The "Underneath" Story

A reader commented on my 2014 Re-Cap post that her year was full of less tangible accomplishments than mine. I like that observation. It's true that some years are full of busy activity, and some can be more low-key in terms of visibility, but a lot can go on underneath the surface. I'm going to use my Golden Moth Illumination Deck to show you what 2014 felt like to me.

I receive e-mails with tips and quotes from a creative business coach named Alexis Fedor. One quote I liked a lot was by novelist Zora Neale Hurston:

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."

For me, 2014 was a year for both. I asked a lot of questions and experimented with trying to get the results I thought I wanted. I'm still sorting through the answers. I wanted to find a way to make a reliable living through my art, to find a way out of the ups and downs. I wanted to prove myself. But the truth is, I'm still experimenting. And I doubt that will ever end. Maybe I thrive off of the ups and downs more than I'd care to admit.

As an artist, I have never liked being fully in the spotlight. I want to reach people and share with them through my art, blog, and newsletter, but sometimes I feel very exposed doing so. And last year I felt more exposed than ever.

I wanted to take on a new role last year. One of "business person." I put myself out there in ways that felt exciting but sometimes uncomfortable. I worked a lot with my printer, figuring out solutions to issues that came up and figuring out the best ways to print my products. I called store owners and sent out many e-mails to try to get my notecards into stores. I had some success with that. But trying to learn how to run the business and apply it immediately sometimes felt like this:

It was a balancing act and a lot of scrambling. I went from feeling triumphant when I received an order, to feeling scared and overwhelmed that I couldn't handle anything or that nothing would result from my endeavors.

By throwing myself into my business, I also realized that running a business is unlike anything else I have done. It's not a flight of fancy. To grow a business, I'll need to keep it going on a day-to-day basis. I need to think about the next steps, how to make things work better. I run on cycles. The idea of long-term anything can feel like a burden. I wondered, "Is this really what I want? If not this, then what else should I do?"

By the end of last year, I had reaped my harvest. I wasn't a millionaire, but I had achieved small financial successes. Through trial and experience, I had made some good decisions. But I didn't feel good about it. It didn't seem like enough. I didn't feel good enough.

Right before I traveled to Rochester, NY to visit my family for the Christmas holiday, I spent an evening with a friend. Through intense conversations over dinner, in the car, and on a chilly walk through my old neighborhood, we both experienced a catharsis. 

"I feel pathetic," I told him. There were so many things I wanted for my future - children, a family, to continue to be a working artist. And I still couldn't see how that would be possible. It felt like so much work just to keep afloat. I felt lost and in need of a change. 

I still judged myself so harshly based on my social/monetary standing in life. Over dinner, my friend and I realized that's silly! Modern society places so much emphasis on our social statuses. As humans, we can no longer be happy with just surviving. We need to prove ourselves to other people, to bolster our own egos, to strive for what is considered "success."

I placed so much emphasis on money, thinking it would bring me happiness. I thought I was being reasonable, that I need money to raise a family, to buy a house, to continue to make art. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting those things. But feeling like I'm not capable of achieving them has tortured me for so long. That night, I realized that those things were outside of myself. What matters most is how I feel.

Rather than trying to be someone worthy of feeling happiness, I just want to be happy. And for me, that means not trying to control the future. Not thinking Point A leads to Point B leads to Point C. Not trying to find the answers that will fix everything. I know my desire for control will flare up again and again. But when I get that anxious feeling of dread when I think about the future, I'll know that something is amiss. And I'll try to move toward the thing that feels better. Moment by moment.

It's been almost three weeks since I returned to Richmond from holiday, and this is where I'm at right now:

I feel like I'm floating through my life, incubating. I'm not trying to push myself too hard. Last year was a year of willfulness, of trying to put things in motion in the outside world. It taught me a lot. 

But I'm very tired from all that striving. Now I feel like retreating into the part of myself that bubbles with creativity, stories, visions, unknowns. I want to nurture the part of myself that doesn't want to be rational or successful. It's the part of me that creates for pure joy.

