Category Archives: new orleans

2 things

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i’m gonna keep this short and sweet and will probably flesh out both of these points later in longer posts.

#1 – i have high quality #RESIST stickers, DIY yard signs (spray paint stencil on coroplast), and so far a handful of handprinted grey 90/10 cotton/poly heathered gildan unisex crew neck tshirts with blue ink for sale. message me with any interest and i’m happy to answer questions and/or hook you up. these are kinda basic tshirts that i can get locally at michael’s and a few other places so even if i run out i can probably go find more of them in whatever size you need. the unisex sizing runs from small through 3xl i think though they were out of 3xl when i went there, so i only have up to 2xl right now. if you need 3xl i can try to find some. these will be $20 plus postage. i am still sorting out what other brand/style of shirts i will do pre-orders for for a future run, so stay tuned if this kinda basic heavyweight unisex t is not your jam. (they will likely cost a little bit more though cuz they will be 100% cotton, lighter weight and probably premium quality.)

#2 – i have signed up for my second year of taking CVP (the creative visionary program) from art2life because they offer an 80+% discount to alumni to repeat the course and i didn’t really finish some of it last year and need the jolt of energy it provides to motivate me in the studio going into this year. i will write much more about why i decided to do so in a later post.

full disclosure: art2life like many companies has an affiliate program that pays out a percentage if you get new folks to sign up to CVP, and i have signed up for that affiliate program. so i will be writing a much longer entry about what the program and art2life in general has done for me and will tell you more about all that, but for now i just wanna tell you that art2life does a totally FREE week long online workshop to introduce nick (the creator and head artist/coach) and his philosophy of teaching art and to get people just making some fun art together. at the end of the free workshop they tell you about CVP if you have interest; if you don’t, then you got a free week of art instruction and hopefully made some fun art and learned a thing or two without any obligation.

the free art of your life workshop will be from march 3rd – 7th. (really bad timing for me since that’s mardi gras week, but fyi all the online sessions are recorded and sent to you via email so you can always do them later.) if you are an artist and want a fun week of working with thousands of people around the planet on some art prompts, or even if you aren’t an artist and just wanna try it out, have some fun with whatever materials you have on hand, and get a taste of this kind and uplifting community, or just find out what i’ve been going on about for the past few years with art2life, go ahead and sign up using this link that’s highlighted. as an affiliate i of course do not make any money off of you signing up for the free class but they do give prizes for the affiliates who get the most signups to the free class, so if you are even thinking about taking it, just go ahead and sign up using my link so i get credit for it cuz maybe i can win some free art supplies! (you can always unsubscribe from the emails if you decide it’s not for you.)

but seriously the free workshop is really worth doing, especially in these dark times we are in right now in the US. the upbeat, supportive community and coaches really raise your energy and for me it’s really inspiring and motivating – it’s not just about how to make art but how making art can help your life. i myself will definitely be tuning in! if a bunch of folks i know take it then we could do a little group to talk about it and share what we make!

anyways, more on all that soon but figured i’d put it out there as early as i could since people need to plan. and like i said, for my new orleans folks, you can always get caught up on the class after mardi gras – it might make a perfect post-mardi gras activity.

happy mardi gras everyone! attend your local protests! call your representatives! make some art!

wtf 2025?

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this year has started out weirder than any other year i can remember. first new orleans starts 2025 in literally the first hours of the first day by having a domestic terrorist attack in the french quarter. many people killed, even more injured, by a radicalized military vet from houston driving his truck onto bourbon street full speed at 3 in the morning while new year’s eve revelers were still partying, running people over. thankfully the bombs he planted didn’t go off or there would have been a lot more casualties. it was an awful way to wring in the new year and we all woke up so stunned and saddened that morning.

then of course the inauguration of a fascist president, which thankfully was overshadowed here in new orleans by a once in a lifetime weather event – a blizzard across the gulf coast. we got 11 inches of light fluffy snow at my house and many places around the city measured 12-13″ even though the official count out at the airport was only 8″. the city was shut down for 3 full days – no work, no driving cuz we don’t have the infrastructure to clear roads quickly, just playing in the snow, being vigilant about our pipes and water pressure, trying to stay warm, and watching all the local meteorologists have the best days of their life. it was magical and cold and nerve wracking all at the same time.

