Embroidered Collage

If you look around my webpage today you may notice something strange - a great deal of nothing!  I removed my galleries, my information pages, even the archives for this blog.  Much of it will be back in a different form, but right now I'm starting over.

I am taking a different approach to my art, so my blog and website will reflect that.

During the last few years I've been on a fantastic journey that began when I realized I didn't need to draw realistically to create art.  I've played with mail art, explored techniques, and discovered my preferred media.  I've exhibited work in juried shows, marketed my art, and sold a few pieces.

But the road took a turn at the end of 2007.  I decided I had other goals than making my art a profitable business.  Then, my first child, a daughter, was born, which reduced and changed the nature of my available time.  As a result, I have had to redefine what I want from my art.

I will still create.

But I will approach it with the attitude of a student, considering my creations primarily as experiments and samples and sketchbook exercises.  I want to grow in my artistic ability and as much as making art for sale motivated me it also constrained me.  I want to reach a point where I can create works closer to what I imagine, then return to exhibiting and promoting my art some years in the future.

In the meantime, I will be keeping this blog more as an electronic sketchbook.  It may not change what you see as a reader, but it changes the way I view the endeavor.  I will still be listing what I consider my best pieces on etsy and potentially attempting to exhibit them, but that will not be my focus.  I actually expect to create a number of bitses that aren't complete artworks in and of themselves but that I may incorporate into larger works later.

I'm excited to see where this next phase of my art journey takes me.

Coming up next - some of the embroidered watercolors I created while I wasn't blogging....

I'm taking a break from this blog for a bit, for the first time in over two years.

My paradigm shift, which occurred a few days before I posted about it, removed a lot of the fuel going to my engine and now I just feel tired, although part of that is probably the pregnancy.  I have a great many ideas swirling through my head, but I need some time to sort them out and don't think I'll be creating much worth posting about in the meantime.

My baby is due in 6 weeks, but could arrive in only 4!  Putting it that way freaks me out a lot more than saying that she's due on December 24th, although I'm not entirely sure why.  We have the nursery almost together but there's still a lot of art supplies and other clutter I'd like to clear up before delivery instead of after, when she's getting closer and closer to mobility with every month that passes.

I don't want to push myself to create and to write during this time period, so instead of trying to post sporadically I'm just going to stop for a bit. 

I hate to do this during NaBloPoMo and even thought about just dropping that personal commitment, but I think I need to go further.  This has been a hard decision for me.  I don't quite know what I'm going to do without blogging, but I'll still be monitoring comments, answering emails, participating in online discussions and so forth.  You can't tear me away from the internet!  I'll even be listing in my Etsy store actively for the rest of November, since I have ACEOs waiting for just that purpose, but once December comes that will be put on a maintenance only status as well.

Come back February 1 and check in!  Or subscribe to my blog using a feedreader or by email so you'll know if I come back earlier.  There are links in the page header above.  I'm certainly hoping to return sooner and, whether I do or not, I will definitely have some great stuff to talk about whenever it may be.  See you soon!

I said I would never do this with my art blog again.

So why have I made a personal commitment to post to my blog every day in November, even with all the other things going on in my life?

I have a lot that I'd like to share with you.  I have some artist profiles planned and another tutorial or two in addition to showing the art that I create.  Last year I was viewing this blog solely as a personal journal, but it has been slowly evolving in my head into something that will be more reader focused and not only about me.  This month will give me a push to move further in that direction. 

What this means in detail is that I am participating in National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo, for its, and my, second year.  This initiative is an offshoot of the long-running National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.  This year NaBloPoMo is being run through a ning network - http://nablopomo.ning.com .  I belong as, of course, Pumpkin12pm.  The randomizer - where you can randomly visit one of the blogs participating, is at http://nablopomo.ning.com/random.html.

Look over to the right and scroll down...  You now have access to previous posts by category or by month.  You'll only see the listing when you're actually on one of the Artist Perpetually in Progress pages.  The links will disappear when you take a look at my Gallery, for example.

Categorizing posts has been laborious and frustrating.  I'm actually only back through February of 2006, but decided to launch anyway.  I am determined to have all entries categorized by the end of the month.  I'm not entirely sure that I've been completely consistant with what types of projects went where, but I'm close enough that the results are interesting to look through.  I may have to break stitching down into groups and make other changes after all the entries have at least been categorized once.

But in the meantime, enjoy this work in progress.

I've been a bit distracted from art this week because I've been learning a great deal about setting up Wordpress and working with my own hosted account instead of within Squarespace's more intuitive interface.  I set up one new blog and renovated another one.

MBA Studies at mba.pumpkin12pm.com

The company I work for has agreed to sponsor me to earn an MBA degree through an online program, so I'll be blogging about that.  This will also affect my art to some degree, but I'll discuss that when we get closer to a program actually starting.  I have to be accepted first.

Words In - Words Out at words.pumpkin12pm.com

I started this blog in November to help me determine if I wanted to pursue a technical writer.  The answer is obviously no, since I'm pursuing an MBA, or at least it's not anytime soon.  But I enjoyed writing about reading and writing.  I've neglected the blog for the last month or so, thinking about its future, but now I have a clearer vision and am ready to start posting regularly.

If you're interested in either topic, please take a peek.  You'll also notice I've figured out how to use the sidebar to advertise my detail art items created through Cafepress.  Eventually I want to get some etsy and finerworks and such links and images up there as well.  Why use Adsense when I can, hopefully, get new people interested in my art. :) 

I will be travelling until the 10th of February.  A little business and a little family with one day home in between.  I have enough to talk about stored up that there will still be regular posts on auto-publish, but I won't be able to check my email as regularly as usual.  I hope to have some sketches of North Carolina and of Las Vegas to show off when I return, plus some hand-stitching.  Sometimes I think I spend more time figuring out what artistic projects to pack than what clothes to pack!