I want to write and illustrate the stories that have been living inside me, half-formed, for years. I don't want to think about the long-term plan right now or where my work will lead me. I just want to do it. 

I don't have all the answers. But answers just lead to more questions, anyway. 

2014: A Year in Pictures

This is me, right now. And Dozer, my cat.

As the caption says, it is glorious. I'm taking a rest - a self-enforced laziness. I feel like I should get up and do stuff, I have my to-do list filled with activities, yet they're getting ticked off so slowly.

YES. To sluggy-ness. It is so healing.

I know that a new western calendar year can mean a clean slate, but truth be told, I usually get depressed after Christmas is over. November and December mean lots of craft shows and art sales for me - it's really the one time of year I can dependably make an income from selling my artwork. And it's very exciting and rushed, but that means post-Christmas blues.

This year, after my busy-busy-busy season, I spent 10 days at my parents' home in Rochester, NY celebrating Christmas with my family.

My mom and older sister looking at a branch on our Christmas Day Walk. It was unseasonably warm for Rochester!

After so much nurturing energy, good food (including Thai, Indian, and Bar-B-Q restaurants), and being around people who have known me my whole life, it felt sad at first to return to regular life. And because my artist lifestyle is not the most predictable, a clean slate can be somewhat terrifying. I have to evaluate what worked and what didn't in the last year, and modify how I will make my living this year. But weirdly, I am not that worried about it. I think things will fall into place.

2014 RE-CAP

Last year was a very busy year, perhaps one of the busiest in terms of variety of activities.

I was a panel judge for a students' art award. That was fun. I had to quickly move to a new apartment after my old apartment's two chimneys caught on fire. I worked on illustration commissions:

An album cover I illustrated in linocut.

An extremely intense hand-embroidered portrait I did as a wedding present/commission.

I travelled to the SCBWI conference on children's books in NYC in February and was totally inspired.

I took a pastel class with Sarah Masters which I loved. Here's one of the still-lives I made:

Starting in April and continuing through the rest of the year, I did at least one or two craft shows per month. I ended up doing at least 20 craft shows/markets total this year.

In the summer I started re-invigorating the notecard business I had begun the previous fall. I printed 8 new card designs, made a catalog, and contacted more than 100 new stores - whew! I also read a lot of books, internet articles, and watched videos to learn how to run my business.

 I had a 2-person art show of my prints at Rivermont Studio in Lynchburg, VA in November:

I fulfilled a dream of mine to learn the technique of Moku Hanga (Japanese woodblock printing) by taking a class with Miwako Nishizawa. Here is the print I created from the class (I still have a lot to learn!):

In late summer, I sold out of my limited edition of 300 Golden Moth Illumination Decks! I re-formatted the files, updated the Handbook, and had a new (unlimited) batch printed in November.

I traveled to visit my family in Rochester twice and my boyfriend's family in Kentucky twice. In August I drove to Vermont for a camping-style wedding of a childhood friend (and on the way visited the Eric Carle Museum of the Picture Book - something else I've wanted to do for a long time!) Here is the wedding gift/commission I made for my friends (it got a little battered from being in the rainy cabin):

I illustrated the cover for my friend's Songbook. He reproduced lyrics and figured out the tablature for more than 250 songs!

I donated artwork and time to some art auctions and events. I cut back on teaching a lot, but taught a few printmaking classes, Etsy Seller workshops, and private art lessons. I worked two part-time jobs and quit one in March and the other in August. I was able to survive on art sales and teaching from September until right now (although that may be subject to change!)

You know what? I'm proud of myself. I worked really freakin' hard, and did some really fun things. But you know what was lacking last year? I didn't make that much new artwork. Okay, now that I am writing this post, I realize I created more than I thought I did. I did commissions and re-printed some pre-existing artwork, as well as made a couple new things, but there was so much more I wanted to do. I did not have as much creative energy last year because I was so focused on learning how to run my card business and selling artwork.

