Hello all! I’ve rebooted my blog completely due to big changes, a need to get rid of stale topics, and a new focus for this site.
I have generally come to terms with the fact that I just don’t like changing the layout of my art/design pages every time I have something new to add, so this blog may become the focus of the site itself, using Wordpress “Pages” as portfolios for various works.
This will primarily become a place for sharing updates to new works of art, but depending on my attention span, it may evolve into more of a creative journal of musings, ideas, projects.
As for myself, over the past year and a half, I’ve spent more time shifting my gears away from the graphic design world. In the Spring of 2008, I got myself a much more social and active full-time job outside of my industry, which offered me the benefit of being able to focus on the things I love about art and design; rather than being self-employed full-time and basically working an undisciplined self-schedule disaster that usually kept me up late as an insomniac addicted to coffee, never really knowing the boundary between “work” and “play.”
I took time off from design to pursue my dream of having my own consistent art gallery space, and moved to Mechanicsburg to “live the art life,” having my own apartment practically over Gallerie 13, where I was renting said space and really enjoying meeting and befriending artists, going to receptions, and producing new works.
Unfortunately, this was all happening amidst a flurry of concerns of the recession, and as my bills skyrocketed during the winter months due to heating costs, I didn’t really have the money or motivation to keep it all up. I started spending less and less time in the Gallerie and more time at work, just trying to pay my bills. While it was a great experience, allowing me to create some of my best work and meet some incredible people, I decided [like many others I know these days] to take my parents’ advice and move back home with them. At 25, that’s not something that sounds very appealing, but considering all of the money I could save, and the art supplies I could buy, I decided to make the best of it.
These days I have been able to focus on figuring out exactly what type of things I enjoy doing without the pressure of “trying to do them for money” or “trying to figure out what people will buy.” Art should feel like freedom, not a marketing scheme. My brain begins to shut off when art and money become too intertwined.
In the next year or so, I plan to have saved enough money to invest in relocation to the Boulder, Colorado area to be close to my brother’s budding family, especially now that I am an uncle; I’d really like to be an uncle. After spending time in Boulder earlier this Spring, I fell completely and madly in love with it, so the reasons and plausibility for my move are innumerable. So, I guess you could say that this blog may potentially document that journey, and maybe help keep me on the right track.
Stay tuned, I plan on doing a few posts soon featuring artworks from the past year that I haven’t yet posted to my portfolio/gallery.