Art Show!

*phew*

It has been a really, REALLY busy past few weeks. And it doesn't show signs of slowing down for at least another three or four. Last weekend and the week before I was preparing for the opening of my Cherry Berry Bunny Etsy shop. And this weekend, my roommate and I put on a show of my art at our apartment. This past week has been a whirlwind of stress and trying to prepare for that.

We threw things together kind of last minute. We decided to put it on less than a month ago. I am going to be showing my art and participating in a panel about Femme identity and creativity at the national Femme Conference in August. I was scrambling trying to figure out how I was going to pay for it all, so my roommate suggested we throw together an art show in hopes that a couple paintings might sell.

Here's some pics from the show:

One painting is cut out of this picture because I can't reveal it here yet. Soon!


A wall with my newest series of portraits.


The "Goddess Wall". Everyone wanted to buy the Five goddesses painting, but my best friend has already bought it!


Collages.


More collages.








Three portraits that were hung singly.


My sister, my mom, and me.


Mingling.

It was overall a really great night! I didn't sell as much as I was hoping, but really I am happy I sold anything at all. That can never be a bad thing, right? :) I sold three paintings and have two possible commissions in the works. I am reasonably certain they will both come through. So, that is good as well. And even just getting people here to see my art is a good thing. It was also really nice to visit with my friends and family. I was kind of too nervous to enjoy a lot of it properly, LOL.

I have been making art like mad trying to get ready for the Femme Conference and trying to have a couple new things for my art show. I will leave you with two new paintings I haven't shown here yet:





I will, of course, keep you posted about art and the conference as it gets closer.

Etsy Update! & some other stuff

I updated my Etsy shop this afternoon with more art. I will be getting my art back from the Springfield Cultural Council soon and I highly doubt anything is going to sell from their exhibit. And if by some weird coincidence someone makes an inquiry by email for something that has already sold--oh well. So, back into the shop it goes! Along with three new paintings that I am really proud of:





Another exciting thing is that I heard through the grapevine 1000 Artist Journal Pages in now available on Amazon.com! I cannot wait to see this book, seriously. I still haven't ordered a copy. They have been in the publisher's warehouse for like a month and I have had the forms to get my discounted copy for about that long. Ooops! I better do that this week. Or, at least go visit it in Barnes & Noble or something.

Lastly, I am pleased to say that I finally bought two domain names. I am still trying to figure out hosting and how to actually build a web site, but I needed to just go ahead and get my domain names now. Because one of the ones I originally wanted was taken! Boo! Couldn't let that happen again. For 20 bucks it was worth it.

I bought one for an art website which will just be my name (www.julieayotte.com) and another which will be a stationery web site, name to be revealed at a later date. I will be selling brand-name kawaii stationery as well as my own designs. I even registered myself as a business, if you can believe that. I now have an EIN number and a Massachusetts tax ID number which permits me to collect sales tax. I'm all official. I need to call this week and see what other permits I need to be selling things over the interent. Honestly, it will be such a small thing to start that I can't imagine anyone would give me trouble even if I didn't have a resale permit. But I figure better to get it now, right?

I've looked into a few ecommerce options that would get a web site up and running pretty easily and inexpensively. I need to learn more about web design at some point, but there are options for those of us with little knowledge about html and coding and all that other lovely stuff. The problem now is coming up with a little money to buy a few initial products. Oh, and I will need a scanner and printer. This crap about giving me 4 hours a week at my job just isn't going to cut it. I mean, are they really serious? Are they kidding? Are they waiting to see if I will notice and be like, ok I figured out your joke and this has gone far enough!

I'll keep you posted when all of this starts shaping up more. I have been playing around with a logo for my stationery shop already. ;)

My moo cards came today!

For those of you who don't know what moo mini cards are, you should check out the link. They are little mini business card type things. The cool part, though, is that they will print high-quality photos on the front of them. I have seen pictures of other moo cards artists have made and I really like them. They have pics of my art on the front and all my contact info on the back. Usually when I tell people I am an artist they ask what type of work I do. And most people are kind of in the dark about what, exactly, mixed media art is. Plus I feel like my art can be kind of hard to explain. So now I can just whip out my mini cards and show them!

I chose ten different paintings to use. You get 100 cards so I got ten of each one. The photos get cropped, but you get to choose the position of the crop, and still I think people will be able to get a good idea of what I do. When they say mini cards, they really mean mini! They were a lot smaller than I had even expected. But something people will remember, I think. The cards are kind of expensive at $19.99 for 100. Especially when you consider you can get business cards made at vistaprint for free. I really like how unique they are, though!

I figure I can start including them in swaps and send them to my pen pals and things like that. And hand them out to people I meet. Just to get the word out about my art a little bit more. I will probably end up having to order more soon because I suspect I will run through them quicker than I originally thought.

