snowboard-inspired dresser diy

Even though we moved into our first post-college apartment almost a year ago, it's still sort of a work in progress. Over the holidays I found an old but solid birch dresser (on Craigslist, where else?) for super cheap and picked it up from another artist in Somerville. It was really dinged up and the finish was literally flaking off but after a few coats of paint and some new brushed metal knobs it now looks good as new.

I bought several pieces of artwork to hang over it but am still waiting to find the right frames for them. For now I temporarily hung Always (still for sale in my Etsy shop!) so it didn't have to be tucked away in storage :)

The paint color was inspired by my snowboard, which happened to be leaning against the wall when we brought the dresser in. Our boards are still there, sad and unused so far during this very warm and snow-less winter. Since our walls are light grey I spray painted both jewelry stands white and picked up that cute cutout frame for $10 at Pier 1.

some art on the walls

This weekend was so packed... between a seminar on craft beer brewing (at Harvard! who knew those smart nerds were so cool), one of my best friends' birthdays and the Superbowl, I felt like we weren't home at all. I love being in our apartment... which is probably a good thing since I spend most of my workday here. These lazy mornings before we each go to work are the best.

We're listening to a pretty sweet Jack Johnson radio station on Pandora if you'd like to give it a listen :)

Doing a little work while we wake up... still pretty bummed about the Patriots' loss.

Live, Travel, Adventure, Bless is about four feet tall and a little too big to store with the rest of my finished work... so it's hung on our wall until it sells :)

Pretty nice view for a kitten.

Sea Fever, hung over my desk.

We should probably take the holiday decorations off our Christmas Houseplant now that it's February.

Banana tree, guitar.

A small mixed media piece I made using photography and stamps over vintage envelopes on canvas. I took the photo almost four years ago from Mike's friend's roof deck in downtown Boston.

My studio in the golden afternoon light.

Now into the studio to paint :)

sweet morning

Some random shots from early this morning...

One of the best gifts Mike and I got for Christmas was 10 pounds of coffee from a local roaster in the town where we went to college... we go through a lot of coffee so it's been fun to brew different kinds each day before we start our workday. 

The last photo is from a piece still in progress... I've been working on a few similar pieces, focusing on textures and a couple new techniques. Hopefully I'll get out of this inspiration funk and have something to share soon.

sunday.

A lazy sunday.

this august afternoon

Today was great... so relaxing. After spending the last two days packing and shipping orders from when I was away, I'm finally getting back into the swing of things. Mike and I woke up and went to Zoe's Kitchen in Cambridge for breakfast (brunch? lunch? It was 2pm... but we got eggs... so I dunno). Our friend introduced us to Zoe's a few weeks ago and now we can't get enough.

(I also can't get enough of waking up, having a cup of coffee and sometimes even going out to breakfast together before starting our days instead of me waking up at 6am to commute to work and Mike spending 3 hours a day on the train to and from work.)

He got the "Three Sons" breakfast, which has three of everything you could possibly offer in a breakfast, and is probably called that because you could feed three dudes with it. Or one Mike. I got the smoked salmon benedict, which is incredible and delicious and undeniable proof that you really can (and should) incorporate seafood into every meal possible :)

After breakfast I dropped him off at work and made the trek up to the huge art supply store in Somerville... it's only a little over 4 miles from our apartment but takes about 30 minutes in Boston traffic. I took some photos while I was sitting in traffic next to Faneuil Hall... but they're depressing.

Haul from the art store: Liquitex Super Heavy Gesso and Black Lava texture gel, some image transfer paper, as well as a couple palette knives and pads of ink.

All the walls of my studio are brick, including the little arched entranceway where this plant sent out some new leaves.

Mike's mom gave us this plant when we were living at his parents' house... I thought we killed it when we moved, but its slowly taking over the archway into my studio. I love plants and love the idea of them creeping all over our apartment. I'd live in Jumanji if it was possible.

I love it here.

A poem I wrote at the beach has been stuck on my inspiration board for a while, so I took a few lines of it and played around with some different lettering styles and colors on a smaller canvas. A couple other paintings have also been started this week, and the finishing touches on some overdue custom work done as well.

I've also been teaching myself to better use the manual settings on my camera... it's silly to own a nice DSLR and expensive lenses and rely on the auto settings all the time, so hopefully forcing myself to experiment and learn different techniques will help me become a better photographer and get more out of my photographs, and later my artwork. Baby steps though... I still carry around an ISO/aperture/shutter speed cheat sheet in my camera bag :)

a day in the life

I love reading Wayward Spark, a blog written by Camille of Red Onion Woodworks about her experiences being a craftswoman, mom, farmer and homesteader. Though we are both 20-something American women and artists, our lives are so totally different that I'm fascinated by everything that goes on in her small Oregon cabin and farm. Her recent "day in the life" post blew my mind and inspired me to catalogue my own day as an independent artist-- unfortunately, since I don't wake up at 5am, have any cute kids or goats, or run a homestead in the woods, mine is far less interesting. But here it is, in case you are curious about some of the things being a full-time artist entails :)

Except for days when he has to go to work early or nights I've stayed up until 5am painting, Mike and I usually wake up together for a cup of coffee and yummy breakfast. This is one of my favorite things about my new job as a full-time artist-- I really love "getting started" for the day in a slow-paced way with Mike before he goes to school.

