Happy new year!
I made it all the way through 2014 as a working artist without spontaneously bursting into flames! It was dicey- my plan had been to keep my day job until I had more savings, more products, more everything, but then the day job, which was a grant-funded nonprofit, up and ran out of grant funding and went away, so I jumped before I felt ready.
It turned out that was kind of a theme for the year.
I’ve been doing pretty robust sales in Print on Demand shops like Zazzle and CafePress for years, and with some careful planning they have been just enough to cover me. That was an exciting thing to learn as my day job was falling out from under me! I added a lot of neat new stuff that took off, and I also expanded to open shops on RedBubble and TeePublic, all of which have slightly different product lines and audiences.
I got back to painting on canvas, something I used to do but haven’t had the space or time in probably a decade.
At first I started very small, but now I’m back to full-size canvases.
I found out that the Creamery District in Arcata was offering really cheap booth space for artists to sell their work the last Saturday of every month. I wanted to do Bay Area Sherlock Con, but I had never done a table before, so I started doing Art Markets in June for practice.
I didn’t have much to offer at first, but I had a little experience under my belt before BASC. I had a blast meeting online friends and new friends, selling prints and merch and just geeking it up hard for a whole weekend.
And by November I felt like an old pro at tabling!
I learned about cast resin and the community surrounding it in late August and was enchanted by the possibilities. I had a friend over and she, my excellent boyfriend and I spent Labor Day afternoon making polymer clay sculptures, and I cast a few of mine a week later.
I was hooked instantly. This year I’m going to be investing in equipment to make my casts cleaner and clearer, and I’m already working on a few new figures and techniques.
I also- finally- opened my own shop on this website, where you can get all of my hand-made stuff and some select prints. It’s undergoing a little bit of a facelift right now, to get ready for all of the plans I have for physical work this year.
To those of you who have been following me on this very weird, scary, exciting, and brilliant year, thank you so much! If you bought something from me this year, I can’t thank you enough for helping me turn a lifelong dream into reality. To those of you who are here but can’t buy anything right now, thank you for your attention and support- the second best thing you can do (first of course is being a patron) is share my work with other people.
I’ve already got a couple of projects off the ground for this year, one of which I can share so far (#100monsters). I’m really excited to show you more!
