Things are about to get busy around here!

Spring event line-up

I have several events coming up! In case you’re having trouble reading the flyer, they are

• April 19: RPS Collective SHOOT! Vol 1 Picnic Launch @ Lake Merritt gazebo, 12-3pm.

• May 2: Santa Rosa Zine Fest @ Northwest Santa Rosa Library, 12-5pm.

• June 6: Two Marys’ Makers Market @ Alameda Marina, 11am-4pm.

I’m hoping to do one of the Castro Art Marts this summer, too, but I want to see how this full calendar treats me first! This is the first year in a long time when I have at least one event every month. It feels like it’s long overdue for me to be doing more events, so I hope I can maintain the pace.

BTS: my booth setup is a feast of street treats

I finally have a photo of me with my wares! 😅 Photo credit to EnteringMyArtEra. Something I hope you’ll find more interesting than that is a brief tour of my table.

Over the years my table has evolved a lot, in terms of form and content. At first I exclusively sold my medium-sized original drawings as well as variously sized prints of them. Then I started adding smaller, quicker drawings, typically ones I made during some kind of drawing challenge. I had a collage moment for a year or two, which gave way into making zines. I’ve slowly started adding trinkets, like button pins (and I have more plans for more trinkets 👀).

The form of the table has changed, too; this is both a function of me amassing more display equipment as well as the table aesthetic becoming a bigger deal. Over time tables have gotten more “vertical” (i.e. with more display racks), and people get really into creating a cohesive personal brand (something that stresses me out tbh). Artists react to these trends in various ways, but amidst all of this, something I’m proud of is how much of my table equipment I’ve gotten secondhand.

• Print holder: street find

• Button pin holder: cheap find from SCRAP SF

• Business card holder: repurposed random box

• Mini easels and picture frames: street finds

• Turquoise triangular display stand: street find

• Signs with my name: saved from old events and/or made from repurposed materials

• Business cards: printed on recycled cotton (yes, cotton!)

• Plastic wrap on prints: some of this is new, but some of it I save from greeting cards

It takes a little extra work to create a semi-coherent aesthetic if you lean on secondhand materials and have a setup that’s not very minimalistic, but it’s not impossible. I kinda like the challenge. While I don’t expect anyone aside from me to notice these sorts of things, I wanted to share it here, since it’s easy for folks who go to and/or vend at these events to feel pressured into getting shiny new plasticky things all the time. An appropriate thought during Earth Month, no?

Latest inspo

• I recently started using the book community+tracking app Pagebound, and I absolutely love it. It has that old forum structure mixed with cute pastel aesthetics and some smart, unique social design. There’s no ads and no genAI. I can’t recommend it enough for bookish people!

• Speaking of a lack of ads and genAI, Anil Dash wrote an insightful piece about how the open web is getting more and more closed, enshittified, and sloppy…and how we can combat that direction.

• Last weekend I read “A dead djinn in Cairo”, a fantastic supernatural murder mystery novella by P. Djèlí Clark. Itś a little queer, a little steampunk, and you know I love a non-Western fantasy world.