I was fixated on making it "the Year that I truly began my art career," meaning a sustainable and predictable form of making income. I had hoped the card business would do that for me. But because I threw myself into it really intensely, I am now intensely burnt out. Honestly, I'm not sure if I'll continue the wholesale card business, at least not in the grand scope I had planned. But I'll keep creating cards to sell on a smaller level at least.

For right now, I'm taking some time off. I've been watching a lot of movies and reading lots of books. I'm basking in the glory of slug-style living and not having an enforced schedule. And I'm trying not to push myself to do ANYTHING. I think it is well-deserved, and much-needed.

2015 is going to be a much different year. I'm intentionally going to back off of busy-ness and take things slow. I want to:

Learn from the slug.
Learn from the tortoise.
Learn from the placid well.

I want to do another update on this using the Golden Moth cards to illustrate my points, but this post has been long enough for now.

To everyone, Happy New Year! What have you done and learned from last year? What are you excited about this year?

Greetings from Comic Book Land!

whew, so it's been over 4 months since i last posted. i actually have been busy, and intermittently lazy, with art and writing and teaching and some travelling and such. but what i really want to talk about is my trip to Washington, D.C. last weekend where I visited my college friend Patty and attended the Small Press Expo (or SPX) nearby in Bethesda, Maryland. Patty and I both went to Pratt Institute where I majored in Fine Arts Printmaking and she ended with a degree in illustration. Patty helped introduce me to comics back when i was interested but didn't know where to start. ah, the good old days of "Johnny the Homocidal Maniac" and visiting Forbidden Planet at Union Square. i hadn't seen her for years, so it was really nice to hang out with her and her sister Sarah and discover some new comics talent.

 

patty (on the left) and me. an amazing savory potato-chive waffle and salad at a belgian place in D.C. where i discovered that i really like pinot gris. which is saying a lot since i don't usually enjoy alcohol.

i have to say that i admire all the freaks who call themselves comic book artists. i use the term affectionately, since i have made a few short comics in my time and i understand that it requires an obsessive and self-motivated personality to produce such things. you gotta believe in what you're doing because why else would you spend so much time drawing each and every tiny panel. also, i believe that comic book art is truly a democratic medium. anyone can put anything they want onto paper and call it art. sometimes it is terrible and sometimes some magical things spring from this uncensored and unique format. i myself love comics because they are a blend of art, writing, and cinema. they tell stories that might not normally be told. they are weird and beautiful and reading them brings me a pleasure that nothing else can.

so onto the show! it was totally packed and noisy and full of tablers. i probably missed out on some good stuff because after 4 hours i was overloaded and i know that i hadn't seen everything. i definitely want to go again next year. there were some awesome artists and it was cool to be able to talk with them and have them sign my comic books.

these were some of the gems i picked up at the show. i would've liked to get more, but at some point i had to be frugal. so i'll review what i got:

so Corinne Mucha is one of my comic book heroes. i love her simple, yet at the same time detailed, way of drawing and the fact that her comics are SO funny. i picked up her comic "My Every Single Thought: What I Think About Being Single" which she signed for me with a doodle of a sad cupid. this comic made me laugh and commiserate many times about the ups and downs of what media tells us is a pitiful state of existence. i almost didn't want to part with this comic, but ended up mailing it to someone who i thought would appreciate it more right now. Corinne also just published a young-adult graphic novel about high school life which looked pretty cool. wish i'd had something like that back in my awkward years. oh wait, i'm still awkward. oh well.

this chap came all the way over from Manchester, UK! His name is Joe List and he makes comics that are absurd yet at the same time heart-felt. this one is called "Skimpy Jim," about a hair-creature that materializes from a boy's unruly mop-top. Skimpy Jim wanders the streets trying to figure out the true nature of himself, good, and evil. heavy stuff. super-cute drawing style.

