My Artist Residency During the Coronavirus

What a time to be alive right?!

I've recently returned from a five week artist residency on a small farm in rural Tennessee, and while I had a wonderful time with the miniature donkeys and generous chickens, it was a very strange feeling knowing that the Coronavirus was just beginning its unprecedented infiltration of the entire world.

Camp Wonder Wander, hosted by artist and entrepreneur Val Sloan, provides a quiet and beautiful space for artists, writers, and musicians to come and focus on their craft in a an environment not bogged down with the complications and distractions of normal everyday life.

As part of the artist residency, we help out with the animals and find ways to add to the enchanted experience of the next residents by leaving a piece of ourselves here in the form of whatever art we choose. I decided to entirely repaint the shared bathroom with a potted plant mural. (See the full mural vid here. )

Even through the current state of affairs I had a really wonderful stay and was able to explore many different art forms in a short amount of time. It was also really delightful to watch spring come in everywhere throughout the rolling hills of Tennessee.

4.19.2020

Potted Plant Bathroom Mural

My first full room mural! As a part of the artist residency at Camp Wonder Wander in Tennessee, each artist is asked to leave a piece of themselves behind in whatever form inspires us. In the artist quarters the walls are all painted very colorfully and feature lots of beautiful silkscreens and photographs, but the bathroom felt a little unfinished compared to the rest of the house.

After brainstorming for a few days on what I could do with all the little nooks and crannies that this adorable room provided, I decided I could open up the space with a few trompe l’eiol shelves and lush potted plants. If you’d like to see still shots from this mural, as well as what the space looked like before, pop over to this blog post from last week.

If you enjoyed seeing this mural come to life, make sure you are getting the Birdie Blog sent to your inbox because I am actually working on two more murals concurrently right now (one’s a beach scene with a little jungley bit and the other is for a music room) and I’ll be coming out with videos for both of them soon!

4.11.2020

Full Bathroom Potted Plant Mural

Hooray! I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to paint an entire bathroom mural of my own artistic choosing during my Artist Residency at Camp Wonder Wander in rural Tennessee. It’s a really fun and quirky house which has really bright walls and artwork everywhere you look (stay tuned to see it when the vlog comes out!), and you can tell its decoration is a labor of creative love by our hostess Val Sloan.

The artist quarters are actually an evolving art space as well because each artist leaves a piece of themselves in the form of artwork, or poetry written, or whatever their medium is, to beautify and enrich the space more for the next folks to come. After about a week of being there and using this shared bathroom, I knew just what to do:)

And how much do you love my little herb garden?! Squeeeee! It’s one of my favorite parts!

I really loved filling in these tight spaces - so cute!

A new adventure in art-making completed. Hooray!!!

3.31.2020

Live Stream from the Farm on Tennessee

Howdy folks, my hard drive crashed, my travel plans got postponed and my gigs got canceled. It’s the middle of a global pandemic and shizz is getting pretty weird!!

Gotta smile through the crazy though and find ways to stay distracted :D

3.20.2020

Studio Vlog :: My First Artist Residency + YT Comment Issues Fixed

Aloha friends (I can still say aloha, right? Wellllll, I'm gonna;) and welcome to my newest studio!

Today I'm sharing my latest artsy venture, being a Resident Artist with the Highlands County Art League! Are you familiar with that term? It's a really amazing way to ingratiate and teach within tight knit art communities all over the country, and probably the world. I've got another one coming in Feb-March too all the way in Tennessee!

I've already been adventuring and camping and going to art exhibits and painting so much since arriving back on the mainland not even two months ago and I could not be more grateful for this creative and happy life:) If you like to see behind the scenes pics and stay abreast of my travels, make sure to subscribe to my weekly blog posts full of my latest adventures and artwork delivered right to your inbox.

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I also wanted to briefly touch on some issues with my YT comments. I recently discovered that there was a hidden spam folder but this past week thankfully I've gotten things all figured out and have replied to each and every comment I could see. However sometimes a funny thing happens where I can only see a teaser of your comment and then am unable to respond due to some weird setting on the viewer's account (I think) so if you have not received a response from me, check out this vid and hopefully I'll be able to fully view and respond to your comments in the future.

And last but not least…

If you wanna support this artsy Bird's great adventures pop over to my Shop and snag a few stickers + buttons to help get a lil gas in the ole spaceship ;) Thanks so much!!

1.24.2020

My First Artist Residency!

Aaaah! I’m living in an art gallery for the next 7 weeks!! How amazing is that?!?!!

I recently got accepted to do an artist residency program here at the Highlands Art League in Central Florida. They’ve put me up in my own quirky yet spacious 100 year-old house right on a lake with the front rooms being used as a community art gallery and the back space being used for a sitting room, studio, bedroom, and even a kitchen for visiting artists (ie me!)

It’s a really incredible program; basically I get my rent etc. taken care of in exchange for doing 20 hours a week of artistic community out reach, either within their museum, local public schools, or with some of the senior citizens that are members. They also said they loved my YouTube videos and would like me to use some of my time to make promotional videos for them.

I am literally paying my rent through art!

I’m beside myself with excitement and I cannot begin to express how grateful I am for this opportunity. Can’t wait to help out and teach and learn and get to know the other artsy folks in town!

If you’d like even more details + pics from my first few days here, jump on my Birds of a Feather newsletter where I share the more personal side of my experiences as an artist, plus all my biggest news first. I just sent one out yesterday about Highlands so pop on my list and I’ll resend it to you too:)

And Happy New Year to all my readers! I hope you find so much success and happiness in 2020!

1.1.2020