Hello everyone,

I think it’s been close to a month since my last entry in this newsletter and, to be honest, there’s been a handful of times I’ve opened up the computer to write an email and just haven’t really had the energy.

To cut a long story short: lots of things are very hard to find time for with my baby daughter! I’ve been embarrassed as there’s been loads of things fall through the cracks - from shipping mistakes on people’s book orders, to design work that just isn’t getting progressed at all. Like just about every single parent before me I’ve found out that, at the end of the day, outside of being a parent, not much else can get done.

The really tricky part is that my partner has been doing more of the baby work than I have been. So there’s even this additional layer of shame thinking ‘gosh she’s really stepping up and I STILL can’t get these timelines met?’.

It’s also important to mention that she’s lovely and adorable and when she smiles it’s the best thing!

With that being said, I want to share a few things that HAVE happened!

1) MEL Photobook Fair was last weekend

This was the second iteration of a book fair I’ve organised and it was a lot better than the first. More people sold books, the venue was a lot better, and the events were much more engaging. On every level it was a step up.

I also brought new merch and a zine to the fair - and it was really nice to see the new merch be purchased and the zine sell out. The zine was a tester to see if anyone would be interested in a ‘how to’ guide for making art books in Australia and, well, at the next fair I’ll bring 20 instead of 5 as I think there’s a healthy appetite.

Overall I sold about $1700 of things which was a bit less than my aim of $2000 but not that far off.

2) Next week I announce a the release of my dingo work

An exhibition to share, a book to show off, pre-orders to promote, etc. That has all been happening behind the scenes. There’ll be dingoes in the gallery, there’ll be books to be proud of, etc.

3) Consider stopping workshops

My daughter has not been sleeping well and the reality is that it has been really hard to run workshops with how tired I’ve been.

At the same time, they are also a lot of work to organise and promote and, this year, I’ve been a little disappointed with the take up. It costs me about $950 to have my studio, the big photocopier, etc each month and I’m getting to a point where I think I might just say ‘hey, last Melbourne workshops are coming up’ and enjoy wrapping up the studio experiment. I think there’ll always be pop up workshops, renting spaces, etc, but perhaps having a permanent space isn’t necessary at the moment, especially given that the teaching can be really fatiguing.

The space I work out of has also become a lot more event focused over the last year, which is really lovely to see as one of the business I love that works out of there is growing well. However, that’s not really the work environment I enjoy.

4) Managing monetarily

I think that the January-March period was this very precarious money time where I was waiting for lots of things to resolve and, largely, they did (though not without some delays and challenges).

Online sales of books have been good and the open call I ran really popped off which helped a lot. Given I am not working any day jobs at the moment this is a good thing.

Finally, I’d like to share that there is fundraising for a book project I’m publishing happening right now. The curators of the project have been skilled enough to get a ‘boost’ campaign approved - which means any donations are doubled by the Australian government.

Even if you can’t donate I’d love for you to read a bit about a very special book we have coming out soon.

Much love,

Matt