An Artist’s Life

20 August, 2015

Jerome Fiber Artist Project Grants: You are invited!

beckarahn2015-08-20T10:48:30-05:00An Artist's Life, Gallery Exhibitions|Comments Off on Jerome Fiber Artist Project Grants: You are invited!

On Thursday September 3 from 6-8 pm is the opening reception for “You Know Who You Are”, the final exhibition for the 2014/15 recipients of the Jerome Foundation Fiber Artist Project Grants.

I was one of this year’s grantees and I have been working on my project since January. The program is designed so that you apply with a project plan. Your project should be something that will help you take the next step in your artistic career, and you get to determine what that is. I decided that my major goal was to have an exhibition of a small collection of my work. (That is a standard part of the program.)

The way I would create the new work would be through a series of conversations with three other artists. In each conversation, my goal was to learn a new way of thinking about something, especially new ways of designing digitally. There are very few resources to learn digital design skills, especially if you are beyond the beginner “Photoshop 101” stage, so I chose a model of learning from my peers about the way they approach design. I will post more about these conversations and the pieces that I created as “duets” with my partners in these next days leading up to the exhibition opening.

I would love to see you at the exhibition if you are in the area.

6 August, 2015

An artist wears many hats. (Send more tea.)

beckarahn2015-08-06T15:51:42-05:00An Artist's Life|2 Comments

I thought it was time for a little staff meeting here at Becka’s to give you a status on some of the projects we have been working on.

The Art Department has been working on a new design idea which is a combination of geometric with organic overlays. Looking for prints that might be good for making simple t-shirt dresses. The one above is called “Editorial Buzz” because it features a geometric print made from a photo of pencil erasers, newsprint and bees. We think this one is a winner. The Social Media team will write an article about it next week. The Art Department has also been busy working on engineered prints for Exhibition Project #3 which is due at the end of the month. Contributors have submitted their components and it is just a matter of completing design work in the next 2 business days.

The Photography Department just finished a photoshoot of 6 new pieces to go with a grant submission. The photo styling team was very efficient. These have been formatted for the grant requirements and also for updates to the artist’s website.

The Marketing Team reports that new business cards have finally been ordered, the artist having realized that she was out of them at an inopportune moment. They have been shipped.

The IT Department ran updates to the artist’s website due to a WordPress software update. The photos from the Photography Department were uploaded and the gallery re-styled due to the artists frustration with the previous template. Tech Support I (aka Google) was queried for instructions on adding additional sidebars and full width templates. A request has been placed with Tech Support Supervisor (aka husband) in regards to a .css conflict which is causing something to be green that shouldn’t be. IT will report back.

The Development Department reports successful completion of Arts Board Grant submission. Approximately 16 hours of prep was required for this project, which results in some overtime for this Department. Final count was 7500 characters exactly. Grant funding will be used for new exhibition of work and purchase of mobile computer lab, pending approval of funding.

Outreach and Community Engagement Department attended a gathering of non-profits to interview and recruit potential board candidates. They report many renewed acquaintances and possible partnership opportunites as a result. Note to Marketing Department: order more business cards. The department also reports two new design project queries, but these have been postponed until after personnel have been freed up by Development.

Product Development received a shipment of experimental purse frames. They also placed a manufacturing order of laser cut components to arrive in a few days.

The Customer Service Team responded to an email request for more product and performed maintenance in the online shop. Orders are to be shipping tomorrow when it is not raining.

Canine Interns report rain in the backyard. They are very concerned about monitoring the squirrels, so they are currently napping in the dry spot under the tree and have declined requests to come in the house.

Sleepy canine interns.

Building Maintenance reports that there are unusual levels of mud in the kitchen. Suggested follow-up with Canine Interns.

The Artist reports a need for a nap. Or maybe more caffeine. We are out of Breakfast Assam.

15 July, 2015

Public Service Announcement: Back it Up!

beckarahn2015-07-15T12:52:33-05:00An Artist's Life, Everything Else|Comments Off on Public Service Announcement: Back it Up!

This is my periodic public service announcement. Take 10 minutes (or maybe an hour) right now and back up your computer or your phone or your iPad (or maybe all of them!)

Burn a DVD of all of your photos.

Run the backup program that you have but never use.

Go investigate a service like CrashPlan who will back up automatically for you every night. (We love them.)

