I made the tough decision to pull my work from Variable Creatives at the beginning of this month. Poor mental health and all of the setbacks from January proved too tough for me to catch up and be able to take good advantage of my spot with the collective. So I gave up my spot so some other artist could use that opportunity to grow.
I'm trying my best to learn from my mistakes last year and to not overcommit myself. So I'm really scaling back on the amount of markets I'm doing this year. As of right now my focus is on building up a surplus of stock for O&C in October and any other fall/holiday markets I might get accepted to. I had kind of always planned to run my making cycle like this, make stock in the beginning half of the year for markets in the latter half, so we are at least trying it out this year. This does mean that the online shop will be closed indefinitely. So if you want a piece from me this year, you'll have to come to Portland to get it.
I have been doing my best to go live from my studio simultaneously on Tiktok, Twitch and, most recently, Youtube for a few hours on weekday afternoons. I haven't been religious about my schedule because of doctors appointments and my mental health. But I have been having a great time hanging out and meeting new people. I've got a nice long stretch without any more appointments in the future and the days are getting longer so hopefully my Seasonal Affective Disorder will get the memo so I can spend more time in the studio.
As I see it I'll probably be pulling finished work from my Biblically Accurate collection out of the kiln towards the end of April. I'll also be doing a few glaze tests with Amaco's new Cosmos glaze collection once I get enough test pieces through bisque in the next couple of weeks. Keep an eye out on socials for updates! I hope you'll join me in my livestream chats as well.