Hello friend!

Welcome to FEATURE FRIDAYS where I feature the work of another artist, writer, blogger, whatever whose work I admire. Previous entries included fine art painter Sarah Cavanaugh, fashion and culture blogger Merritt Beck and Sydney Hoffman, as well as writer and musician Rob Priestley.

This week’s entry is the great singer song-writer Lisa Loeb, who I’ve mentioned briefly in a previous post, my tribute to David Letterman.

Like the rest of the world, I fell in love with Lisa’s music in 1994, when her single “Stay (I Missed You)” was featured on the Reality Bites soundtrack (thank goodness her music has aged better than that film, but I digress…) and got major radio play (Interestingly, the song even went to #1 without her having any sort of formal record deal, a totally rare occurrence).

But then seeing how cool and lovely she was in the music video (and aforementioned David Letterman appearance) really made her a favourite of mine. I really like her songwriting ability, she’s been really funny in a bunch of cool acting roles, and has just about the nicest speaking voice a girl could have (she even voiced Mary Jane Watson on a short-lived Spider-man cartoon).

While I’ve never gotten to see her play live (come on, Lisa, visit Canada more often!) I do have a weird, slight connection to her. Back in the very early days of Twitter, it was common for big stars like Lisa to instantly follow back when they got a new follower. So when I joined twitter, Lisa was obviously someone I wanted to follow. When I did, she followed back, and sent me a quick message thanking me for following her. (Because I was brand new to Twitter, I had no idea that a lot of this was probably automated.) I got very excited that a fave musician of mine would write me, and decided to shamelessly self-promote, sending her a link to my Illustration website (the very site you’re reading this on!). To my surprise, a real life Lisa (not even a robot, or anything!) wrote back, saying nice things about my work, and even lamenting that I hadn’t been available for a recent project of hers. So it was a very cool, mind-blowing moment for me. If 14 year old me, with my Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories magazine ad clipped and taped to my locker in Grade Nine would know that someday she’d be looking at pictures I drew, I would never have believed you. And, in case you don’t believe it, either, here’s a screencap of the exchange.

To this day, Lisa still follows me on Twitter (so hopefully she’ll see this post!) and I remain a huge, huge fan of her work.

(My top five fave songs of hers would be “I Do”, “Do You Sleep” “Waiting For Wednesday”, “Let’s Forget About It” and of course, “Stay (I Missed You)”. So if for some bizarre reason you haven’t checked out her work, Spotify this fine lady!)

And speaking of work, here is a piece of artwork I did of Lisa doing what she does best (based on a great creative commons license photo by Justin Higuchi, full disclosure) singing and playing. I hope you like it!

And Lisa, if you’re reading this, thanks for all the great music, and for being so sweet.

Lots more posts coming soon (honest), including more Blue Jays stuff, some custom t-shirts and a whole lot of Shakespeare goin’ on!

Thanks for reading, I love you.