'22 Post-Mortem

Hello, all! Welcome to the 2022 year in review blog post!

I’ve had a whirlwind year, as they say. I moved out of my home work space to a basement studio in Nashua. Then, just as I was starting to get my mojo back, aforementioned basement studio sprung a leak less than 6 months into my stay and I needed to move again. I found another studio in an old mill building in Wilton, NH and things have started to fall back into place ever since!

After some fresh paint, new shelves, and a thorough vacuuming (with a lot of help from my partner) the space is finally complete. I’ve been working here since October and hopefully this will be my permanent studio space for years to come. I’ve made a handful of pieces in the space already.

I even got a new desk for my birthday! It’s technically a Husky workbench, but I love it because it can be converted into a standing desk. It’s helped my flow sooooo much. If I had known years ago that standing would help me focus, I would have been unstoppable!

Even without the new bench, this space has brought me a lot of joy. It is truly, I think, my best one yet! So much natural light and charm— I got back to my day dreaming right away.

Speaking of— I am planning on doing my own individual Februllage challenge in 2023! I’m going to come up with my own prompts and make as many as I can. I don’t particularly enjoy Februllage because it feels like a popularity contest. So, I decided to do my own thing and see how it shakes out. Maybe I’ll pick up a few of the mainstream prompts to bring my account some visibility… but otherwise, it’ll just be me vs myself (like a Mario Kart time trial lol)!

In terms of the art I created this year, I’m really proud of myself for getting back on the horse. Even though there are days when nothing comes to me and I just end up faffing about in the studio—hey, you know what, at least I went. I showed up for myself this year in a lot of ways.

I had some fun making more videos of my process. I enjoyed getting back into music and letting the ideas flow. Music, films, and books are the magic cures for my doldrums. I think looking at some of the pieces I made this year, you can tell I started allowing myself to feel again. Here are a few personal favs:

Transitioning to a personal update from 2022— I ended up filling the new studio with more plants than I had intended because we adopted two lovely kitties, this autumn. Our sweet Yuki passed in September and she never bothered my plants so I just kept whatever I wanted around the house without worry. The boys, however, are a different story… They love to nibble plants. I discovered, to my shock and horror, that they were eating toxic plants! So, I brought most of my house plants to my studio, where they are thriving! They enhance the space, anyways, and it’s nice to have the option to still keep all my plants.

The boys are named Cash (as in “Johnny”) and Mr. Darcy (as in “Austen”). We adopted them from the Darbster Rescue Foundation in Manchester, NH. They are originally from South Florida and they had been at the rescue for 6 weeks when we adopted them. They are a bonded pair, meaning they needed to be adopted together and couldn’t be split up. That worked for us because we were looking to give two kitties a home.

They’re such good boys! They love to play with toys, chase each other, sleep in sunny windowsills—and of course I spoil them rotten. We miss Yuki very much, but the lads having their home here has helped my heart heal quite a bit. (apologies for the photos, my camera has a hard time exposing The Voids properly haha)

In terms of artistic goals for next year— I’d like to do more of whatever my brain feels like doing. I’d like to not be on social media as much. Instagram is a dead platform and I don’t enjoy being on there anymore, so why force it? I guess the motto for ‘23 is to just “let go”— and that’s a good goal in and of itself, I think.

Thanks for reading and thank you to everyone who supported my shop this year! It means a lot to me!!

See y’all in 2023!

pssstt… if you’re reading this and you made it to the bottom— message me for a free sticker! ;)