Let's Get This Show on the ROAD!

I am so excited to return to traveling around the country and doing shows!  It’s been quite a challenge (for all of us) to embrace the changes that this global pandemic has instilled, and I bet there are challenges ahead while we continue to create our new normal.  As the timeless cliche rings true today: “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” which is to say…in terms of survival…if there is to be a comeback, it MUST be stronger than the setback.

That quote is also the theme of the Des Moines Arts Festival this year.  The beginning of the latter half of my year begins with doing this top-ranked arts festival during the dates of June 25-27.  I am thrilled to be a part of this awesome event, to be outside and see smiling, familiar faces, and to finally once again feel the buzz and animation of doing what I love to do!

My Show Schedule is packed full of amazing events as we adventure towards the end of this pandemic and the end of 2021!  I’m making tweaks and adjustments in my studio operations to accommodate both my online commitments as well as art-show contracts!  I am hoping that if my show schedule does not bring me to where YOU are this year, then we will continue our connection and conversation here online.

As well as keeping up with my online undertakings while maintaining a travel schedule for shows, I am continuing to make progress on my house-building project!  I close on the property on the 18th of this month, and then it’s time to enter the design phase.  First, I will need to get a land survey so that I can know my elevations and start drawing up some concepts.

It is a very sloped lot, which is a new challenge for me.  The Colorado house my ex and I built was on flat land, so pouring a concrete foundation was relatively easy.  This down-slope on my slice of paradise here in Arizona suggests that in all likelihood, I will be building on a pier foundation, however, there are other ideas of modern design that are bouncing around in my head.  Maybe steel cantilevers and glass… We’ll see!  I have to weigh my ideas against the CC&Rs (Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions) from the HOA, which are not all THAT difficult to understand and abide by.  All they’re really saying is, “Just don’t build a pink tree house in the middle of our shared haven here!”

By the end of the year, I hope to have my plans drawn up, engineered, and to have my sub-contractors on a schedule to begin breaking ground in the spring of 2022 and erecting a structure that is to be my new home and studio!  As the GC and a crew-member, I will be juggling LOTS of things, including keeping up with my dynamic bookbinding business—existing online as well as on the road.  But the juggle is the fun, and I’m looking forward to the organized chaos…or as it is stated in a book I’m reading called “The Builder’s Secret,” “Learning the Art of Living through the Craft of Building.”

And if you can stand ONE more cliche and quote: “It is the journey, not the destination.” To me, the “it” there is the meaning of life.

Be Well & Be Journaling,
Teresa

Look at YOU!

#mejnation on social media SPEAKS!