well nokingsnola was a big success for the mutual aid group i work with, el pueblo nola. we got a lot of donations and gave out a bunch of tshirts, guillotine earrings/pendants, and buttons as donation gifts! and we got lots of volunteer signups and had so many great conversations with folks. now we finally have a little money in our coffers to restock the pantry, load up on hurricane season supplies, and otherwise help families who need it out east. the day was beautiful, the energy of the crowd was amazing, and i saw so many friends and acquaintances from across many different realms of my life, which was awesome. i hardly noticed i was on my feet for six hours plus. it was a long day but well worth it. hats off to all the organizers of the event from indivisible nola and the aclu and all the other community orgs that were there representing and all the volunteers who pitched in to make it happen. good job nola!
i had some catching up to do with cvp after that week leading up to nk3. but thankfully this past week was a slow work week so i am all caught up now. made my inspiration, desire and art boards (though i did them in my journal this time so it wasn’t as much of a production); i’ve watched all the lesson videos and bonus content; i even managed to tune in to all 3 of the live calls this week (nick’s call, the coaching call and the many hours long blooming session on friday) and painted quite a bit in my journal. maybe not every day but most days. i also got my materials ordered that i need, which is thankfully not much (just some 12×12 boards, some gesso and some shop towels), so i’ll be good to go by the end of the week. i had a few boards left over from last time that i didn’t use so i spent some time today prepping those so i’ll have stuff to work on this week while i’m waiting for what i ordered to get here. and i had a productive day organizing and working on unfinished stuff today. so i feel ready to take on week 3 and like i’m making progress on completing some older things that have been sitting around the studio for quite some time.
now what i need to do is focus some time on photographing and uploading more completed work to my web shop so i have something new to promote there. i feel like i’m not very good at the business aspect of my creativity these days. i quite frankly NEED to be making some money from my art practice, whether it’s tshirts, buttons, prints or paintings. i need to be selling stuff both so it gets out of the house (cuz shit is piling up!) and also cuz the pet biz has been really slow and i’m in kind of a financial hole at the moment, having raided all my savings just to get rent and beginning of the month bills paid. i haven’t been so close to the bone in a long time. thankfully pet sitting is picking up this month but i need to invite in some serious abundance right now to get me back to a comfortable place.
what else? french quarter fest and jazz fest are coming up. so many events happening around town. spring in new orleans! folks coming to visit. crawfish boils. beautiful weather. all the distractions. the next few weeks will be a true test of my intention for more consistency in the studio. i feel good right now but i hope i can keep it up.
(pictured above are some of my journal pages that i made in the past couple of weeks that i really like.)