Greenville Open Studios: This Weekend!

Calling all Greenville-area art lovers! This weekend (November 13 & 14) is Metropolitan Arts Council’s Open Studios event, where over 100 local artists open up their workspaces and invite the public in to see where the magic happens. Greenville is a very artsy city, and if you live here, there’s a pretty high chance you have an artist living in your neighborhood. Now’s your chance to get out there and meet them and learn about their work!

Plan your route using the Metropolitan Arts Council (MAC) app on their website - you can filter my name, medium, location. I’m stop #59 in Greer.

I’ve always enjoyed visiting studios in the past, but I’ve never participated. Our previous home, where I grew this small biz from 2011 up until about 9 months ago, wasn’t laid out in a way where I could have a lot of visitors, and my workspaces were separated on 3 different floors. Not great for Open Studios. When we started house hunting, one of top things we were searching for was a home with a large workspace, where ALL of my artistic and business needs could be met in one place. We got lucky - we found such a space in Greer, SC, just 4 miles away! I can’t wait to invite you into my home studio next weekend to show you where I create jewelry, fiber art, and run my small business.

I’m not the only artist out this way - there’s so may of us here! I just met my neighbor down the road, artist James Greene, because of Open Studios. He’s a mixed media sculptor and he’s new to the event this year as well. Go check him out while you’re in the area. His barn / studio is full of so many fascinating treasures, and there’s a very sweet, very large pig living in the backyard. Win, win, if you ask me.

One stop you should not miss is the MAC art gallery downtown. The current exhibition is all 12x12 work from each artist participating in Open Studios this year. That grid wall is a dream, so many different subject matters, mediums, and styles, all scaled to this one uniform dimension. It’s a great way to get a taste of the art scene in Greenville and may also help you plan which studios you want to visit.

Here’s a look at a blog post I wrote after touring some of the studios in 2018.

Artist-in-Residence: Cheraw State Park

Time in the woods, by a lake, or anywhere out in nature is what restores me the most. Making things with my hands is what gives me energy and joy. Put the two together and I’m one happy adventuring artist! My week as Artist-in-Residence at Cheraw State Park in South Carolina was such a wonderful experience. This was my fourth consecutive residency through the Parks program and as before, each experience is totally unique and always exceeds my hopes and aspirations. I feel so lucky to be invited to these parks each time, and it’s definitely one of the highlights of my year.

Cheraw is a small town near the Great Pee Dee river in northeastern South Carolina. I’ve lived in SC since 2010 had never been to this part of the state, so I was eager to get out and explore. The park sits on 7,000 acres of lake and woodlands, and is home to a huge variety of birds and other creatures.

Each day during my stay, I watched the sun rise at the lake, then went off for several hours of hiking either around the park or within a 30-40 drive. The afternoons were spent back at the cabin, creating needle felted landscapes, jewelry designs, and paintings inspired by what I’d seen earlier that day. Then I’d head back over to the lake for the sunset and a quiet stroll before a little more creative time back at the cabin in the evening. I love this schedule - explore, create, explore some more!

Favorite Things: about Cheraw:

Hiking Trail: The Cheraw State Park Trail

Sunrise Viewing & Birdwatching Spot: The Eureka Lake Boardwalk

Park Wildlife: Fox squirrels, woodpeckers, and deer!

Plant Life: Cypress trees growing in the water and the carnivorous flowers by the beach

Daytrip Destination: Carolina Sandhills Wildlife Refuge (Tate’s Trail)

The new collection created while at the park is now available on my website. I hope you’ll enjoy this short recap video of my art-cation experience!

A huge thank you to the South Carolina Parks program for hosting these residency’s and a special thanks to the Park Rangers at Cheraw for making me feel so welcome.

If you’re interested in hearing about my past residency’s with the South Carolina Parks Department, you can find them here:

2020 Devil’s Fork

2019 Edisto Beach

2018 Poinsett

Diamondscapes

Mini needle felted landscapes framed in a brand new shape. These 3” x 3” rounded-edge diamond frames are custom made with a CNC router, and the new shape add so much interest to the tiny textile pieces when they’re hung. They’re great hung on their own, displayed in clusters, or I like to use them to fill in those weird gaps in my gallery wall (don’t worry, we all have em’).

Although I’ve certainly tried felting smaller than this, just to see if I could do it, I keep coming back to this 3” size. I’m able to get enough detail at this scale to create actual scenes, not just abstract landscapes, plus they ship extremely well, I can work on these while I’m traveling since they don’t require a lot of supplies, and the price point works with most budgets.

As much as I love working large, those pieces are always a risk and take longer to sell. With these mini’s, they’re often sold out in a few hours or days after the launch, so mark your calendars for September 1st when they go live. Or, if you want to get first dibs with my newsletter subscribers, signup here.

Enjoy the collection! I hope to do one or two more mini landscape collections before the end of the year. Stay tuned!

Mixed Media Collection: July 2021

I can never get enough texture, and ever since I learned rug hooking and punch needle, and how it could compliment my decade of needle felting experience, I’ve been falling in love with the layers, colors, and depth made possible by working with yarn, wool fiber, and fabric, all at once.

These mixed media pieces have been such a joy to make, but dang, they’re slow. I thought needle felting was slow, but it feels like a breeze compared to this! I have only ever had 2 or 3 pieces available at a time in the past, so this summer my goal was to have a substantial collection to offer. 7 pieces may not sound like a lot but it’s weeks and weeks worth of work, plus one of those pieces is 24x36 which is by far my largest mixed media piece to date. I’m so happy to work large!

One other idea I have had floating around in my head was adding embroidery or stitching to these mixed media pieces. That’s the beauty of mixed media - no rules and anything goes! I’m thrilled with how the wild flowers turned out, my very first attempts at hand stitching tiny details with yarn.

Enjoy the new series (now available on the website) and be sure to check out the process video so you can see one of these made from start to finish.

Modern Matte Materials

Leather was the very first material I ever used to make jewelry. It was what started Once Again Sam back in 2009. I loved the material because I could cut by hand, it was lightweight, and you can get in any & all colors. Wood entered my handmade jewelry scene in about 2012, when invested in my first laser cutter. I’ve certainly combined leather and wood many many times over the years, but it’s been awhile since I added anything new to the collection. Time to freshen up my earring offerings!

You may recognize a few of these bold modern shapes from the hand painted acrylic series - the dewdrop and ozone styles both came from that collection, but then there’s some brand new shapes and designs as well, such as my personal favorite, “moondrop”. I had a really hard time narrowing the style and color options down - I truly loved all of my prototypes this time around!

For summer, I’m loving the lighter leather and wood color combos, but as soon as we get into Autumn I’m definitely switching over to the darker cocobolo & black. All 3 color pallets are neutral enough to go with everything, and there’s something beautiful about the natural wood as a color.

Enjoy the new collection and be sure to use coupon code EARRINGADDICT (all caps) to get 20% off your entire jewelry order at www.onceagainsam.com (only valid on retail orders on website, not wholesale or Etsy).