the snow has melted and the rhythm of the city has gone back to normal. the last few days have been about digesting the flurry of awful coming from the tyrant in the white house. i’m not going to give much space to talking about him or his administration, but the reality of what this country has voted for is starting to settle in now sadly.

as for me? well i smartly made a choice to go on a break with one of my afternoon clients while the other one was in puppy training camp so i could have my afternoons free to be in the studio. it’s worked well in general though i didn’t get much done with all my extra free time during the blizzard cuz the snow was just so distracting. but for the most part i have maintained several hours of working on various art projects each day. well except for the week that i decided to switch phone carriers and had a clusterfuck of issues that required me to be on the phone with customer service every single afternoon for almost a week. and then there were the few days right before the pussyfooters blush ball – the mardi gras ball i attend every year that always has a theme which requires some crafty accessorizing – when i was working on pink-and-orange-ing shoes and belt buckles and cowboy hats for this year’s western theme. but still, i’ve done well this month with art.

is anything finished? no. but i do have many new pieces in process which i hope to finish soon. i took bibby gignilliat’s mixed media online course as it was a self-paced, low $ investment offering that i hoped would give me some tips and tricks for dealing with collage as the basis for mixed media painting. and it did! honestly there wasn’t a whole lot more info than one can glean from her instagram reels but the lessons were more fleshed out and you get to see her make some pieces from start to finish. i just love her style and energy and while i don’t want to be “copying” her i do want to use some of her techniques and build upon them for my own interests.

above are two of my mixed media pieces on wood panels that are in process. i kinda like where they are now in a minimalist way but i think they need more to make them interesting but i haven’t figured out what exactly. i thought sitting with them for a few days would help but honestly i now wish i’d just kept going as i think this kinda mixed media work is intuitive and all about energy and i clearly had some good energy flowing the day i made these. now i’m a little stuck in that don’t-want-to-mess-it-up place but i need to just do something to get back into these.

simultaneous to working on about 7 different mixed media pieces like these i also started playing around with some small 6″x6″ collage pieces, since i had all my scraps out. i was covering up old canvas board tiles i call them, ones that didn’t work or i just didn’t like. and i had an early success or two so i thought i was onto something… but similarly, i seem to have lost the energy for them as i went on to try to make several more and they aren’t coming out as good as the ones that i just did spontaneously.

above are the first two spontaneous ones that i really like. i kept it to a limited palette of black, white, red, kraft paper/brown bag and newspaper print. the black and white really pop in contrast to the muted browns and beiges and the red adds some interest/energy. hopefully i’ll be able to salvage the other 3 i have going so there’s a little set of them. they are good exercises in composition.

the month is almost over and i’m not sure how i’m feeling about possibly losing my afternoon studio time, or some of it. i have some pet sits coming up which will eat into that time as well. i welcome these warmer days post-blizzard though because it’s very hard to motivate myself to get in there to work when it’s 30-40 degrees outside cuz it’s not much warmer in the studio, even with the space heater on. so hopefully this will be a productive week.

this is already a very long post so i’ll stop for now. more later. i have more on my mind to share beyond this little catch-up session.

heading into week 6 of CVP…

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it’s been a whirlwind so far. keeping up with this class is harder than the last one i took because there are more weekly live zoom coaching calls and much more video content. it’s a lot to physically get through and even more to really digest.

the image above is just a little montage of some of the work i’ve done so far in the class. (you can see continuing updates and more explanation on my art instagram feed.) unlike FYJ where we worked on watercolor paper, in CVP we are working both in an art journal (a modified bullet journal where we take notes as well as paint) and on 12″x12″ birch plywood panels. painting on wood (prepped with gloss medium to seal and then primed with 2 coats of gesso) is really different than painting on watercolor paper with 1 coat of gesso, in terms of how the paint acts. plus we aren’t doing as many multiples as we did in FYJ where we worked on six pieces at a time (from one big sheet of paper taped off); for most weekly CVP assignments, we’ll be working on 2-3 boards at a time (front and back) as well as doing various smaller exercises and a daily art practice in our journal. it feels like a very different process and my results feel really different. not better or worse, just different.

