And Just Like that, Summer's Over
Studio News edition newsletter
Hello dear friends, (and a special shout out to all the new subscribers of late)!
It is hard to believe I am writing to you from the tail end of the Summer season. It has, of course, flown by as summers tend to do. Not, perhaps, to the school aged generations, as I write these words remembering long hot sticky days spent exploring the neighborhood, banished from the house until dinner.
Do kids still roam the neighborhood like that? No. I realize I’m dating myself with that anecdote, but here I am on the cusp of my 59th year and I have the sense that time warps and speeds up somehow, the farther we get on the downhill side of the curve.
More than likely, it is that summer has been packed full of work that needed to be done when I arrived here in Kansas City, MO, for what has been my landing place between places of my own. I’m still in the midst of figuring out what comes next, as far as that topic is concerned, but that is a post for another day.
Today I’m popping into your inbox with a news edition to the newsletter and as a marker on the blog for remembering when I look back asking myself that question again—where has summer gone?
Here’s a quick little peek at my space in the studio, all tidied up for a Studio Visit yesterday.
While I have been calling it an Artist Residency, it has been anything but what a traditional residency might be, arriving as I did with a task list of work that needed tending to, which I had woefully underestimated how much time and energy it would all take:
In June, I had at least one live event online each week on the schedule, two were with my subscriber based membership group, and I think there was a two part live online workshop in the mix too. (How long ago was June??)
In between live events, I was busily editing videos for the Big and Little workshop hosted by Paperworks AZ, which opened in July and included another live online event in August.
At the beginning of June, I announced I’d be closing the website Canary Rising, which was where I’ve been hosting my online courses for the past three years. I shared about my why’s on this decision in several earlier posts, but the target closing date of July 31st left me with a myriad of tasks to tend to and I only just managed to completely close the site a few weeks ago.
In the days since, I’ve been surprised by a fair amount of grieving I’ve had to do for the letting go of it. And even more surprised at how weird it felt, how much it left me with some big questions hanging over my head. Now what? How do I make a living without this website? Before I finally remembered that I used to manage to create and sell my classes just fine without it.
I have been steadily uploading all the video lessons from those courses to my Vimeo account, creating a showcase for each, and sending links and passwords to each one to the participants so they can continue to watch or download their courses from there.
I filmed a new course as part of a 5-artist group workshop on Jeanne Oliver’s website.
I’ve got a live online workshop coming up at the end of October (now over):
Momigami Boro Collage, takes the traditional method of Momigami, and the traditional paste used to create it, a step further. Demos will include creating simple works with these methods as shown in the image below, and more complex layered works.
Somehow in the midst of it all, I manage to have two pop up shop sales and sold some art and some materials I created for others to create art. The materials were included in my annual Ephemera Packs, but this year they were called Collaboration Packs.
Each of the buyers will be invited to send images of their own work incorporating any of the materials from the pack. If you were one of those buyers, details will be going out in October and I’ll host an online exhibit early in 2025.
That’s it in a nutshell. If it sounds like an exhausting summer, let me assure you, it has been. I am exhausted. I am deep in the weeds of it, and yet, somehow I am feeling excited for the unknown next steps to come.
With love and gratitude to you all,
Crystal Marie
Catch up on the previous posts from my time in Kansas City:
Crystal, I am glad you are doing well (better)! Will you tell me about the unusual frames with the wooden, sort of Asian, tops on them you showed in the studio tour? Would you have any extras of those you would be willing to sell? Alyce Mcdonald