Jack on design wallAs an artist, one of the hardest things to do is promote yourself. Really, marketing and creativity are separate pursuits and it’s difficult to come out of the studio to show your work — and yet if you don’t, you’re creating work that goes directly into your closet. Part of the joy in creating is in sharing — and today is an awesome day because I’m featured on Artsy Shark, an online network for helping artists build their business. You can find my article here.

I’m also sending two of my pieces off today to Sacred Threads in Herndon, VA– The Bowl Judgments and Beach Guardians. I’m going to fold them up with tissue paper, tuck them into a pillowcase and a plastic bag, drop them into a box, and send them off with prayers to FedEx. I was lucky enough to also have them both included in the extension of selected pieces to Omaha, NE so it will be a while before I see them again. One day I hope to travel as well as my work does.

I completed my latest piece, Jacks Are Wild, over a week ago — but it’s summer, the girls are home, and there isn’t a lot of studio time to be had. I’m hoping to make pictures today & post a new page — but I’m not making any promises. It’s part of the Fiber Art Fusion show in September and the members want us to not show our pieces until the show — but there isn’t technically a virgin rule — and I don’t enter shows that have them — so I plan to share. That is why my blog exists — I share.

There are still a few more shows to enter this year — but I’ll have to choose carefully. The deadlines are all about the same time — end of August, beginning of September. I have a few pieces not entered and not promised — but I can’t have them overlap and entered in two places at the same time — so I’m going to have to choose. I like to stretch myself and try to enter a show I haven’t been in before — but the other part of me is more practical and thinks I should enter the shows I’m more likely to be accepted into. It’s always a shame to have a piece sit at home when it could have been somewhere else.