Look up a tutorial for how to backup to the Cloud or DropBox.

I can 100% promise that you will never ever regret spending the time to do that. Our hard drive melted down last week. As you might have guessed, I use the computer a lot. I have hundreds of MBs of design files. My entire exhibition that goes up this fall lives entirely in this computer right now. And the hard drive had a malfunction and it completely croaked right in the middle of checking my email.

That photo. That’s exactly what my screen looked like. That is one dead hard drive.

It wasn’t a crisis. Because it was completely backed up. It was very annoying. The computer was in the shop for a week; it took several days to download all of the files to a new drive. I drummed my fingers a lot because I had a lot of work to do last week. It could have been a disaster.

19 June, 2015

My 7th Spoonflower-iversary!

beckarahn2015-06-19T11:13:37-05:00An Artist's Life, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|Comments Off on My 7th Spoonflower-iversary!

June 20th is my 7 year Spoonflower-iversary. That was the day I uploaded and ordered my very first fabric. I remember getting my invitation to join the site. At that point, you signed up to be on a waiting list and Spoonflower would invite groups of people to join at a time. They only had one printer and I think you could only order a yard or two at a time. I remember reading about Spoonflower in someone’s tweet and Googling to find the site and signing up that minute. Printing my own fabric? For real?

When it came time to design my very first fabric, I had no idea what to draw. I don’t usually suffer from the “fear of a blank page”, but I was truly stuck. It was intimidating. I wanted to love it, I wanted it to be mine. So I decided to do something practical. I made a fabric that matched my Etsy shop banner, thinking I would make some gift bags to send Etsy orders in. Smee the fish and bright colored bubbles. I even did a top-to-bottom seamless repeat of the bubble pattern, which when I look back on it now seems pretty sophisticated for my first design. I didn’t end up making gift bags from that fabric, because I couldn’t do it. When I unwrapped the package a few weeks later and I had my first yard of fabric in my hands, it was perfect. It was like the best Christmas present ever. It was my design and it was real fabric. I couldn’t cut it up and give it away. I still have that yard and it’s still my very favorite. I bring it to class with me sometimes and show it to my students.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the day I found my niche. I had been working at an art center for years, and I had taught hundreds of people how to do all kinds of fiber art, but I didn’t really feel like I had an art form to call my own. I wasn’t a quilter or a fashion designer or a felter, although I could do all of those things. I wasn’t really passionate about any of them.

I ordered several more designs and tried all kinds of things, but it took me a couple of years before I really figured out what to do with my own fabric and that was this dress.

I wish I could remember exactly the inspiration for this. I had a couple of events that fall I needed to dress up for. I loved those two photos the design is made from. I had a brainstorm. I meticulously re-drafted all of the pattern pieces for this in Illustrator and placed the photos on each piece. I had to figure out how to make files that were each exactly 1 yard of fabric so I could place all of the pieces. I wasn’t sure what it would look like when it was printed. Would the colors look right? Would it look too much like a photo billboard? I had no idea if it would work. After I ordered the fabric, I realized that I had made 2 left skirts instead of a left and a right and I had to redo and reorder that piece. I wasn’t sure how much it would shrink or even if it was the right weight for a dress. I had never even ordered this silk-cotton fabric before. (It turned out to be perfect.) It was a leap of faith and the worst that I figured would happen was that I would end up with some random silk scraps and no dress.

It maybe sounds cheesy to say Spoonflower changed my life, but it’s kind of true. I loved designing fabrics but it wasn’t something I could just do, except by hand. When I was in college I worked at a summer theater and I costumed an entire show with costumes made from muslin, drawn on with sharpies and colored with crayons. I wanted them to look like they were out of a coloring book. Completely impractical (not washable), but such a great concept. I block printed borders on satin fabrics for another show because I couldn’t afford the fancy fabrics and trims I wanted to make the costumes look lush and “royal”. I could print fabrics on my ink jet printer, but only 8 1/2 x 11 inches at a time. I never could find the fabrics I wanted in my head because they didn’t exist. I now have a whole gallery of fabrics that exist because I designed them. This September, almost exactly 5 years from the day I ordered the fabric for that dress, I am going to have an exhibition of my work and our new book is going to be released and it is all about digitally printed fabric.

Wow.