you may be wondering why in the world i’ve chosen to spend so much time and money taking another online art class that is basically going over much of the same material as the last one. well, first of all, i feel like i need to really master the basics. i didn’t go to art school and so have always felt like i missed out on basic art education. i did go to a liberal arts college (almost 40 years ago!) that had some art studio courses as part of an art history major and i took as many of them that i could, but they were for the most part intro level and i don’t recall any of them really teaching me basic art theory principles. we were kind of just given supply lists and basic assignments and told to go create. we did group critiques and got some feedback from our instructors, but i never really felt like i was learning how to make my art better. i also spent a LOT of time comparing myself to the more “talented” students and feeling like an imposter, which was not conducive to me really exploring my creativity fully.

we definitely did not go as in-depth on anything the way FYJ and CVP have done. and we certainly did NOT cover “mindset,” which has been invaluable. in CVP, in terms of the lessons covering an art principle (i.e. value, design, color value, etc.) we are shown art historical examples as well as contemporary art examples on coaching call presentations, plus given examples from the work of our 9 coaches who lead those calls as well as live demos. there are also 7 teachers, and 3 guest artists as well as 10 CVP ambassadors (alumni of the program who monitor the various online forums and answer questions)… not to mention the 1500 CVP alums who are taking the class again, who are all contributing. there’s a lot of collective knowledge in the community of the course and the general vibe of the community is so open and helpful and encouraging. every day i get to see a wide variety of art being made, from super beginner to acclaimed professional and everything in between. there’s also a lot of modeling going on as to what different stages of an art career can look like, different paths one can take as an artist to grow your art practice and make a living (or not), etc.

second, taking FYJ and now CVP – as well as all the little free classes i’ve been taking for the past few years – has really helped me establish an honest-to-goddess art practice, which is something i never really had before. yes, i’ve been an artist in various mediums and styles off and on for my entire adult life, but it was just that – off and on. inconsistent. when inspiration struck… which sometimes was not very frequently. at times i went YEARS without making anything. or i would have a productive spurt and then would be frustrated to not have any new ideas for months. i did a lot of staring at blank canvases/sketchbook pages. but now i have learned to show up every single day for at least 5 minutes. (yes there have been days i haven’t painted at all, due to life circumstances. it happens. but for the most part, i show up most days in some way.) i don’t wait for inspiration to strike – i show up so that i’m already there in the studio working when it does. and i’ve learned i can nudge inspiration along by just doing.

however, the main reason i am taking CVP is that it is teaching me – and i am slowly absorbing – how to critique and edit my own work. how not to look for outside validation or feedback but how to think in a way that allows me to apply the art principles we are learning so that i always know how to critique myself, how to proceed, advance, get unstuck, and make my work better. that is really the end goal because that is the key, to me, to being a working artist.

i think i’m still a ways away from that but i can feel myself getting better, that some things are becoming more intuitive. and that i am learning to just keep going when i start feeling stuck or unhappy with how my creating is going. and if i can really get to the place where i can successfully do that with each painting i start – then it will all be worth however much money i’ve paid. because i’ve spent the better part of the past decade bashing my head against the wall in frustration, starting a million paintings with a lot of energy and excitement, only to get to a certain point and lose steam, not know where to go next, or worse yet, completely ruin whatever i had started because of bad decisions made when i didn’t know what to do. and i’ve relied way too much on the validation of friends and collectors, which often is at odds with my own opinion.

so yeah, that’s why i made the decision to do it. and so far, i’m loving it despite it being fairly overwhelming. i look forward to getting through the rest of the art principles and on to our own series of paintings that we work on for the last few weeks of the course. i can’t wait to see what i come up with!

how’d it get to be november already?

