Coming This Year
Happy New Year, everyone! You can look forward to some exciting things from me this year, but first, here’s a recap of what I achieved in 2023 that built the foundation for this coming year. I took a business class through Business Impact Northwest, which I highly recommend. Their classes are thorough and extremely affordable, focusing on under served communities, and they offer free business coaching as well! I’ve had business coaching before, though it was not for my own business, and this was not only a great refresher, but I also gained a lot more clarity around my art business. This clarity led me to produce my first “trifecta” in December called Death vs Rabbit, and I plan to produce two more in 2024.
What do I mean by trifecta? A trifecta is a puppet show, art series, and book that are all created around one theme working together to explore a subject in greater depth. In December I took a puppet show I already had and built the trifecta around that, but this year it is my goal to bring you two completely brand new ones. First up will be a look into how artificial intelligence is destroying our ability to discern truth from fiction. The idea came to me from one of Bach’s solo soprano cantatas called “False World, I Don’t Trust You!” which I’ve been meaning to puppetize for a while now. This puppet show will be part of a longer term goal of creating shadow puppet shows for all of Bach’s solo soprano cantatas in a project I call Shadow Bachs.
I’ll be having pop up art shows throughout the year as well to coincide with Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day where I’ll be selling my jewelry too. I took my jewelry off this website since the selection seemed to overwhelm people, but I will be offering it at in person events, so you don’t want to miss it!
In 2023 I created my first pattern collection, and it’s massive! Generally a fabric collection consists of around 12 different designs, but I made 16. Admittedly, my goal was to have a good selection of designs to choose from for my own collage work, which is why I went a bit overboard. This collection is inspired by medieval art, especially the backgrounds found in illuminated manuscripts, and I will be releasing it for sale on fabric and wallpaper early this year.
And here’s some big exciting news: Operadisiac is getting back together!!! If you don’t know, Operadisiac was an accordion fueled operatic burlesque vaudeville troupe consisting of three main performers: Marchette DuBois, Melissa Young, and myself. We existed from 2005 to 2015 or so and disbanded when Marchette moved to Texas, but now she’s back! We’ll be dipping our toes into it slowly with a 20 minute set or two, hopefully as an act in someone else’s show, so let me know if you know of a good Seattle area variety show for us to participate in.
There’s lots more going on behind the scenes here, but my main goal for 2024 is to really dial in a routine for myself that nurtures my creativity, my business, and my soul. How are you nurturing your creativity this year? Let me know in the comments.