Hi friends,

The last few weeks/months have felt like a waking up process. Coming out of a post-masters recovery period, I’ve finally started getting excited about creative projects again. I’ve been reading Austin Kleon and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, listening to Amelia Hruby, Kening Zhu, Struthless, and New Creative Era and I even rented a bass to start making music again.

The Garden: Website Overhaul

Naturally, this burst of energy led to the inevitable: I decided to redesign my website. Again.

I know, I know. But I’m in my digital garden phase. I realized that my previous small web aesthetic, while fully hand-coded and proud, wasn't fully representing the "poly-disciplinamorous" nature of my work (see Loveless below). Like the last iteration of my site, I opted to design and code it from scratch, although this time with some help from gemini code assist in order to bring a grander vision to life. I wanted an active, exciting archive: not just of polished outputs, but of all the messy learning, jobs, and experiences that shaped me over time.

The Grid: Artist vs. Creator

In the middle of this redesign, while wrestling with how to label myself in a bio, I stumbled upon this article from Metalabel.

They break creative work down into a quadrant system:

• Artistic vs. Market Expression

• Self-Directed vs. Contracted Work

This hit home. For the last few years, I’ve been trying to figure out where I land on this map. I don't want monetization to be the sole focus (lest it ruin the passion), which is why I hold down a separate job as a bartender. It allows me to keep my work somewhat rough, experimental, and true to myself.

I often feel pressure to fit into the "Artist" box, while simultaneously feeling drawn to the "Creator" side, while also desiring the stability of contracted work, whether institutional or commercial. But as I redesign my site, I’m realizing that this identity isn't a fixed point. It’s a spectrum, and it's fluid, and making a creative living may very well require navigating different quadrants at different times, possibly stepping outside of the grid entirely.

The Chimera

This brings me back to a quote by Natalie Loveless from How to Make Art at the End of the World, that anchored the conclusion of my thesis. She speaks of research-creation producing a "Chimera":

"It produces hybrid forms, defamiliarizing and uncanny, that oscillate between more than one 'species' of production... It creates a chimera." (2019, p. 56)

I am realizing that I don't quite fit "Artist" or "Creative" or "Creator", or any one label really. I am a Chimera. I am the jack-of-all-trades. I am a filmmaker, a musician, a bartender, a researcher, a coder, and a human being. And my goal now is to let my work move fluidly across and sometimes right off that grid, lovingly tending to different interests at different times, and trusting that following my creative gut, being curious, and putting in hard, honest work will take me where I want to go.

I’m excited to build, sow and grow this new digital garden, and I’m excited to share it with you, and with others: unfinished edges and all.

Remember: whatever label(s) you determine for yourself, the focus is just to be authentic. If you build it, they will come.