So, cheers to Spoonflower and Stephen and Kim and Darci and all of the creative and wonderful people I have worked with at Spoonflower. When you are a painter, you don’t think about the people who make your paint or your brushes. I am lucky enough to have a whole fabulous team that is helping me do what I do.

1 May, 2015

How to do everything at an art fair (or maybe not)

beckarahn2015-06-16T17:16:35-05:00An Artist's Life, Everything Else|Comments Off on How to do everything at an art fair (or maybe not)

This has turned out to be my very busiest time of year. This last week I travelled to Rapid City SD for the Black Hills Fiber Arts Fair. It is just the second year for the fair. I went last year as a visitor and took a class with my mom; this year I taught 4 classes and had a vendor booth.

I do several fiber fairs that are structured like this one: vendors, classes, other events all packed in to one weekend. Figuring out what parts you want to do and what you realistically CAN do are two different things.

Classes

I realized quickly that I wouldn’t be able to take any classes. This event was set up to have a “classes day” for the vendors before the event was open to the public, so that you could go take a class without having to have someone watch your booth. But I was teaching a class then and the schedule worked out that I was overlapping with other classes and one of the events that evening (an opening reception) so I wasn’t able to do either of those things. It was a great class to teach, so that really worked out just fine. The rest of the weekend I was either teaching or needing to be in my booth, so no classes for me.

Events each have a personality. This fair had a pretty laid back policy about checking in for set up and teaching and those kinds of things. I needed to be a little pro-active about tracking down what I needed (extension cords), improvising name tags (masking tape) and adjusting some lights in the space we were in. The gallery staff for the venue was outstanding and really helpful. One of my classes had 2 or maybe 3 different times published which was a little confusing, so just being extra prepared and having a “make it work” attitude made the weekend that much nicer.

I packed all of the supplies for my classes into rolling suitcases, packed with big ziploc bags. I knew I needed to just be able to pop them out and be ready to go since I had limited set up time and more setup meant more time away from my booth. I stashed the suitcases under my table so I could just grab them and go.

Vendor Booth

I was super lucky to have my sister and husband who could be booth sitters while I taught the rest of my classes over the weekend. It really helped that they were both pretty familiar with my items for sale, but there were still lots of people with questions who stopped back to find me later when I was in the booth. Even a great booth sitter (which mine were) isn’t a substitution for being able to interact with the artist, so I felt a little sad that I was away from my booth for about 8 hours of the event. I might think next year about requesting that my classes happen during the “slow hours” of the event right at the end of the day.

I forgot my knitting! One thing I think is really helpful at a fair like this is to have something to do with your hands. I know how much I hate “pushy salespeople” in a shop and I feel like if I am occupied with a little something, then I make the customers more comfortable looking at things at my booth. And it gives a really easy start to a conversation with strangers – “Oh, what are you knitting?” You need a simple project that you can pick up and put down (no lace patterns to count) at any minute and especially something that you can look up and talk and be aware while you are doing it. I didn’t have a project ready to go and I was antsy without it.

Social & Social Media

I had really good intentions of taking lots of photos and writing up a whole post about the art and the vendors at the show. Oops. That didn’t happen! I have some photos of my booth, but only because my mom took a few. I really only got to walk around the show in the minutes before we opened to the public and I could chat with other vendors. I bought one skein of pretty yarn from the booth right across from mine. I love reading other people’s posts about their visits to events like this, but being able to write one fell down to the bottom of my list of things I needed to do.

I met some really cool people, but I never really had time to chat. We were each running to teach and then back to our booths and I think next time maybe I will plan an evening for going out for a drink or a meet up for coffee before the event opens.

Don’t underestimate the Power of Chocolate

A very dear friend surprised me by coming to the show to say hi and bringing me a little box of chocolate. I hadn’t had anything but a granola bar for lunch that day and I was feeling a little worn out after teaching for 4 hours. Chocolate was exactly what I needed. Sea salt caramels coated in chocolate can fix anything.

They had a really awesome food vendor at this show from what I heard, but sadly for me, she didn’t have any vegetarian options. I probably could have gotten a side of potato salad, but I wished that the taco salad option would have included beans instead of meat. I will put that in the evaluation that I turn in.