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sigh. the last time i wrote here it was the end of september, i was in the 2nd week of the find your joy course and loving it, and i was looking forward to my vacation to new mexico mid october.

well it’s a month and a half later now. the find your joy class is finishing up week 8 (of 12) though i’ve only just today managed to finish week 5. (week 7 was an integration week for folks to catch up so i’m 2 lessons behind at this point.) and i took my vacation, which was glorious and if you follow me on my personal instagram or my personal facebook, you’ve seen all my photos… i had so much fun with my dear friend dix and was gobsmacked by the beauty of the region.

but… i returned already fighting off some kinda crud (allergies? altitude? airplanes and airports?) and then had a very intense week of work and an ill-advised if fun weekend of social activity which sped up my illness and landed me really REALLY sick for the past two weeks with severe bronchitis. like sicker than i can remember being as an adult outside of hospital stays. two urgent care visits and two courses of antibiotics later (well i’m still in the middle of the second course), and i am starting to feel better. but i worked sicker than i should have for several days – it was miserable. i am grateful to feel like i’m coming out the other side now but also overwhelmed by how much money it cost me to be sick (urgent care visits, prescriptions, over the counter drugs, ordering out cuz i was too sick to cook, canceled walks, turned down petsits, and several weeks of missed time in the studio) and how far behind i feel.

thankfully i don’t have any work this weekend so i trying to get caught up while also resting. i finally did some vacuuming today and i hope to do laundry tomorrow. i did lesson 5 in FYJ today and posted my results on my art IG and played around with some other stuff in the studio, generally relaxing and not exerting myself too much. tomorrow i hope to tackle lesson 6 and maybe do the dishes. baby steps.

so i don’t have a lot to share here about art cuz i haven’t done a lot in the past month and a half. however… i am considering joining in on a midcity art studio stroll that’s being planned for saturday december 9th from 12-6pm, so i guess that’s what i can talk about. i haven’t done any art markets or pop-ups in years and years and i actually think the last time i did one was also at my house during the holidays. the last time i did it, i was still living just in the back of the house, so i really had no choice but to do it in the backyard; i had folks come down the alley along the side of the house to enter. if i end up doing it this time, i do have a front porch now and a living room and office that i could use to display stuff, but it would require me to really clean up before then to allow folks into my house. so i might just do it like last time, around back, since the studio opens up to the backyard. we’ll see. i have some pet work scheduled that day so i have to figure out if i really think i can do both.

if i do decide to do it, i will have a mix of old leftovers from the crafty and t-shirt printing days plus newer paintings from the past few years of dabbling in abstract work.

i’ll keep you posted if i do end up doing it.

that’s all i got. til next time! and happy thanksgiving!

a few ways to art the vote…

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remember when we all used to blog? well i’m gonna try to get back in the habit and stop relying on facebook so much.

in the last few days i have become aware of a few calls for art to inspire folks to get out to vote in the presidential election in november. which is, you know, kinda important. and i fully believe in the power of art to inspire, motivate and galvanize enthusiasm for the election.

website design by https://simplesc.tt/

the first one came out of the blue from one of my fellow artists for obama, from that grassroots movement of creatives (of which i was a part) that came together in 2008 to help elect barack obama, culminating in the manifest hope gallery show in DC during the inauguration. he’s spearheading an effort based on the concept of UNITY – http://time2unite.org/. here’s a snippet of the email he sent me:

I’m reaching out to ask you to join an army of artists, designers and creatives. Similar to the work we did in 2008 for the Obama campaign, I have hope that together we can inspire other artists and designers to express a single message we desperately need to hear. UNITE. IF WE UNITE, we can secure this election for a Biden/Harris victory and move past 45, and begin to heal this country. Whether you are a progressive activist, a part of the exhausted majority, or an ideal moderate, we need to all UNITE. We need to once again illustrate a word and begin the process of letting things manifest themselves. Let’s once again unleash our collective creativity.

i plan to create at least one design, if not more, and i just love the idea of a grassroots visual uprising to bring people together to defeat the fascist in the white house. i encourage you to do so too!

the second comes from a new nola local organization, creative community league, seeking designs for a GOTV postcard campaign. here’s the post directly from facebook:

CALLING ALL ARTISTS: $100 for a winning Get Out The Vote (GOTV) postcard design

November elections are right around the corner! In an effort to support local Get Out The Vote (GOTV) campaigns, Creative Community League will offer FREE GOTV postcards to advocates and allies working in Louisiana.To support local artists, Creative Community League invites artists and creators to submit a design for a 4×6 postcard. From the submissions, three designs will be chosen. Artists of winning designs will be awarded $100 each. Deadline to submit a design is August 30. Designs should be full-color, 3 1/4” W x 3 3/4” H, and 300 dpi. Please send the image as a pdf to Amanda Sanfilippo at amandafromcreativeleague@gmail.com.

