State of the Studio | Spring 2020 Edition
NEW BEGINNINGS
First of all welcome to my new website and the first of several major changes that will be taking place with my studio practice over the next few months!
I’m sure you’ve noticed that last year it was a bit quiet around here. To be honest about halfway through the year I realized that I wanted to start changing how I ran my studio as a whole, moving away from strictly traditional avenues and embracing different tactics that would allow me to ultimately reach a wider audience and (more importantly) make my work more accessible to the people I make it for in the first place. I was also craving a bit more out of my website, so I needed to define it’s purpose was other than just simply being an online portfolio for my work. The reality is that as creatives we often wear many hats and for me selling work through traditional and academic venues is a very small portion of what I do, but not many of the other things were present - teaching, commissions, etc. The old one was beautiful, but the more I looked at it the more static it felt and at the end of the day it just simply didn’t accurately represent all of the different aspects that make up what I do as a draftswoman and visual artist. It was time for a much needed change.
So as you can see I ended last year with a lot more questions than answers. How do I want to change up my studio practice? What do I want to do with my website? One big positive that has already come out of this is that I’m suddenly way more determined to live life on my own and pursue my career on my own terms. That’s why the first two months of this year I took a bit of down time to start things out, ultimately developing a new vision for what I needed out of my studio and my daily life.
So grab yourself a cup of coffee, get settled in and read on to see how my studio will be evolving through the rest of the year.
MY PLANS FOR THIS SPACE
HOW I’LL BE USING THIS SPACE | I own my website and 100% control the content on it - everything you see here is me from the ground up unless stated otherwise and I take a lot of pride in the hard work that’s gone into that. With other platforms its very hard to control who actually sees what you publish and there is always a risk that a network you’ve sunk a lot of time into something that will simply evaporate into nothing more than a flash in a session of mindless scrolling to waste the time. With that being said this is the place I’ll be using as the home base for all of my work, social media in the form of Instagram, Pinterest, etc will serve to compliment the content produced on here. This is where you’ll be able to find new releases, up to date information on available drawings, find out how to learn from me through classes/workshops and discover more about my thoughts/ideas behind the work. Everything I do lives here and anything I add to that will also become a part of this site, because at the end of the day this is my little cozy little corner of the internet and I plane to make it feel a bit more like home.
STORYTELLING + LONG FORM CONTENT | My work is deeply rooted in storytelling and I take a lot of pride in crafting images that have a multitude of layers to them, so I’m over the moon to finally have a website where that thread can really come forward and shine. Not only will I have more writing about the individual series of work I produce, but I will also be creating blog posts that are more in depth on the process and the stories behind each piece - cause ya’ll know this good old mountain life of mine has got some crazy ones. Those will be coming to the forefront a lot more over the coming year to help paint a broader picture of why I’m so passionate about creating the things I make. I also want to begin contributing slower, longer form and more thoughtful content out into the world. There’s a lot of quick reads and sensationalization in media at the moment and more than anything I think a lot of people are getting tired with it and are ready to have something that they can really sink their teeth into on a Sunday morning with a cup of coffee to genuinely learn something from or shift their perspective a bit. I’d like to think that through my time on this earth I’ve learned a thing or two that could help some people. Through my years of teaching I’ve witnessed first hand how connection, understanding and knowledge can genuinely open doors for people and to me it seems a little silly to keep what I’ve learned to myself and just a classroom or two of students I have each semester. Those of you that know me know that I am always honest and open with my thoughts (maybe more than I should be, but at least you’ll always know where I stand) and I want to bring that same sense of sincerity into this space. I’d also like for this to be a place that can indulge in my interests in creative process, what inspires me and also open the discussion around the more problematic side of being in a creative field, guess I’ve found that the older I get the more comfortable I am with saying things that might make others a bit uncomfortable. I know that’s what I’m craving right now and there’s only a small handful of people out there doing it. In that spirit I’m going to start being a hell of a lot more adventurous in my content by sharing my thoughts and combine all the various aspects of my career into one small corner of the internet.
NEWSLETTER | Over the next few weeks I’ll be putting together a monthly newsletter that will come out on the first of every month. The newsletter will announce any upcoming releases, events, workshops and anything else that will be going on in that month, as well as contain a summary of the previous month’s content. Subscribers will also be part of an exclusive group will be the first to know about any new series offerings or classes/workshops before it becomes public knowledge, so if you want to be part of that close knit community then head over here to sign up.
