment. He seeks beauty, especially in the trivial and in what is deemed by all else as useless and unimportant. To capture intuition and impulse, that is the great aim of the artist.
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 51
Posted on June 30, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
The secret to living well and longer is: eat half, walk double, laugh triple and love without measure.
— Tibetan Proverb
Hand lettering inspiration of the week: Margaret Kilgallen
Margaret Leisha Kilgallen (October 28, 1967 – June 26, 2001) was a San Francisco Bay Area artist who combined graffiti art, painting, and installation art. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. She was considered a central figure in the Bay Area Mission School art movement.
Inspirational Artist of the week: Donald Baechler
Donald Baechler (b. 1956 – d. 2022) emerged in the 1980s as part of New York City’s East Village art scene alongside such luminaries as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Baechler studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, then Cooper Union in New York City. To briefly escape New York of the late ’70s, he took up an invitation from German exchange students to visit their homeland, where he then spent much of 1978 and ’79 studying at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. There Baechler witnessed neo-expressionism taking hold in what became loosely known as the Neue Wilde movement, which featured German painters disinterested in the dominant forms of conceptualism and minimalism.
Returning to the United States, Baechler honed his version of graphic, neo-expressive painting paired with flashes of Pop Art, American folk art, and children’s drawings. With Baechler back in New York, the early ’80s saw his first major solo shows in New York and abroad as he continued to explore brightly colored and thickly outlined foreground images—often flowers, faces, skulls, animals, and ice cream cones—painted over heavily textured collages sourced from scattered ephemera. Baechler cited Giotto, Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Kosuth, and especially Cy Twombly as major influences.
Furthering what he called his “education in public,” Baechler eventually began showing playful bronze statues of flowerpots and large-scale figures in stride. Overpainting, erasure, and intense editing—not to mention a lighthearted sense of humor—remained key to his process thoughout his career. “I’m an abstract artist before anything else,” he has said. “For me, it’s always been more about line, form, balance, and the edge of the canvas—all these silly formalist concerns—than it has been about subject matter or narrative or politics.”
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 50
Posted on June 23, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“Kindness isn’t a weakness — it is a very potent strength.”
-Steve Carrell
Inspirational artist of the week: Isobel Harvey
Isobel Harvey is a London-based artist who works across multiple mediums, including paintings, textiles and ceramics.
Isobel Harvey grew up in a house full of books about birds and bird-related artworks. The sculptures her dad made were mostly modelled on birds and binoculars, and he’d always point out different species when they went on walks.With both her parents immersed in art and nature, Isobel’s creative journey and focus were shaped early on. Now a full-time painter, her work heavily features abstract bird motifs alongside other animals, expressed in striking and vibrant shades. “Birds and fish lend themselves nicely to being interpreted because they’re so colour and pattern-heavy in their thousands of species.”
In addition to her rich use of colour, there is also a sense of texture across Isobel’s work which brings her subjects to life. A lot of her ideas come from constructing and deconstructing a painting. When it doesn’t go to plan, she simply paints over what she has done. And that creates tactile layers. Her aim for her paintings is for them to be very texture-heavy.Though the process is largely intuitive, she credits folk art and ancient Egyptian paintings as inspiration for her forms.
Handlettering inspiration of the week: Tony Fitzpatrick
Tony Fitzpatrick is a Chicago-based artist best known for his multimedia collages, printmaking, paintings, and drawings. Fitzpatrick’s work are inspired by Chicago street culture, cities he has traveled to, children’s books, tattoo designs, and folk art. Fitzpatrick has authored or illustrated eight books of art and poetry, and, for the last two years has written a column for the Newcity. Fitzpatrick’s art appears in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC. The Neville Brothers’ album Yellow Moon and the Steve Earle’s albums El Corazon and The Revolution Starts Now also feature Fitzpatrick’s art. In 1992, Fitzpatrick opened a Chicago-based printmaking studio, Big Cat Press, which exists today as the artist exhibition space Firecats Projects. Before making a living as an artist, Fitzpatrick worked as a radio host, bartender, boxer, construction worker, and film and stage actor.
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 48
Posted on June 9, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“We should really love each other in peace and harmony, instead we’re fussing and fighting.”
-Bob Marley
Inspiring artist of the week… Rex Ray
REX RAY (Sept. 11, 1956—Feb. 9, 2015) was an American artist best known for his innovative pop aesthetic in fine and commercial art—on canvases, wood panels, album covers, paper, book jackets, murals, and rock and roll posters. Born in Landstuhl, Germany in 1956, Michael Patterson was raised in Colorado Springs. Before moving to San Francisco in 1981, Patterson, inspired by Andy Warhol, adopted the moniker Rex Ray. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute where he studied with Sam Tchakalian, Kathy Acker, and Angela Davis, and received his BFA in 1989. He became a major force in the Bay Area’s art, literary, and activist communities. Ray was one of the first artists to use Mac-based technologies in the creative process to generate art and graphics. His early designs include: the first graphics for the San Francisco chapter of Act Up; many guerilla marketing flyers and posters for queer nightclubs; and numerous book covers for City Lights Books and HIGH RISK/Serpent’s Tail. His impressive client roster in the music, fashion, entertainment, and design industries, includes David Bowie, The Residents, Bill Graham Presents, DreamWorks, Levis, Neiman Marcus, Sony Music, Warner Brothers, and Apple. Rex Ray designs have been licensed and produced as distinctive imagery on scarves, carpets, ceramics, wristwatches, surfboards, and even on a Mini Cooper. During his lifetime Rex Ray generated a prolific body of painting and works on paper. His technique involved a complicated process that combined Xerography, handmade woodblock prints, newsprint, and magazine images into vibrant color schemes with parabolic forms and abstract patterns. His works reference mid-century modernism, Dada, decorative arts, Fluxus, and Pop Art.
Hand lettering inspiration of the week… Anna Tou
Anna Tou is a classically trained designer, creative leader and strategic marketing thinker with a proven track record in building brands and leading diverse projects across advertising, digital experiences, identity, brand strategy, packaging, marketing promotions, social channels, and more.
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 47
Posted on June 2, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.”
— Camille Pissarro
Inspirational artist of the week… Sophie Digard
Since 1999, designer Sophie Digard has been designing fashion accessories and textile objects in her Paris studio. Inspired by the infinite variation of organic elements, Digard uses natural materials—Italian wool or Belgian linen—that are dyed to her specifications in a range of carefully selected colors. They are then sent to the Indian Ocean to be transformed into beautiful objects in Digard’s own workshops. Each creation mirrors her belief that color is of primary importance, and she never repeats the same chromatic combination in any one object. All seemingly single threads are actually composed of two colors intermingled to create a subtle play of light and shade. Digard’s unique necklaces demonstrate the intersection between the artist’s intuitive and meticulous creative work and her artisanal know-how.
Hand lettering inspiration of the week: Zak Foster
Zak Foster is a self-taught textile artist and quilter, known for his unique and often improvisational approach to quilting. He is particularly drawn to creating memory quilts and burial quilts, exploring themes of history, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves. Foster’s work often incorporates reclaimed fabrics and natural dyes, and he has become a community organizer and advocate for social justice through his quilting.
Lori Siebert & Co. 