I was delighted to find a former Pratt-alumnus at the expo, Laura Terry! I had once taken a sculpture class with her back in the day. she attended the Center for Cartoon Studies in vermont (imagine - a school dedicated solely to comic book art!) and is now making comics and doing freelance illustration. this lovely comic called "Morning Song" was nominated for an Ignatz award for Outstanding Mini-Comic. laura has a very fluid drawing style and beautiful sense of color.

i picked up "Blammo #7" by Noah Van Sciver, who came all the way down from denver, CO with his publisher Kilgore Books. i'd never read his comics before, but i like the way he draws people and the ways that he tells stories. this collection was a bunch of seemingly unrelated narratives (actually, i suppose that death played a role in most, but i'm not sure how purposeful that was), including the one above about a grim young man who helps out a girl who gets lost on Halloween. the other stories in the collection include a couple of horror stories about near-scrapes with death, an unemployed dead-beat, and a historical account of the beginnings of Mormonism, the acceptance and rejection of which Van Sciver later reveals was a large part of his formative years. his comics are very self-aware and modelled after older alternative comics serials (including fake ads and a letters page), yet there is a sense of sincerity throughout.

David Mack had the most crafty-artistic display that i saw at SPX. he had many little books that showed a fine eye for detail and experimentation. one of his comics, Steak and Cake, used punch-outs on the cover to reveal said steak and cake characters. he also had cards, etchings, and originial drawings. the comic above was a tiny little story about a sheep in wolf's clothing, perfect for anyone who has felt out of place in their world (with a happy ending, too!)

okay, so that's the majority of it. i got my comic fix for sure. i wish the best of luck to all the aforementioned comic book artists and also ones that i didn't talk about. i do admire you guys, and you have inspired me to set aside time to make my own comics again! when that will happen, i'm not sure...

speaking of, i have done a couple of comic/zine collaborations with the amazing Katie Green that i am sheepish to say i have still not posted about. but i assure you they will be in an upcoming post real soon. and i have a few other things to report on as well. all in good time. for now, enjoy your day everyone and keep creating whatever it is you create!

I am a sketchbook...

hello everyone, this post will be long and a bit more personal than most because i feel the need to share what i've been going through lately. for the past couple of months i've been pretty busy working at a gift shop and teaching, and i feel a bit guilty blogging when there are more pressing things i could be doing. but i realized that i need to do this because i need to share at least some of what i've worked on since january. i want to feel  like an artist again, and an important part of that is sharing. when i make art, i have a relationship between myself and what i'm creating. that is essential. but sometimes it's not enough. i almost always have an audience in mind, even if what i make is mostly just for me. so right now, all i'm working on is process and that is what i'm sharing with you.

here is my newest sketchbook that i made some months ago. i hand-bound it with coptic stitch and decorated the covers with gouache. i wanted it to be looser and freer than my other sketchbooks have been.

here is a sketch of one of my children's book ideas. remember i was taking that class awhile back? well, i took almost a month to even decide on my idea. i had several of my own ideas i was working on, but decided i needed more time to develop my writing. so i chose an e. e. cummings poem "maggie and molly and milly and may." i typeset and printed most of the poem, but haven't even worked on the visuals yet. another one of my backburner projects.

here are just some random paintings and drawings. i got really excited about working with watercolor and painting again. while i love printmaking and all the process involved, i really enjoy the spontaneity of working with paint and the primal-ness of simply drawing. can you tell that i'm also really getting into using color?

i must admit, i've been a bit "blue" for the past month. maybe that's not the right word. anxious, lost, depressed, angry, imbalanced. there are different reasons for this, and part of it is that i haven't had much energy to create art for the past couple months. i've been trying to balance myself physically and emotionally by going to yoga regularly, but it's quite frustrating to not have any energy to create new things. at least i've been writing poems and making some art in my sketchbook just for fun every so often. making things for fun or self-therapy was not really part of my life until lately when i realized i don't have time to do much else. since graduating from college, i have felt a drive to create art that is presentable to the public or immediately "sellable," because one of my goals in life is to be able to make my living from my art. but driving my art in that way is not always healthy. everyone needs time to not know what they are doing, to not have a finished product in mind. wandering is part of the process, a very essential part that i have neglected. so maybe these negative feelings are okay. they remind me not to get ahead of myself, to be myself whatever that happens to be at the moment.