Overall…

It was an awesome show for me. I had 2 shops approach me about carrying my stuff. I met some awesome people. My classes all went great. I was invited back to teach again next year. Sales were even better for me than at a much bigger show I did last year. All in all, this one gets an A. Thanks to the staff and volunteers at both the BHFAF and the Dahl Arts Center. You do a great event!

26 March, 2015

Inspired by your space?

beckarahn2015-06-16T17:16:58-05:00An Artist's Life, Everything Else|4 Comments

Finding inspiration isn’t a problem for me. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. I am compelled to create things and I am never lacking for ideas. Sometimes it is difficult to actually finish something because I always have a better idea in the middle of what I am doing. My mom will attest to this. She tells stories of elaborate schemes presented to her in order to get her to take my sister and I to the local hobby store. No one was bored at my house.

There’s an expectation, or perhaps a social media inspired trend, that I am feeling right now that when you are an artist that you do a lot to find inspiration. You create a mood board or a journal or you collect things that inspire you. You put things in your space to provide inspiration. In fact, you have a specific inspiring space where you do your work. And you post photos of your inspiring space to help inspire others. And you pin photos of other people’s inspiring spaces.

Abby, a blogger who I follow, just posted something the other day about a comment left on a photo she posted of her laptop at the kitchen table:

This question really struck me. I started to wonder what people might be imagining it looks like here at my house when I’m writing or sewing or podcasting or working on my business. Do they think it looks somehow different than this? Sexier than my kitchen table? And if they do, why?

What makes us want to imagine artists in beautiful light-filled loft studios surrounded by a rainbow of paint tubes where even the drop cloth is color-filled and brilliant? Or writers sitting in bustling coffee shops sipping espresso and effortlessly dashing off inspired tomes?

In fact, this has been somewhat of a recurring theme for me lately. In an art group I belong to, we had a discussion about journaling. One of the artists is in a mentoring program that does not require, but strongly recommends, that you keep a journal of your experience. She wasn’t sure where to start or how she could do it without it becoming something she felt obligated to do, rather than inspired by. Another group meeting recently had an activity where we were each asked to bring our sketchbooks and talk about our process. A friend stopped me at an art show and was disappointed when I said I didn’t have a studio that I work in. (I get asked this a lot)

I actually find all of those things the opposite of inspiring. I don’t like to have other people’s work in my space. I have art all over my house, but nothing specifically there to “be inspiring”, just things that I love. I don’t want to have a photo clipped from a magazine that I can copy. I don’t keep a sketchbook or a journal. In fact it was very awkward for me at this meeting with the sketchbook activity – I felt as though I had to defend myself for not having one. I keep a notebook of notes, but it’s all math and technical notes. I write down RGB and hex codes for colors. I write out the math for determining how much ease and the size of the facing on my wrap skirt. It’s practical and it’s information I know I might need again. I also keep meeting notes in there and stuff I write down while on phone calls. It’s not very inspiring. I like working in my house and being able to scratch my dogs and go make tea or a piece of toast when I feel like it. Sometimes I work in my sewing room, but it’s small and so sometimes I spread out all over the dining room table. There’s a card table set up in the dining room right now too because I am working on a big project and I feel like I need the space. Sometimes I spend the whole day at the computer, which is on a big messy desk cluttered with coffee mugs, earrings and camera equipment. And I am not talking business chores on the computer, it’s a part of my art process and one that I love. But not exactly inspiring either (at least to anyone else.) Believe me, erasing pixels is exactly as exciting as watching paint dry.

I think about the artists who I know and love and none of them have Pinteresty workspaces or processes. My friend Donna works with buckets of frozen rhubarb leaves and stews made from a whole lot of other things that most people would compost. There is nothing romantic or pretty about that. (I imagine some of them smell bad, too.) Another friend’s studio is a mish-mash of storage space, staging area and place to make a mess. She doesn’t want the mess at her house, so the studio is the place to make the mess and it invites you to do it. I work in the dining room or at the kitchen table or on the back porch or sometimes all in my head. I may or may not be wearing a matched pair of socks while I do it.

Do I burst your bubble by admitting this? Are you sad that I don’t have a secret artistic sketchbook to show you? Do you want me to have a studio and a pretty Pinterest-worthy wall? (I am curious now.) Do you have a sketchbook of inspiration? Does it work for you? Or do you do it because that’s what artists do?