Blueberry-raspberry-chocolate pancakes and some amazing coffee. We visited Mike's parents the weekend before and got to bring home a bunch of beautiful flowers from his mom's garden.

I have a weird thing for nice coffee mugs-- drinking strong coffee out of a nice mug is just awesome, who knows why. This mug was handmade by potter Karen Lorenc. The butter dish was made by Sumiko, and the plates are stoneware from IKEA.

Not everyone wants to get up early.

After breakfast Mike walks to the subway and I get right to packing and shipping the last day of orders. I used to only ship every 2-3 days, but now that I have more time and the post office is super close I try to ship every morning. My desk is outside my studio (read: computers are away from paint and brush water) and is actually a kitchen table from college (as is all of our furniture, excluding our couches and the TV that came with our apartment). This is where I do most of my business stuff and where I sit when Shit Needs to Get Done.

A couple prints packaged, tied up and tagged. I'm working on new packaging, due out at the end of summer.

I had a very large order to ship out to the Vessels & Jewels art gallery up in New London, NH along with my regular orders. Big print orders get shipped wrapped in about a dozen layers of bubble wrap, which is almost entirely free and recycled from Mike's office.

After everything is packed, I take a break for lunch, which is usually a protein smoothie. I've never been big on vegetables, but at one point a couple months ago I realized I literally hadn't eaten a single vegetable in over a week and that kind of creeped me out. I started replacing one meal a day with a green smoothie when I found out that you can completely hide the taste of vegetables (kale, cucumber, lettuce, spinach) by blending them with fruit and juice. I bought an Oster personal blender which is super easy to clean, and on days when I have a veggie smoothie I feel like a million bucks and have more energy than I know what to do with.

On my way to the post office with about 25 orders. I knew there was a post office nearby our apartment when we moved, but then found out it was only about 4 blocks up the street, meaning I could walk or bike there! So I got a basket for my bike and only drive when I'm shipping a very large piece. Boston really hasn't gotten the hint that it's summer now, as you can see from the raincoat and long pants. On nicer days I try to bike around our neighborhood for a little while before going home.

After shipping orders, I try to get as much business stuff done as possible before getting my hands covered in paint. I answer emails, blog comments, Facebook posts, any pending wholesale or custom orders and then do an inventory of supplies if it looks like I need them. On this day I ended up stocking up like crazy- 250 mailing tubes, several bales of bubble wrap, cardboard mailers and archival paper. Gracie is either sleeping or doing cat yoga?

After the business side of things is done (and there is a lot) I finally get to play in my studio and actually make art. I started this piece over a month ago and really wanted it done, but couldn't figure out exactly what to do for a while.

The inspiration is back :) I'll move things from the easel to the desk constantly so I can see what different colors or lettering will look like before making it permanent. This is the last piece I have to finish before taking it and 4 other paintings up North to the print shop that does all my high-res scanning prior to selling or making them into prints. Since it requires two 2-hour round trip drives I try to get a lot of finished pieces together and make it worth the trip.

 About half of my text is hand-lettered (ie, my handwriting or hand-drawn letters) and the other half uses stencils or stickers that I resize, cut out, paint over or otherwise alter to look how I want while still retaining some of their original shape/size. I paint on top of recycled cellophane print sleeves that are torn or wrinkled-- it protects my table, and the letters or other painted paper lifts right off.

More of this piece. I've been working on it forever, but I know if I don't force it, it will come out just right on its own.

After painting that day, I went to pick Mike up at work in Cambridge. He is currently pursuing his PhD at M.I.T. so I usually park and meet up with him in the biology lab where he works on his thesis project, which focuses on capturing sustainable solar energy from marine algae. I waited for him to finish doing some kind of intense-looking science thing and then we headed home. 

I got lazy and stopped taking photos at this point, but if I had to guess, I think our night probably ended watching hockey and eating sushi, and a little more painting... Not bad for a full day of self-employment :)

On Quitting My Day Job

Last night, I put my paintbrush down at 3:30am and went to bed, and woke up this morning to light filtering in through the blinds, a soft breeze blowing through my window and tides of sunshine lapping at the edge of the floor. My morning commute wasn't a 70 mile per hour highway race, but a shuffle to the coffee maker and into my studio, the curtains waving softly and a belly-up tabby cat waiting for attention. 