6th Day of Fasting

Yesterday was the 6th and final day of my fast, and the day i broke it. i felt pretty even-keel that day, but i was excited to eat again. at around 4 pm i cooked some vegetable soup. i used fresh parsley and kale that had overwintered in our garden.

Strangely, eating after 5 days wasn't quite as triumphant-feeling as i thought it would be. it just felt normal. though i was only supposed to eat the soup that day, my tummy kept wanting more. it was hard to know when i was really full. i knew i shouldn't overstuff myself, but i ate some roasted seaweed, many handfuls of raw pecans, and half an apple. my tummy was grumbling like crazy the whole night, trying to process so much.

This morning i only craved another glass of lemonade. i think i ate a bit too much last night. i feel fine, but not bursting with energy the way that some fasters seem to feel.

Early this morning i woke up with several thoughts running through my head. This fast has been helpful in showing me a different way of thinking, and of putting together pieces of a puzzle i've been trying to solve. Originally, i wanted to go on this fast to detoxify as i felt sluggish and unmotivated. i have always had trouble focusing, and i'm a major procrastinator and worry-wart. During this fast, i felt oddly "normal." i didn't feel anxious or over-worried as i usually do. my moods were more stabilized. this makes me realize that i need to keep a better watch over my blood sugar dropping. during the fast, i could tell everytime i needed more lemonade because i would become suddenly irritated and angry. once i drank the lemonade i felt better. i believe that i have internalized a lot of these negative feelings that may have a large part to do with my metabolism and blood sugar levels. Maybe because this fast focused my attention so much on elimination of bodily waste, it was easy to see these negative thoughts similarly as "invaders," separate entities that enter into my mind and become stored inside my body as pent-up irritation. i've resolved to practice letting go immediately. Also, maybe just the simplified practice of drinking lemonade helped clear my mind and allowed me to focus on the fasting without thinking about too much else. i became a bit weaker through this fast, so it may have given me only enough energy to be aware of the fast.

another realization is that much of my hang-ups about food come from a deep-rooted fear of "not having enough" - physically, emotionally, financially. i think i've always been like this. it makes me act selfishly at times, and feel like i need to hold onto things for fear that i'll lose them or will never have another opportunity to have them. i think this feeling has impacted me negatively my whole life. i've read that if you want to experience abundance, you need to practice abundance. i had been trying to do that more consciously ever since the new year, but this realization compounds it.

and the last realization leads me to why i have trouble focusing. this doesn't have to do specifically with the fast, but i believe something about the process helped me to figure it out. it's not so much that i don't have enough energy, as i first believed, but that i MISUSE my energy. i divert it through anxiety, worrying, and distraction. the reason that i divert my energy is that i become overwhelmed very easily. i am not a good multi-tasker. i have always been jealous of others who seem to do many things at once so easily. i used to think this was something i should just get better at. but i have to accept that my strengths lie in different areas, and i need to develop those strengths. i am much better at doing one thing at a time. it takes me way too much energy to switch gears constantly. i believe this is the reason i am so detail-oriented. it allows me to focus much more fixedly. if i have too many things i need to do, it's like my brain just shuts down and i can't deal with anything. I decided that i need a way of organizing my thoughts to streamline my tasks so that i don't get overwhelmed. so far i haven't quite found a system of doing that, so i am searching around for one. but it feels good to know that i've found the root of the problem, and i can begin to work on it constructively.

Ever since beginning teaching at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, i have been sometimes overwhelmed at the prospect of teaching and all the planning it involves. there have been times i've freaked out and felt like i simply couldn't do it. but one thing that helped was to simply sit down and actively try to solve "the problem" - write lists of the materials i'll need, brainstorm on class ideas, and call people if i need help. this very basic way of tackling problems has been so much more helpful than simply beating myself up for not feeling capable right away. i AM capable. I just feel afraid sometimes.

anyway, this has been a rather long post. but i felt it was important for me to get these thoughts down. hope everyone's having a great day. time to go to the grocery store and get some cat food for Dozer. Here's a picture of him jumping on me when he wants to tell me something.