Whew.

June 20, 2009 | Posted By: Chris | 1 Comment
Filed Under Friends + Family, Life 

This one’s for you, Tim French!

+

The past 12ish months has been one of those years.  You know, the kind of year when every day that goes by is filled with uncertainty, trying to figure out how to be “successful” at doing art, working hard but feeling like you’re running a marathon on a treadmill without getting anywhere, but peppered with moments of excitement and a sense of accomplishment, moments when you think, “I’m really doing what I’m supposed to be doing…”

Let’s see… arty-farty recap.  Over the past 12ish months, I ventured into the wonderful world of freelance (a.k.a. Feast or Famine), which comprises an entire universe of problems, joys, failures, successes, lessons learned, and so on, we had about a dozen art shows between the two of us (alumni show, art & light gallery, Plants + Animals in NC, CLIPPED at the ex-Silver Chair Bookstore, a handful shows at BANG Hair Salon (hi Janet, you rule), the FUEL Project collab with Jason Waggoner, got Rescue in the Clemson national drawing & printmaking exhibition, 6 painted skateboards in the Hit the Deck! show at HUB-BUB in Spartanburg, plenty o’ art put up around town at coffee shops and and such…), started our Etsy shop, drove to muh hometown of Chicago to show our artwork and do a presentation at a youth art festival, then drove to Pennsylvania where we met our amazingly awesome new friends / amazingly supportive new patrons (Hi Deb and Doug!) who stocked up on botanical drawings and etchings galore… and a bunch of other stuff that will take too long to remember and write.

And as I type, I’m in the thick of the biggest project I’ve ever had to tackle, a big graphic novel.  Funny, when I was a kid, I devoured comic books and comic book art, telling myself that one day I would do them myself.  And years after getting out of college and making all sorts of imagery and illustration work, now I find myself actually illustrating a graphic novel, for real, with alot of the days feeling like the toughest job in the world, and on the best days feeling like I’m getting paid to play.  But when it comes down to it, I’m making art, telling a cool story about interesting, well-written characters, collaborating with really great people on the other side of the country through the power of the internets, and providing for myself and my wife and kid by doing it.  Whoah.  I’m grateful.  Especially in this economy.  No joke: the same day I got contacted about the project in late February, I was dropping off applications at Starbucks.  Providence has a funny way of stepping in last-minute, every time.

A few months ago I moved into a studio space a few minutes from home, where now I can really focus to get the work done, with relative quiet and privacy.  Pretty cool place, a super old big house (pretty much got the coolest room in the place, thanks for the first dibs, Caroline), more on that soon…

…

I think that covers about 10% of this past year’s chaos.

I’d love to share more, but man… tired of staring at the computer screen… will need to be back in front of it in an hour to work on a photo-illustration collab project with Aaron Greene. Time to go play with Marshall / prevent him from hurting himself.

Oh, check out the etsy shop. Lots of goodies just added, with more on the way…