Thank you friends, for opening your hearts and sharing your laughter
Today’s Do What You Love interview is coming to you from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where I am recovering from four awesome days at the Squam art retreat. Artwork and photos to follow after I have processed the details of a very special experience.
For now I want to share this interview with Jessica Gonacha Swift, a painter, surface pattern designer and illustrator. I have always been drawn to Jessica’s gorgeous fabric designs but have just seen some of her original art work in the Enormous Tiny Art Show here at the Nahcotta Gallery in Portsmouth and they are just as juicy. Jessica is married and lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two adorable cats. She has been a working artist since 2003, when she was 23 years old. Today she is sharing a peek into her creative life.
(Note: since this interview Jessica has moved to Portland, OR)
Sometimes great things seem to drop from the sky just when you need them. This is one of those times.
With huge good fortune I have been chosen as one of around 15 young female entrepreneurs to be part of a groundbreaking business mentoring programme run by a leading national glossy magazine here in the UK. This awesome opportunity partners us with some of the country’s most inspiring and successful businesswomen.
I have been gifted the most amazing mentor – Kanya King, founder of the MOBO Awards, the largest urban music awards in Europe with a television audience of 250 million. Kanya is a creative entrepreneur of quite astonishing energy, talent and courage. She founded the awards 15 years ago, remortgaging her house to pay for it. Since then Kanya has won over the music industry, negotiating major TV and sponsorship deals along the way, to turn MOBO into one of the high points of the annual music calendar. Not only has it been a huge commercial success, but it has also become a shining light for social responsibility within the industry.
I am so excited that we will be working together on branding and expansion of my creative business – and there are some seriously cool things in the pipeline which I will share with you here soon. I will also use this space to share the many things I know I am going to learn from Kanya, so stay tuned, and get yourself some mentoring by proxy!
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This year’s MOBO Awards will be held in the music mecca of Liverpool on October 20.
Having recently been overwhelmed by kindness I have many thank yous to say right now. There are many ways to say thank you, but I like the hand made way…
Here are some of the cards I have been making in my new studio this week, using gorgeous ribbons from East of India, Tim Holtz’s Distress Inks and hand made paper from Southern India, recycled from cotton rag.
How do you like to say thank you?
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I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
by John Masefield
I used this poem as the inspiration for this work-in-progress for Louise’s ‘Creative Color Challenge’. Check out all the other contributions here…
Have you ever been on a tall ship? It is a magical experience. I once raced in the Cutty Sark Tall Ships’ Race across the Bay of Biscay, wind in my hair and dolphins at the bow. I love this poem as it captures that feeling so beautifully – the sense of freedom, and wandering wonder.
Anyone else signed up for An Artful Journey in California in February next year? For Jesse Reno’s class? It is going to be awesome, I just know it. More energising days of organised creative chaos in those beautiful mountains, in the shadow of that magical redwood forest, with old friends and new. So exciting!
The Presentation Center, home to all sorts of creative magic at An Artful Journey
I started this blog after attending An Artful Journey last year, and it was a really important moment for me. I began listening to my own creative whispers, and so many great things have happened as a result.
And this is just the beginning…
In fact, today marks six months since my first ever blog post, which talked about the importance of doing what you love. And signing up to An Artful Journey again is one of the ways I am trying to stay true to that. With Squam coming up next month it is fast become a twice-yearly creative pilgrimage to the US, but I know it is going to be important again, for different reasons, as next year is going to be HUGE (you’ll have to wait a while to hear more about that…)
For now, I just want to take a moment to thank you all for making this blogging experience so special, for leaving comments, sharing your stories, and hearing mine. To think that I knew nothing about this whole world of lovely creative souls just six months ago.
What a precious thing this is, really.
“Pick one room and make it yours.
Go slowly through the house.
Be polite, introduce yourself,
so it can introduce itself to you.”
(borrowing the words quoted by the lovely Louise Gale as a comment in response to this blog post)
So that’s what I am going to do. Introduce myself, then introduce you, room by room, bit by bit. As we start to make friends with our new home.
Here is a peek of the first one – my studio. Won’t you come in?
At one end it has this sweet fireplace, which will be great when winter sets in. I have just put up this picture for now while I work out what to do with the space above the mantelpiece. Any ideas?
Here’s my painting/making stuff table. There is an easel in the corner but I like making a horizontal mess! The glass table is actually more practical than it looks – it provides a brilliantly smooth surface for painting and is easy to cover, but also makes the most of the space in the room when it is uncovered.
The wooden floorboards were reclaimed from an old school gymnasium. They are full of marks and stories – you can almost see generations of children jumping over benches and off climbing bars (and maybe even sneaking a first kiss behind the pommel horse).
There are three big windows like this so they let in lots of light
Handy storage for my art supplies, and just enough space to squeeze blank canvasses underneath
No such thing as too many art books…
These old picnic hampers make great storage for my sewing stuff – fabric, ribbons, thread for the things I am slowly learning to make!
And above them is the lovely painting from Judit at Pilgrim of the Moon (I talked about it in this post)
One of my inspiration boards. This one includes prints by Juliette Crane and DJ Pettitt, and my Soul Collage cards that I made in California back in February.
I think the paper obsession, stationery obsession and book obsession may be linked…
Finally I have somewhere to put all my bits and bobs – paper ribbon, buttons, lovely shiny things
My little bonsai friend (in need of a haircut)
My reading corner, and all important stereo – a girl’s gotta have tunes to paint to!
So there it is, my new studio.
Would love to have you all come over to create and make mess. What’s your creative space like? What’s on your inspiration board?
Yvonne Carmichael is the curator of Art in Unusual Spaces, a scheme which opens up empty shop units in city centres for use by artist as project or exhibition spaces, inspiring and sometimes surprising busy shoppers. Artworks so far have ranged from miniature prams to giant robots and from den-making to really short artist films. Yvonne shares her thoughts on exhibiting art from a curator’s perspective.
Ingrid-Berton Moine’s short artist film as part of ‘Short Shorts: Very Brief Artist Films in the window of 42 New Briggate’, Decemver 2009. Part of Art in Unusual Spaces. Photo with permission from Yvonne Carmichael
Just wanted to share a couple of cool things I am joining in with this summer, in case you fancy having a go yourself.
The lovely Louise over at Dream, Inspire, Create has launched a ‘Creative Color Challenge’. It’s a great idea, and gives you a bit of a steer for creating but also gives you a lot of freedom to play with juicy colours. I will be sharing what I make over the next month right here.
And Susannah Conway has just launched the ‘August Break’, a photo blogging challenge for the summer – so I will try to share a photo (nearly) every day in August.
And I am also trying to keep up with learning some new techniques from the very talented Claudine Hellmuth. Her class ‘@ Home with Claudine Hellmuth’ is very cool. I will share some of the things I make over there in the coming weeks too.
What creative challenge are you setting yourself this summer?
This week I am delighted to share a conversation with Suzanne Woolcott, the inspiring creative brains behind the Gorjuss™ empire. Some of her fans are so crazy about her work, they have had her designs tattooed on their bodies! Suzanne’s Gorjuss™ Girls are licensed by Santoro, a brand creator, design and publishing company with distribution in over 50 countries around the world.
Suzanne runs her company with her husband Grant, from their studio in Glasgow, Scotland, where they live with their three children. Her work has been exhibited in galleries across the globe, but most regularly in Hollywood, LA , New York, NY, and Hong Kong (how cool is that?!)