New Year, New Studio

Greetings from my new studio! After nearly a month offline, I’m finally set up in my new workspace and it’s a dream come true. This dream has been many years in the making. For the last 9 years I’ve had my workspace spread out over 4.5 rooms and a storage unit, and while it certainly worked fine for a long time and allowed my business to grow from a hobby to a near-full time gig, it wasn’t ideal for my workflow.

My husband and I closed on a house this fall, started renovating it immediately, but I left my studio untouched because it was my busy season - the holiday rush is not the time to shut down! Once my Christmas cutoff date passed, I started packing up my supplies and implementing my plans for the new space.

One of the big reasons we chose this house was the studio space, which is a one bedroom apartment over the garage. It’s attached to the house, so I can still come up in my slippers and start working while I finish my morning Earl Gray, but it’s separate enough that I can “leave” work at the end of the day and I don’t have to see shipping supplies or inventory bins while going about the rest of my life.

The 800 square foot apartment needed some work, and there’s many things I’ll update / change out in the future once my bank account recovers from the initial renovations, but as of this week, I’m officially moved in and open for business once again. It feels so good! The natural light is amazing, the view of the cows and chickens across the road is still very exciting and novel to me, I’m thrilled to have heating and air (and running water!) in my laser room for the first time, and I love love love having ALL of my workspaces in one space. It’s so efficient! I’m now able to laser cut, paint, assemble jewelry, do computer stuff, store inventory, photograph things, pack and ship all in my studio apartment. I feel so grown up.

Before moving in, we had the popcorn ceiling scraped, textured walls sanded and painted, new carpet installed, got new sub panel and outlets for my equipment, and put up new light fixtures. I was able to reuse almost all of my existing studio furniture and only had to replace one desk since it wasn’t the right size.

In the future I plan to replace the green tile floors in the shipping area and bathroom, replace the doors to the deck, get new countertops, and add a few can lights, plus little odds and ends like dividers for my wall of wool and yarn.

Here’s a peek at what the space looked like before we started renovations:

Flat Out Under Pressure Competition

Every year in June the Metropolitan Arts Council hosts the Flat Out Under Pressure competition for local artists. It’s a fun thing the community looks forward to every year. We bring our surfaces to get stamped the morning of the competition, then have 24 hours to complete the work. This year, due to the COVID19 pandemic, the whole thing is virtual. Instead of getting our surfaces officially stamped at the MAC office, we signed and dated the blank piece before starting.

The last 2 years I have summited a needle felted wool landscape, but this year I changed things up just a bit. Since MAC is the whole reason I learned rug hooking last year (thanks to a continuing education grant) I thought it would be cool to show them what I have been doing with my new skills!

This year’s piece includes needle felting, rug hooking, and punch needle techniques. I used over 40 materials and colors, and 8 different tools for the 3 fiber art mediums. It’s SO much fun to combine materials like this! Here’s a look at my progress from yesterday - I took photos every few hours to show how the piece was coming along. It was really slow going at first. I only covered a few inches of my surface in the first few hours, but I kept at it and 12 hours later, I was happy with my finished piece. I did take a few breaks during the day so I think all in all I spent about 10 hours on the 16x16 piece.

The Flat Out Under Pressure exhibition will be virtual this year, and will begin on July 1. The winner of the competition will be announced Monday by noon, and of course all the runner’s up as well (which is also a pretty big deal!). There are quite a few other “winners” and they’ll get a cash prize plus the honor of having their work prominently displayed on one of Greenville’s recycling bins downtown.

My finished piece, plus 2 other test pieces I did prior to try out ideas and see how large I could go for the 24 hour competition, will all be available for purchase soon. I’m so glad I found out I couldn’t finish a 20x20 in the amount of time aloted BEFORE it was the actual competition. That would have been a pretty frustrating thing to learn when it mattered most.

My wrists are sore, but I’m so happy I was able to participate in FOUP2020 this year, even though there will be no big party to announce the winners as before. Even still, this has been a bright spot in my week!