HOW MY STUDIO IS EVOLVING IN 2020
GETTING BACK TO MY ROOTS | This year I’m going to do just that, focus on bringing a sense of play and experimentation back into the my studio practice. There are a lot of small side projects and experiments I’ve been pushing off due to time constraints or having to push out larger drawings for exhibitions, etc. This is the year that those little snippets of an idea get to see the light of day. In fact the first two collections of work this year will both be based on ideas that I’ve had in mind for a while, but simply haven’t seen the light of day yet. Another thing that’s been on my mind lately is that I’ve lost a bit of the sense of play I’ve had in the past with media, so I want to get back to those experimental roots by using printmaking techniques, testing out new substrates and really digging into the innate properties of each media.
DIVERSIFYING PRICE POINTS | Let’s all be honest here…in the grand scheme of things art is a luxury and not a necessity. Between the basic costs of living and surprise expenses that pop up, the art on our walls is usually the last thing we think about at the end of the day. That being said the things that we bring into our space make a huge difference to our environment and daily lives. When we are surrounded by the things that we genuinely love, it makes the place that we call home or work even more special. I think that everyone should be able to do this in some capacity and that is what I want to strive to work towards in my studio this year by beginning to work towards a tiered pricing model outlined below.
Large Scale Originals - My original drawings and private commissions will still be at a higher price point due to their their one of a kind nature. These larger drawings are higher in price due to materials and the fact that they often take more time to plan and execute. I also hand build all of my framing and take a lot of pride in the final presentation of the work, so that has to be factored into the sale price as well.
Small Scale Originals - In addition to the larger original drawings I’ll be offering a few smaller scale drawing at a lower price point than the original drawings. These will be available unframed or have standardized pre-made (cost efficient) framing options available.
Prints / Small Goods - Finally I will also be working towards some limited edition prints of originals and other unique smaller items like pins, stickers, etc. that will begin to make the work accessible to a much wider audience.
CLASSES, WORKSHOPS + ONLINE RESOURCES | If you know me you know that teaching is a huge part of my studio practice. If you would’ve asked me 10 years ago if I ever wanted to teach I would’ve said hell no. However, in grad school I got the opportunity to be a part of a work study program that required teaching and I realized that it’s something that I really enjoy. The process of learning and communicating creative information is endlessly fascinating to me, not to mention that all of my introverted fears of public speaking have practically vanished due to fact that I have to do it almost every single day. For several years I’ve been teaching in traditional academic settings from large universities to local community colleges and I’ve experienced a lot of the ups and downs that come with it. I was thinking about those things a lot and how they can change, then finally towards the end of last year it hit me that:
Not everyone (including myself) has access or even wants to go through an entire college program to learn new skills. Part of me wants to get back to the notion of art as a trade, going back to its skill-based roots, so that you can continually find new resources that help you build and develop those skills.
As an adjunct my teaching schedule is insanely unpredictable and it’s not sustainable for me long term. After seven years I finally realized it’s been wearing on me (like I said earlier I can be a bit stubborn/dense at times). While I recognize that I need to have freedom and flexibility in my life to pursue the things I’m passionate about, I also need to operate on a more stable cycle in order to be able to continue to do the things I want to do long term.
Due to demand or curriculum, the likelihood that I will be able to teach classes rooted in in-depth study of subject matters or media I love will be limited or basically non-existent due to program or curriculum demands. Traditional drawing media has also been loosing ground exponentially to new technology-based classes and things like landscape, figure drawing and more media intensive courses have almost all but gone to the wayside in traditional academic settings. At first this made me a bit depressed, my favorite class I ever taught was a summer landscape drawing intensive, where we were outside en plein air every single day for almost three weeks straight. It was amazing and I felt so alive, but never had the opportunity to do something like that again.
In short after a lot of thinking I figured why not start actively pursuing opportunities to teach the things I want, when I want and where I want. To create my own schedule and start to offer people some access to the years of knowledge and practice that I have behind me. Later this spring I’ll start offering my own online resources and begin hosting small scale workshops focused on individual topics. Later in the year I’d like to open up an online course, which is a whole other beast that will definitely need a couple solid months worth of planning to bring to reality. I won’t lie…the idea has me both excited and nervous as hell. There is a huge learning curve and a lot of stumbling blocks that will surely pop up along the way, but with the above realizations gnawing at my mind I know its time. Besides if you keep doing the same things over and over you’ll never grow outside of your comfort zone, so for the sheer love of my craft and in the hope of creating a slightly more sustainable career that I genuinely enjoy - it’s time.
Thank You!
For those of you that stuck around until the end, thank you. This took me absolutely ages to write and I think I rewrote it about a dozen times over. I also genuinely wanted to say how much I appreciate the love and support from all my friends, family and followers that are constantly showing support for my work, it really does mean a lot and is one of the things that sustains me through those inevitably hard times. I look forward to seeing how this year starts to shake things up a bit, so on that note if any of you have a media specific questions, need some art advice or have a drawing related subject you would like me to cover in future posts please leave me a note in the comments below!