A seasonal review
The joy of capturing creative memories
Almost a year ago I began my journey with Patreon. Fellow creatives had been telling me to do it for a while but I wasn’t convinced. I am not sure what changed that position but I suddenly found myself writing my page and launching before holding my breath. Roll on a year and it has been the best thing I have ever done in my wee world as a working artist. I was quite ambitious with my take on Patreon. I didn’t want folk to support me - I wanted to create a community where we all supported each other with some gentle guiding from me. It worked! I now have a wonderful Patreon community and on the 1st September I am opening up two further tiers to allow for ‘lighter touch’ involvement.
My patrons and I are now entering a review stage where we look back just to see how far we have travelled - joyful. We are busy making scrapbooks to hold some of our favourite memories close. My Patreon is all about seasonal creativity and this first year has been focused on monthly classes in zoom where we have worked across a range of media and experimented with lots of different techniques. The year finished with an artist book and I fully expect to be sharing some of those books on my website in the near future.
Attention is now shitfing towards our scrapbooks and these precious books are universally popular and timeless. They give us the opportunity to record our precious memories and artistic licence to do whatever we like. For me, scrapbooks are inward focused. They are just for us to enjoy for years to come. First we got out all our work from the last year. The photo shows just some of it. We have worked across sketchbooks, art journals and written journals all capable of tracking the seasonal shifts.
Can you see that wee toadstool in the middle of the image?
At the centre of my work is careful observation. I have been a teacher my entire adult life and it is always the first thing I say - observe closely. During last autumn I wanted to do a wee survey of toadstools on the island I call home and that decision lead to this wee book and it is, quite possibly, my favourite thing from the entire year. During the year we fell down all sorts of seasonal rabbit holes so the chance to make a scrapbook of the year offers us a chance to celebrate. We are celebrating our seasonal creative journeys. We make our own books in my Patreon and that allows us to create sizes and shapes that ‘speak’ to different projects.
I am so proud of our creative journeys and you can expect a second virtual exhibition on my website soon. If you haven’t seen the ‘blossom and bloom’ exhibition from my patrons you can view it HERE. If I am honest, I am amazed at just how much we have created in 11 months so we will need this month to pause and reflect. I am asking my patrons some reflective questions and I hope they will also ask themselves some questions. There is much talk in the art world about the importance of an ‘authentic artist voice’. This reflective process is so important in identifying and strengthening that voice. So, we are looking back to go forward and there is much excitement about where we go next. Of course, I know the answer to that already!
For all of us though, this is also a process of reflecting on the seasonal shifts and this project has taught us all just how small they can be. To live within the seasons we must all learn to observe closely and our wee Patreon community even got our magnifying glasses out! I never knew that a dried mace flower looks like a pincushion…..
I hope my enthuiasm for this Patreon experience is coming across and I am excited to be expanding the opportunities going forward. Not everyone wants to do a zoom class. Some might just prefer my weekly seasonal creativity pdfs and others might be happy with just my free dowloads and monthly Patreon only vlog. So I am trying to provide greater width to my wee project and I hope that is useful. If you are interested just mark the 1st September in your diary.
For now I am going to grab a cuppa and continue work on my scrapbook. If you love to scrapbook I would love to know what you get out of the experience. Until next time….x