When Things Fall Into Place Perfectly

About a year ago, I applied for something big, something that seemed like a long shot: a large-scale gallery exhibition at Greenville Center for Creative Arts. I was thrilled when I got news that my series of 2D needle felted landscape paintings would be part of a group show in June & July of 2019. It seemed like so far off at the time, but now it feels like it’s right around the corner (because it is!).

Tomorrow is February 1st, and it’s the day I have chosen to embark on the #100dayproject in which I’ll create one piece per day for 100 days straight. This will be a continuation of my needle felted wool paintings featuring South Carolina landscapes and other natural things from the region. These 100 pieces will be the body of work exhibited this summer and will be created during the months of February, March, April and the first part of May. I can’t wait to get started tomorrow and I’ll be sharing each piece on social media if you’re intersted in following along.

During my 100 day project time period this spring, I’m excited to share that I’ll be working onsite at Edisto Beach State Park as South Carolina State Parks Artist-In-Residence for one week in April. I had the honor of doing a residency last year through the same program at Poinsett State Park, and it was truly life changing. I’m so lucky to have the chance to do this again at a new location! Expect to see lots of coastal landscapes come out of my brain in April as I take in the beach, the marsh, and all the beauty the lowcountry has to offer.

A gallery exhibition, a challenging 3 month project, and a residency ahead are just the starting point of my exciting news. I was recently awarded a grant by Metropolitan Arts Council to fund this project! This was my first time writing a grant proposal so this was a huge win for me and I’m so thankful to have financial backing for my upcoming series. The cost of creating a large body of work like this is pretty daunting (materials add up quickly and framing is expensive) but I felt so strongly about challenging myself to work daily, work big, and experiment along the way, I’m free to do so now. So thankful for all of these opportunities!

Sometimes things fall into place perfectly. This is definitely one of those times! I’m excited to start this journey and look forward to sharing along the way. Lots to show you between now and June!

This program is funded in part by the Metropolitan Arts Council which receives support from the City of Greenville, BMW Manufacturing Company, Michelin North America, Inc., SEW Eurodrive and the South Carolina Arts Commission.

Photo curtesy of Eli Warren and TOWN Magazine (shot on location at Poinsett State Park in May of 2018)

Open Studios 2018

Metropolitan Arts Council in Greenville does a very cool thing every year called Open Studios, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Artists all over the city open their studios and invite the community inside to see where they work. Every year, I end up scheduling a craft show that conflicts with Open Studios, so I never get to do it. This year, however, I was excited to have well-timed free weekend so I could experience the self-paced tour with my husband!

Here’s some of my favorite stops:

Sunny Mullarkey

Kate Furman

Joseph Bradley

Janina Tukarski Ellis

Paul Flint

Diane Kilgore

Annie Koelle

Kent Ambler

It’s so inspiring to see artists at work in their space. I love the piles of crusty paint tubes, the unfinished panels stacked in corners, the works in progress on the easel, and of course the final product matted and ready to hang. Buying work straight from the artist is also very rewarding because you’re making a connection with the actual person who created the piece you love, which isn’t always possible at a gallery. This weekend we added six new pieces to our collection. Can’t wait to hang them!

I would love to participate in Open Studios one day as an artist. It would be so much fun to welcome people into my workspace and share my process in person. However, our home is just not set up for that - the different workspaces are spread out all over our house - but we’re hoping to move sometime soon and set up our ideal workshop, so perhaps in the future this dream will be realized. Till then, here’s a short video tour of my studio.

TOWN Magazine Feature

Greenville SC people probably already saw this, but for everyone else, I wanted to share this article in a local magazine about my time as Artist-in-Residence at Poinsett State Park back in May. The full article can be found on TOWN's website. It's such an honor to be featured in the July issue! I enjoyed recounting my experience and sharing how all of my expectations were blown away. 

Flip through the entire issue if you like...and stop on pages 49 & 50 ;-) 

Photography by Eli Warren

Thank you all for being so patient while I listed all of the wool landscapes from The Poinsett Collection. Everything is now available on my new website: www.onceagainasam.com

Several of the pieces sold during my 3-day Art in the Wild Exhibition a few weeks ago, but everything else (plus a few more) are listed online. If you've had your eye on any of the work I've been sharing post-residency, incluing the piece I'm holding in the photo above, now's your chance!