Here’s a jpg of my latest art project for Hickory Nut Gap Farm. We’re having a HEROFEST event at the farm. I’ll leave the full explanation of the event to be announced by the Event Organizer, but it’s bound to be a lot of fun! It’s planned to be an open-concept, Comic-Con type event combining agritourism, health and wellness, visual art, capes and glitter. Stay tuned for more info on this wild event!

I’ve been doing a lot of illustration and painting with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop using a collage of vector and raster graphics. I’m using a small Wacom drawing tablet that I bought to test whether or not I’m comfortable with freehand digital drawing in a digital space… I know it’s not for everyone, and there are a lot of strong opinions on either side of the subject, but I’m enjoying the process and it feels natural after adjusting to the differences between digital space and traditional drawing on paper. Some of the digital abilities are mind-blowing, like the ability to undo actions, duplicate, mirror, work on multiple layers, and save an endless variety of versions for a project.

I’ve been making the most of my recent downsizing and “de-materializing” (meaning: throwing out/giving away old, hoarded art project materials and supplies) by doing more digital work. The supplies, workspace, and cleanup are all a breeze compared to the musty, sawdust sprinkled concrete basements and garages I’ve been working in for the last couple of decades. I’m enjoying having a more streamlined lifestyle and not being weighed down by bulky piles of framing wood, boxes of rusty scrap metal and backlogs of blank, primed canvases (I have held on to a few… there are certain qualities to atomic, handmade artwork that are undeniably indispensable). This ongoing process of downsizing has helped me prioritize what things to let go of and what to hold onto, and I highly recommend it to anyone feeling creatively “stuck.” You will likely find, as I have, that I am not my material possessions and I am not my job description.