Evolution

Northern Mockingbird

When I started this little ol' blog-erooney, I was also launching Odd Bird Studio as a shop / brand to encompass my handmade, upcycled, and easy-on-the-environment gifts and housewares. I intended for the blog to be a place to share practical tips, guides, advice, and a collaborative forum for the behind-the-scenes business practices that support artists, art making, exhibiting, and selling. Hence the tagline: The Business of a Creative Life.

The reasons behind this intention were many. (This post from 2012 provides an explanation of some of these reasons.) The essence, though, is expressed by Kari Chapin in her introduction to Grow Your Handmade Business: How to Envision, Develop, and Sustain a Successful Creative Business:

For the creative entrepreneur and the handmaker, our business-planning needs are different. There are lots of reasons for this, but it pretty much boils down to a basic fact: our values are a bit different.

Right-o. When I speak of being an artist / crafter / maker / writer / creative, it's personal shorthand to encompass those of us for whom creativity is a way a life rather than a means to make a profit. Sure, some of us might make a profit at it, but that's not THE motivating factor. We make because we want to make, because we must, because our souls shrivel up and die if we don't.

Yoni materials

While the first incarnation of Odd Bird Studio didn't fill the hole in my soul left by abandoning photography, writing in this space helped me figure out what was missing. And while this blog has never become a business guide for artists as intended, it has shifted and meandered along with my winding path back to making art. Ever. So. Slowly.

I've been tempted to change the tag line of the blog to better reflect the musings and ramblings on these pages, but what would be more appropriate? Delving into the day-to-day roadblocks, challenges, triumphs, and process of creating stuff - art, craft, stories, any creative field - as a way of life, as imperative to living, puzzling over the nature of creativity itself, well, isn't that the business of a creative life?

Seems like an apt full-circle to me. Begin by addressing the business needs of artists who are not profit driven but rather soul driven; delve into sustainability - of materials, products, studio practice, business; and continue the arc with investigations of creativity itself - the business end of the urge to create.

On the mending block - soft flannel to line the threadbare front legs