And now that I know you better, I seem to have stopped writing here. It’s not from a lack of stuff to write about.
When I started writing the blog I had a baby who took naps. We couldn’t afford a babysitter for studio time, so nap time was my chance to do something creative. So I wrote this blog, and that was my art practice for a while.
I craved community and was told repeatedly that the best thing to do is to show up for stuff. It is sometimes hard to go from gallery to gallery knowing no one, so my motivation for going was the plan to return home and write about it. Writing about what I saw was my way of making myself “get out there,” and then giving myself credit in a seven-year-old-earning-gold-stars kind of way.
To my utter amazement, people were reading my blog. I was making friends over the interweb! There was a handful of other artists who were writing blogs, and we “met” by commenting on each others blogs and then eventually met in person, thanks to a gathering initiated by Emily Pothast.
A few months later, I asked those writing artists, and other artists I didn’t know, but knew of –SOIL members and Crawl Space members– if they would like to get together once a month and talk about each others work. Studio Group was born. It continues to this day, and is great.
Then I joined SOIL.
Now we can afford a babysitter so I can go to the studio.
I think someday when I get to do residencies again I’ll write about art in those cities.
This post is really just to say that I’m so glad I’ve gotten to know you. I really really like you.