Sneak Peek

I've started work on a new series of portraits. All told, it will be a series of 12. I'm not quite ready to say any more about it now, but wanted to share a picture anyways. I'm pretty happy with how things are coming along:

May Family Arts Festival

I had five pieces chosen to be hung for a family arts festival this May in downtown Springfield. Oddly enough, the Cultural Council didn't give participating artists a whole lot of details about what this festival is really going to be like. What I do know is this: there's going to be a festival taking place the weekend of May 17th-18th. It coincides with the big annual pancake breakfast. I'm not sure what the rationale for that is--maybe because lots of people will already be lured downtown with the promise of free pancakes. And pancakes and art are both yummy. Anyway, pieces will be hung May 1st throughout the downtown area. There will be opportunities for sales and also to be part of ongoing exhibits in partnership with downtown businesses. There's going to be a reception May 17th as well as two artist workshops on grant writing and growing your business. Both I expect to be very helpful.

Apparently there's going to be a few more art festivals throughout the summer and fall. I will keep you posted. Hopefully I will be able to show more work for those. I'm not sure where exactly my work is going to be hung, but I will keep you posted on that as well. This will be my first "official" public showing as an artist. Very exciting!

The following works were selected:

I Finally Got Inspired!

It only took a few months! I am finally creating again. Partially it is getting closer to the time of year when I am most active creatively. Partially I think I was not just uninspired, but depressed. I'm feeling a bit better mentally, which has been helping with my creative output. I have new paintings, new journal pages, and lots of new little projects going on. I joined a web site called atcsforall.com. You can join swaps to trade homemade art with other artists. I've started making artist trading cards and chunky book pages for a few swaps I joined there. My etsy shop is finally up and running. So, lots of exciting things going on.

Some of my favorite images of what I have been doing lately (you can see more photos on my flickr page):


A page from my journal. I've been really obsessed with mermaids lately, and this is my favorite.


A journal page with a paper doll in a pocket. Isn't she cute? I spent an entire afternoon creating her and then my rabbit ate a piece of her crown!


A mixed media painting on canvas. I collaged magazine pages, phone book pages, and tissue paper, then painted over it all with acrylics. It's available in my etsy shop.


A mixed media painting on art board. Also available in my etsy shop.

I recently hosted a post card exchange. My theme was, you guessed it, mermaids! I used a combination of collage, acrylic and watercolor paints, and altered magazine photos. Here are a few of my favorites:







And finally, my favorite artist trading card I made for a swap called "Whimsey Girls Cupcakes and Crowns" on atcsforall.com:



There's actually a lot more where this came from! I am going to try and update the blog more regularly with pictures of my artwork and not let as much time go by between posts. It feels really good to be creating again. Hopefully I can keep it up.

Some new journal pages...

I've been looking at lots of art lately, trying to get inspired. It's a catch 22 because I do get really inspired looking at other mixed media and journal artists--but then there's always the danger of comparison. I start feeling page envy and feeling like my stuff isn't as good. Which I guess every artist probably goes through. I also sometimes feel like my style isn't as cohesive as I would like it to be right now.

With that being said, I did create two pages in the past week or so that I really like. They are a little bit more free and messy than what I have been doing for the past couple months. The pictures aren't the greatest--we have had very little sunlight lately which makes taking nice pics difficult. Every day is dark and grey. But you should get the idea:

Testing, Testing

I've been wanting to start a blog for a while now. I'm pretty much an addict when it comes to reading other artists' blogs. As I venture further on in my own journey as an artist, I find myself wanting more and more to document and share that process. I am not sure at this point how this blog will shape up; I will probably change it around a lot in the beginning.

Lately I have been feeling incredibly stuck in regards to my creativity. I haven't been painting or collaging or even journaling much. I've done a bit more journaling in the past few weeks, but it still feels like I am pulling teeth to get anything creative out of myself. I am typically much more prolific in summer and fall. Everything comes easy to me then. I barely have to think about paintings in the summer--ideas are plentiful and executing them seems easy. But then things start slowing down during the fall and once winter hits--forget it.

I'd like to learn more about how to create during the difficult times as well. When times are slow and the ideas aren't as easy. I am thinking if I want to become more of a professional artist, spending half the year creatively dormant just isn't going to cut it. Perhaps I will learn that it is just part of my natural pattern of creativity--I don't know. Maybe I will focus more on other aspects of being an artist during that half of the year. But I would like to learn to be at least somewhat creative during this time. Maybe slow down but not come to a complete stop.

My most favorite piece of art I have done lately is for an altered book round robin that I am a part of right now. I was assigned the cover by the owner of the book and this is what I came up with: