One of my books is currently on display at the Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Arts Center! They have been doing an outstanding job on their Instagram account showcasing the works in this exhibit.
“On Paper” and the magic of a museum show
One of my books is currently on display at the Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Arts Center! They have been doing an outstanding job on their Instagram account showcasing the works in this exhibit. This is a walkthrough of the museum show and it is just so lovely. You can catch my work for a few seconds starting at 8:25, but spending the time to see the whole show is WORTH IT.
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I couldn’t be more honored for my work to be on display with these other amazing works and artists. The staff at Annmarie have been so fantastic. Many thanks to all of the folks I have only met through email but who have done an incredible job to produce this show.
Being in a museum show has been at the top of my bucket list since I was old enough to walk the halls of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock. Back then it was called the Arkansas Arts Center and I took a drawing class there when I was maybe 7 or 8. My little kid mind was so dazzled by the idea that a group of “real art people” (I thought they were somehow different from regular people? Who knows, I was 8!) could decide your work was good enough to be on display for others to see and enjoy.
When I started concentrating on being an artist full time, this dream from 8 year old Misty seemed like something that could never possibly be realized. I didn’t even think it was achievable so it wasn’t anything I had made any plans for or thought through how I might go about realizing it.
Honestly, sometimes our dreams are so big and magic there doesn’t seem to be any way for them to possibly come true. So I just concentrated on making things. Day in and day out. Making things and experimenting and enjoying my personal process and the people I’ve met along the way.
I apply for things all the time. Sometimes I get them, sometimes I don’t. Art is subjective and on top of that, sometimes my work fits the theme of the event and sometimes it doesn’t. I work very hard to be judicious in where I apply because the process of gathering materials is exhausting. So of course, I want to apply to things that I think I have a really good shot at. I have a fairly thick skin about missing the mark though and can move on to the next thing pretty readily. So it was with that spirit, I applied to the Annmarie show earlier this year. I was excited to see that they had picked my tree book. It was the piece I felt best fit the aesthetic of both the show and museum’s outlook.
Saturday night I was sitting on the couch watching a movie and scrolling through Instagram and saw the video walkthrough above. It hadn’t hit me until then that my work was in a museum.
My work is in a museum show. I’ve been thinking about younger me and her dreams and what it has taken to get here and I am just so thankful. So incredibly thankful.
I’m just enjoying the big feels today, y’all. I don’t really know what else to do with myself. I’d like to tell you there’s a big lesson here about going after your dreams. But the truth is sometimes you just get to be in the right place at the right time doing the thing you love to do and when you add a big stroke of luck to it, there’s magic.
Here’s the video flip through of my tree book:
