Timmy Tu Shoes

So basically, up at the farm, 20 something artists come together and live as a community for a little over a week on a farm where one of the barns has been converted into a studio space. It’s a really great experience, and all of the people are absolutely fantastic. Each year we have a show sometime in Fall. Last year, this place opened me up a lot, it brought a lot of feelings to surface and a lot of truths I wasn’t ready to encounter, which caused me to isolate myself and stop posting on here in order to focus on working through these issues that had resurfaced. By the time I had finished sorting out a lot of these issues, I was constantly being bombarded with new problems that were distracting me from my social life and social media.  Now, I feel revitalized having come again. It was a fantastic experience I wouldn’t trade the world for. I got to see many of the people from last year, and met some fantastic new people this year. Many of whom shaped me in a positive way throughout the duration of the trip. It gave me a good dose of energy and I feel like I can come back to this full force, focusing my energies on networking and socializing more, as well as posting and interacting with social media. I’ll try not to post TOO much about the farm, but a lot happened, and so I’ll likely have a few posts regarding it over the next few days.

I’m having a blast with these, they will definitely become a regular thing. I like the aesthetic, they have a decent tattoo aspect to them, and they’re excellent drawing practice, as they are all very small and transitions are extremely important in small scale drawings.  I have more larger scale drawings coming that relate to these, but they will take a bit longer. (Hint/Spoiler: I’m doing some Dark Horoscopes) Anyhow, Airy Knoll posts incoming.

I am a depressed individual. Not majorly depressed, but it is always with me, and it can always become problematic. This music uplifts me. I would put Black Water Lilies, as it is the most directly uplifting, but this one resonates with me the most out of her many songs. She’s a truly magnificent artist and I hope to see more music from her. (Which I’m not too worried about with how fast she writes music!) ON A TOTALLY UNRELATED NOTE: There will be a small period of potential inactivity for this coming week, as I leave for the farm on the 18th or 19th, and I will be back on the 26th, where I will post my adventures, and my art. I have no service up there, so unfortunately, there will only be a few updates, if any, for that week.

It’s great really. This is another song I’d really like to do a time lapse for. I think a lot of these songs I’m going to share here, at least the first few, will be in time lapse videos (as long as I am able to do so). So in a sense this is also planning and organizing music for myself as well for future works. Short post for once, not much to say, just feelings and inspiration are drawn heavily from this particular piece of music. Oh, and also testing if this way of showing a video works right with my theme.

So after Wednesday, my last critique will be done for classes, and I’ll be done and Summer will begin. Sort of. I suppose I’ll post some of that art for a while and see where it goes and evolves from there. I should have a lot of material. I’m also going to finalize Art366′s collection, as I never finished posting it. So there’ll be a lot of content coming eventually as I kick back into gear. I’m planning on cannibalizing a lot of the work for Art366 into newer stuff, ideally getting at least one ‘finished’ piece from each week of work.  So, soon, you’ll be seeing a few representational watercolors, a ton of abstracts, and some printmaking stuff. Plus maybe Art366, some tattoo commissions, possibly a collaborative work, art from the Farm, and lots of other cool stuff. I need to network better and put myself out there more. Hopefully I can handle it this time. I’ll also post a few works that were in previous shows, so yeah, lots to come!

 I have a few goals for the summer. Due to a few circumstances within home and family, I’m at a stage in my life where I have to jump in and really start bringing in money with this art stuff, or I have to stop if I’m going to survive. In that sense this song resonates with me even stronger, a sense of urgency, a sense of duty and work hidden behind overwhelming obstacles at times.  As such, before the end of the summer, I’ll likely have to build a legitimate website, complete with a solid portfolio, for both school, commission, and work in at least 3 very differing artistic outlets (Illustration, Painting/Drawing, and Printmaking). I also have a few stretch goals to do, which include finishing the documentation of Art366, beginning screen printing (And potentially setting up a small printing and matting/framing service), as well as a various How-to and Time Lapse videos on Youtube. I’ve had a wonderful opportunity to focus on my studies, on experimentation, on art for the sake of art, but right now I have needs that have to be met for the sake of not just myself but others as well. I want to give back to my family for the opportunity they helped create for me. Therefore, I’m going to really focus, I need to move past my introversion, anxiety, depression, motivation issues, all of it. If I can’t, I’m unfit to make art a career, and I’ll swallow my pride and put it completely on the back burner for this, and now I have a time constraint, a deadline that really forces me into a corner.

Atlas is a titan found in Greek Mythology, he is condemned to hold the world on his shoulders.  He’s holding the earth up, representing the strain and burden of taking care of earth, likewise, his enduring nature and constant strain to hold the skies up correlates to earth itself as well, and how it endures our collective environmental impact on it.

So for the first bit of this, I’m probably going to be mostly talking about what’s happening and where everything’s going right now. I’m a little busy with exams and art critiques right now, and then I’ll be at the farm I mentioned in the last post before I disappeared again, but I’ll talk about what’s going on now and what happened throughout last year. I’ll also probably be using this text format, up until the Keep Reading will be high priority information, such as this, or titles and medium information, and then below Keep Reading will be more personal musings, conversations and thoughts. That way it’s there for people who want to see it, but likewise my blog will be efficient and better formatted for people who just want to see what’s going on, and the images. To update, I got into about 4 different shows right before and after I disappeared from here. One being a show relating to the Farm class, one being a tiny pop up show in a Library called the Bagh (?), one being a collaborative pop up show because an exhibiting artist wanted us to do it, and the final being the annual juried Student show at my college. Yay! Lots of fun. I didn’t sell anything. I feel like my prices were too high given the commission cut, but all good. I also had a few personal issues and family issues that I’ll discuss in a future post. Do you think it’s a decent (albeit minimal) theme, taking into account readability, contrast, and the visual content oriented focus of this blog?

I might post some stuff from all of those adventures, but not yet. This coming month, I’ll leave again for 2 weeks to go to an artist retreat on a farm; however, I intend to post and talk about this experience, share writing, and share WiP and interesting experiences I have while up there. So that will be coming sometime very soon, after which I will begin to seriously use Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat again. This is my post to you guys. The way I see it, it basically forces me to try, and hopefully succeed this time at making social media a regular part of my networking and art, I hope you guys enjoy what’s to come.