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Mid-Winter Social Media Break and Studio Construction
After completing the grueling 100-Day project, ‘100 Unwearable Rings of 2020’ on January 1, I temporarily ‘checked out’ of social media content production. I must say it has been a delightful winter break! I took the time to chill out a bit, to step away from the mandatory creative demands of making a ring a day (after teaching all day) and to enjoy winter living in rural Maine a bit. We finally have some snow to work with, so snowshoeing and snowmobiling have become part of the routine. My studio is divided into 2 rooms. The 12’ x 24’ Art...
100 Day Project 'Unwearable Rings of 2020'
What is a 100 Day project? It is a self announced and moderated creative challenge where an artist creates a new work, based on a theme, each day, every day for 100 days. I chose to begin my project on Sept 23 so it would end on December 31st, the last day of 2020. What is the challenge? Make 1 new 'Unwearable Ring' each day for the next 100 days! Why Unwearable? Making visually interesting rings, that are completely unusable as rings seems like an exceptional fit for the final 3 months of an exceptionally upside down 2020. Wax or...
Virus Ring Making, One Artist's Response to COVID-19
“Forgive me Hivers, for it has been 6 months since my last blog post!” Oh my, is this a crazy, surreal time or what? The planet is on lockdown, the virus is in charge, we are sequestered in our homes, things are just so strange. On March 1, I made my first Virus ring. It began out of frustration and anger when our president called the rising pandemic a “Hoax." However, it soon turned into a way to help make sense of the problem and allow me to creatively process, not panic and get hands-on with my frustrations and...
Looking Ahead, Silver Beehive Studio
One of my mentors, Gary Vanercheck, talks about playing the ‘long game’ and the 3, 5, even 10+ years it takes to become an ‘overnight success’. In thinking about my art and my business from this POV I try to keep looking forward and asking myself, “What do I need to be doing right now to pave the way for long-term success?” The answers seem to change monthly but these are the things I am thinking today: I need to play to my strengths which is being creatively prolific at the wax bench. Cranking out lots of ideas, 10-20...
What We Learned During Our First Sale!
When I look at the website blogs of other artists, it is common to see irregular posting behavior, sometimes months or even years between posts! I get it, you get busy, your attention gets refocused, you lose motivation. That’s all I’ll say about my posting frequency! We held our first ‘sale’ this past week, although we called it a “Labor Day Special”, it was still a sale. We offered 25% off all our ring designs. We held it for 5 days and only targeted our current Facebook and Instagram followers, we did not purchase any advertising so it ended up...
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