An easel and canvas rather than a computer screen, a pallet and brushes for a keyboard and mouse. 

Where there was once the top of a cubicle wall and buzzing, fluorescent lights, now I am blessed with a 10 foot tall window overlooking Boston's rooftops and chimneys and a hint of city skyline, daylight illuminating a table of paints, pastels, ink, paper. 

For the last month I've been thinking about how I got to this point. The moment I decided to quit my job was scary. I felt nervous and uncertain, and most of all, ungrateful. 

(For those of you who don't know me as well, I was up until recently a research coordinator at a top medical school about an hour outside of Boston. I coordinated an NIH-funded study that recruited hospital patients in order to learn about the relationship between health events and behavioral changes in tobacco use. Painting took up the rest of my time.)

After graduating college, it was so hard to get a job-- when I was combing job listings, I would have done anything to have a cubicle and a dress code and a guaranteed paycheck every two weeks. (Ironically, the three months between interviewing and being hired into my day job were when my Etsy shop picked up the most momentum.) And I was grateful to be hired into a job that I did well, interested in what I was learning, and happy to get a fairly quick promotion and feel my work was appreciated. But something was so missing. 

What does it mean that so many of us spend the majority of our waking hours and energy on work we don’t really love? That we wake up to loud alarms, commute to cubicles and count down the hours until we leave for the day-- to go home for a few hours, sleep and do it again the next day. Sometimes it is an early sacrifice that eventually leads to what we really want to be doing. But, sometimes it doesn’t, and you know it won't. Every day I was torn between feeling grateful to have a paycheck in a time when so many people don’t, and being frustrated by the knowledge that no matter how hard I worked at this job or in this field, it would never put me where I really wanted to be and where I was beginning to realize I could be: making art, expressing myself, creating things that touched people and made them feel something special. There was no reward at the office, no employee evaluation that matched the feedback from people who were buying original, sometimes even commissioned, artwork. Nothing came close to how it felt to hear that something I created with my hands touched someone deeply, or was the perfect expression for something they felt too. My "day job" was a good one but not the right one.

I think we are all given chances and blessed in different ways throughout our lives. There are some talents and opportunities I have always had, some I have fallen into or made for myself, and some I will never have. But the more I thought about the mindset that it is somehow acceptable to give half of our lives to making money-- regardless of whether we enjoy or even tolerate our jobs-- the more I realized that the opportunity to make a living doing what I have always chosen to do for free was really special, and it wasn’t a gift I could pass up. Aside from being nervous about aging in general, I’m pretty scared of the idea of waking up in 20 years (or even in 1) and wondering where the time went, then realizing it was spent doing anything other than what fulfills me, when that option was there. Our lives are too short to be involved in things that are not meaningful to us.

Though it makes for some good pictures, not every part of leaving my day job to pursue art full-time has been easy or fun so far. In addition to an artist, I have to be my own accountant (ugh!), photographer, supply and shipping manager, PR guru and marketing strategist. My work day will never, ever end at 6pm and will never be something I can walk away from for a weekend (although it also doesn't start at 7am either and Wednesday can be a weekend if I choose, so it's worth it.) It is gratifying to know that my income is a direct result of how hard I work, but it's scary to know its not always guaranteed. I honestly don’t know if this is what I will do forever, but I do know that if I want it bad enough, if I work hard enough, I can be the one to decide how my days are spent. The peace of mind that brings right now is worth all of the unknown.

transitions

This is today, in the studio... We slept in, then had the maintenance man come in to fix stuff, then made lunch, then had some I-get-frustrated,-Mike-says-just-the-right-stuff-to-make-it-better time, then Mike went to school and I finally sat down to do some work. I put up some magnetic cables to hold my inspiration wire (not realizing that every one of the million exposed pipes is magnetic, duh) and got my table tidied up enough to do some work. Then, I did work, and tackled the end of a painting that had been beyond my grasp the last couple times I sat down to it.

The bad news is that I'll never be Martha Stewart, clean and organized even in the midst of creating. The good news is that I'm finally getting settled into my new studio and into a painting routine where I actually get things done instead of just making a mess, getting distracted by the cat, getting paint on the cat, checking out our neighborhood, daydreaming about possible artwork and then going back to staring at my mess.

It surprised me how much the transition from part-time to full-time artist threw me off... everything about my creative process is just a little different now that there is more time, but also more pressure, to make art. The freedom to paint in my own space at my own pace is almost overwhelming. I'm getting used to it and I know its just a matter of time before it clicks, but right now, man... what's a paintbrush?

(In spite of all that--- walking into an art studio every morning is infinitely more rewarding than walking into a cubicle in the basement of a hospital. I'm happy I took the plunge. More on that soon.)

Good Morning from the Boston Commuter Rail

Sights from a couple cold mornings on the train out of Boston: