Celebrating ten years of making art and keeping track of it

Recently I was doing the extremely boring task of updating SEO tags on older posts (I know! The things I do sometimes!!) and I realized I was sitting on a milestone. I started this website ten years ago. My first post here was about my goals for 2016.

Back then, I was busy doing my “make something every day” project so a lot of my posts were the weekly accountability posts I was doing to document that project. I was also trying to figure out how to blog in a sustainable and meaningful way. I’m still trying to figure that out, just to let you know how it’s going.

Then vs now

Along with my “make something every day” project, I was documenting the larger pieces of art I was working on:

I was struck reading through some of these older posts and looking at my older work just how much hasn’t changed even as things have really changed. I’m still trying to document my work, trying to record things about it while the ideas and work are fresh in my mind. I’m still setting goals and figuring out how to reach them. But what I work on has gone through so many changes. I’m glad I’ve been documenting that as it happens because I don’t know that I’d have been able to recognize it as clearly without this little walk down memory lane.

Every little bit really does add up

In 2021 I started working on several different projects here on the blog. I had the makings of my book project: How to create your art practice. I started Art AV Club, which I still work on when an artist strikes my fancy. Then I started doing artist interviews in 2023 with women and nonbinary artists I know. And then of course, all the discussions of process and practices that I’ve wanted to share with you.

It all adds up to almost 400 posts. Four Hundred Posts. As well as just under 140 portfolio pieces. I’ve also got another 177 projects listed on Ravelry for those years. Since I’ve slowly been incorporating more and more crochet into my art making, there’s some overlap here and I feel like it’s worth including in this celebration.

I say all of this not just to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the blog, which lemme just say loudly GO ME!!, but also to illustrate what can happen when we work at things a little bit every day. Because while I was doing all of these things, I was also being a Mom and caring for my family full time. All of these things were accomplished in the spaces around doing other life things like school drop off and pick up, orthodontist appointments, endless laundry, and cooking dinner every day.

There were days, sometimes weeks and occasionally months, when I didn’t have the time or the energy to work on art or this blog. I always gave myself the blessing of starting fresh whenever I needed to by not beating myself up for NOT being able to show up for whatever the reasons were. And that feels like some key advice to share with you. Give yourself the gift of starting fresh whenever you need to.

The blog’s origin story

It’s August when I’m writing this and I’m coming off of a two month writing break. It wasn’t intentional. Summer just jammed me up but good. I had four or five posts started before I accidentally took two months off. As I was reading through those to get going again, it struck me that I always seem to have a lot to say here. I like talking to you about what I’m working on and thinking about.

The imaginary reader I have in my head is a young artist (maybe not young chronologically but maybe youthful in their art practice). Probably a women. Likely someone who is struggling to know where to start or someone who has started but wants some company on the journey. In essence, I’m writing to myself when I was starting out fifteen years ago. At a time when I was busy being a full time mom, I was making art and trying to sustain my personhood outside of motherhood. Having some encouragement on that path would have been really nice.

Along with making art, I always wanted to write. I love fiction but don’t want to figure out how to craft stories. I save that ingenuity for solving art problems. But talking about making art and documenting what I make, there’s a thing I want to and can do! Blogs were big back in the early 2000s. Mommy bloggers were a whole ecosystem unto themselves. I wanted to blog but I didn’t want to talk about my kids. So the art making and encouragement became the engines for this website.

Thanks

I’m thankful you are here reading and cheering me on. I appreciate the time you’ve spent here over the past ten years. Thanks for reading my posts and watching my videos and looking at my photos. Thank you for buying my work, attending my classes, and going to workshops with me. Thanks for buying me a coffee when you are able. Just thank you full stop. I appreciate your presence here more than you can know.

Thank you for stopping in! Nothing on my website is AI generated. Not the art I make and not the words I write. If you’d like to keep up with what I’m working on, I’d love to have you as a newsletter subscriber. I include blog posts from here, cool things I find online, and occasionally pictures of my dog. Sign up here. Or if you want to drop me a note to catch me up on what you’re working on, email me here. Lastly, if you like what I do and want to support my work you can buy me a coffee.