Launched in 2020, Creative Community League is an initiative that utilizes cultural strategies for movement building, supporting artists, storytelling, and other dynamic community engagement in moving reproductive and sexual awareness into creative spaces. Creative Community League is funded by the Packard Foundation. Visit us on Facebook at Creative Community League. For additional questions or if you would like a FREE order of 50 GOTV postcards, email Amy at amyfromcreativeleague@gmail.com.

sounds like a cool idea and i’m excited to hear about the new local effort. i’ll see if can come up with something.

the third i just learned about this weekend while attending netroots nation at home, this year’s all-virtual iteration of the annual progressive activist gathering that i’ve always wanted to go to but never managed to afford. this year on a whim i decided to apply for a scholarship as even their reduced covid-affected rate was more than i could handle financially, and surprisingly, they approved me!

it was a great experience, i learned a ton, and i was able to take part in several design-related panels/trainings, amongst so many others. during one of the diy design sessions, i decided to post in the chat about the above UNITY call for art, and was immediately approached by a woman from people for the american way (PFAW), who recently launched their own national “art the vote” campaign with the theme of enough of trump. they’ve enlisted several big name artists like shepard fairey, carrie mae weems, jeffrey gibson, tatyana fazlalizadeh, ed ruscha, deborah kass, and others, and launched a kickstarter to fund billboards in key swing states featuring these artists’ works.

jeffrey gibson’s “enough of trump” contribution

the kickstarter page explains that if they reach their goal – and they did, in fact they quadrupled it! – they will expand beyond the 12 artists they started with into other states. and so while i don’t see an explicit call for art on a grassroots level, i don’t see why folks shouldn’t use this theme to make your own version to spread wherever you live or online. i’ll update here if i learn anything more.**

so, there you have it. some inspiration. i frankly wanted to write this all down mostly for myself, so i’d remember to use these prompts to make something. it’s been hard over these last five months to feel inspired, frankly. but it’s time to get back to it, for my own mental health. i’ll show you whatever i come up with – you show me yours!

**edited 8/18 to add: upon reading the social media toolkit on the enough of trump website, i did find their “get involved” details:

Want to submit your own artistic entry? Make your own post on Twitter with whatever art you’d like – a drawing, song, poem, anything! 

Make sure to tag @peoplefor AND use both #EnoughOfTrump and #ArtTheVote in your post so we can find your entries – and we might retweet you!

(When you submit content to PFAW, you grant PFAW permission and a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to post or display your content on PFAW’s website and any other PFAW media platform. Content you submit must be your own original work and not the work of a third party.)

summer update.

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yes i know, it’s been a lot of months since i’ve updated here. i will skip over the boring parts but, hey, it’s summer! it’s pride weekend! i’ve made a bunch of stickers since i posted last! (i did a bunch of other stuff too but you probably already know about all that if you follow me on facebook, twitter or instagram or ever look at my etsy shop or teespring store.)

but here’s what’s coming in the mail soon. i tried to get them made in time for pride weekend here in new orleans, which is this weekend, but apparently i was one day off, as i got the shipping notification today that it’s coming monday. oh well. our pride is early in the month, though, and lots of other cities have pride at the end of the month so i’m hoping there are still folks who will want these in the next few weeks.

the rectangular one on top is 4″ x 3″ and the square one is 3″ x 3″. they will go up in my etsy shop as soon as i have them and be $2 each with free postage. or feel free to message me and we can figure it out with paypal or venmo directly.

i’ll let you catch yourself up on everything else by visiting the above social media links. and i’ll try to get better about posting updates here. happy pride everyone!