Planting a garden, gearing up, and growing.

🌱 ISSUE 05. 🪻 MAY 2024

Happy spring, seedlings!! I hope you’ve been enjoying the mildly-unseasonable warmth and the emergence of the leaves. Spring has nudged into first place as my favorite season recently. There’s something about the bright green, the carpets of trillium, the little bursts of violet in my yard, that just lights me up! It’s been very needed this spring: I was lucky enough to get top surgery in the middle of April, and recovery has been hard and easy all at the same time! I’m on the mend, though, and excited to jump back into making things.

🌸 Rest is harder than it sounds.

Last year in April, my spouse and I were packing up our little Brooklyn 1-bedroom apartment and preparing to haul ourselves and our cats to our new house in the Finger Lakes. During that process, I was also participating in a sweet challenge called Bring on Spring Art. Amid the chaos, I managed to complete all ten pieces. They remain some of my favorites. I was excited this year to be able to really focus in on the challenge during April….. and then my top surgery was scheduled.

“Well,” I told myself, “I paint fast. I can make it work anyway!”

I probably could have pulled it off, but there’s something I’ve been quietly working on for the last year: knowing where my limit is. The system we live and work under is so inflexible! Seasons don’t matter. The state of your body doesn’t matter. You’re supposed to push through and hustle and give 110%, even when you maybe only have 50% to give. A big part of the reason I made the leap to full-time artist is to control my own schedule.

I ended up with a compromise: I’d commit to doing 5 out of the 10 total prompts as best I could before my surgery on the 16th. It felt like copping out. If you’re a recovering perfectionist and overachiever like I am, I think you’ll get the constant urge to do more, to push as hard and as high as you can go. Voluntarily doing less work??? How could I? Doesn’t that mean I’m lazy?

No. It doesn’t. And I’m glad I scaled back! I made 5 really nice pieces of art in three weeks, and then I made myself take 2.5 weeks off after surgery—the bare minimum I’d let a friend accept from their full-time jobs—and honestly, y’all, it was really hard! Each day that I felt fine, a nagging sense of guilt crept up my spine. “You could be working right now,” it whispered, and the worst part was that it wasn’t technically wrong. When you’re running an art business, there’s always something you could be doing. The temptation to work was incredibly hard to resist, rooted in guilt and freedom and love for what I do, but I did resist. I rested. I helped plant our garden. I stretched, and read mystery novels, and made ramps butter. I felt alternately guilty and glad.

I came back to work, got into two more art shows, and reworked my entire manuscript into something much better. The rest paid off, but even if it hadn’t, it still would have been worth it.

I guess my point is that sometimes rest isn’t the easy choice. It’ll feel uncomfortable, if you have the chance to take it, don’t listen to the voices telling you it’s bad. It’s not. It’s necessary.

🐦‍⬛ A poll

On the note of getting back to work, I wanted to know what you all would like from this newsletter! All options will eventually happen, but what would y’all be interested in first?

If you have other ideas beyond what’s above, hit reply and let me know! I’d love to know what y’all think.

☀️ Subscriber-only spring cleaning!

In order to make room for some new work and make sure my booth isn’t too cluttered, I’m doing some spring cleaning! This discount code (SEEDLINGS) gives you 25% off a bunch of springy pieces, some of which are never going to come back!

The stickers are safe, but this is last call for all the included prints, so if you want some flower ducklings in your life, now’s the time to get them!

My shop always has free shipping once you spend more than $35 ✨🪻 and if you’re local and don’t want to pay for shipping, let me know and we can work something out!

It's a special sale!

🧺 Markets and Shows

We’re jumping back into market season and I could NOT be more excited!! I’ve got new stuff to show you (fish stickers and posters, here we come) and I missed everyone’s sweet faces.

Come and see me and other wonderful vendors at the following shows for the next few months:

✨ Beltane Market
Buffalo St. Books
Saturday, May 11th, 11am–5pm

After that, I’m excited to participate in my first-ever:

🌷Ithaca Festival
Downtown Ithaca
Friday, May 31st, 12pm–6pm
Saturday, June 1st, 10am–6pm
Sunday, June 2nd, 10am–5pm

Looking forward into June, I’ll be at:

🏳️‍🌈 Ithaca Pride in the Park
Downtown Ithaca
Sunday, June 9th, 10am–4pm

AND

🌈 Syracuse Pride
Progress Park, Syracuse, NY
Saturday, June 22nd, 11am–5pm

There’s a lot more coming up after this, and I’ll be making and debuting new work all summer, especially some special Pride stuff 👀 can’t wait to see y’all there!

🍓 In the Garden

I can’t wait to start planting my northeast native wildflower garden with this seed mix from a Hudson Valley company!

My amazing mentor Anne Appert wrote & illustrated a beautiful new book and you can get a signed copy of it from a local bookstore!

We’re in full ramps season and I’m thrilled. If you find yourself with an abundance of ramps, make some ramps butter! Remember to forage responsibly!

If, like me, you are obsessed with floral flavors, maybe make some violet syrup, or some lilac scones? Sidenote—did you know lilacs were edible?? Because I did not and I am HERE for it.

That’s all from me today, my friends! I hope to see some of y’all at some markets this year, but if not, thank you as always for your attention and your presence in my life! Get some rest with my permission not to feel any guilt whatsoever about it.