Creating & Marketing Your Unique Artistic Style

The struggle that almost every artisan faces in this business is creating a style that is unique and then marketing that aspect.  I am not the greatest salesperson but I do recognize the value of a good market strategy. There are hundreds of jewelry makers, gourd makers, artists & craftsmen out there.  My market strategy is simple.  There is no one out there, that I have found, that does those things they way I do or can do it better than me.

For example, There are folks that buy beads & parts at craft stores make jewelry and vendors that get jewelry and sell it for a company like a franchise.  I, on the other hand, order my parts online in bulk and make my own pendants and earrings by cutting, shaping & melting the raw materials in my kiln.  I also find local semiprecious gemstones for making into jewelry. My designs are truly hand made and unique one of a kind pieces.

 My artwork is also uniquely my style.  I like to do portraits of people or animals or both.  What makes mine unique is that I usually do them in pencil - not paint and I sometimes add pops of color with colored pencil.  I have done some in full color that end up looking more like a watercolor.  When I choose a subject, I can see it completed in my head before it is finished so I have already decided how much color, if any will be involved.

When an artist begins to develop their own style, it is like taking a creative journey.  While it is a simple process sometimes it can be difficult to master.  The key (as in anything) is practice, practice, and more practice.




 Once you have developed your skill set and understand the rules of the medium you can then become experimental with the skills or bend rules to foster the creation of your style.  The process takes time.  The beauty is seeing your personal progression and it is very rewarding for most artists.  It is like life itself...It is all about the journey.

Sailing Yak

Most artsy crafty folks like me look at an item and think: "Gee, I could do that much cheaper than buying a kit online."  Many times, dare I say, most times that is true.  However, there is the odd occasion when I come to realize that it may just be worth it to pay the piper (so to speak) and avoid a ton of hassle.  But the truth is that I love this ridiculous creation because it is one of a kind-like me.

I love sailing.  I love getting out on the water and letting the wind carry me away and wrangling the wind to bring me back.  It is my way of embracing the rhythm of nature and appreciating a living, breathing moment.  When I left the Chesapeake and lower Potomac where I sailed often, moving to the mountains, I really missed those moments on the water.

 Now, even though I live nearly 200 miles away, I still am near the Potomac and other small bodies of water that are inspirational in much of my highland art and wildlife photography.

In the mountains, folks have kayaks.
Learning to navigate the shallow fast flowing rivers is very different from the lazy sailing that I knew.

Even the intensity of sail racing (a somewhat oxymoronic term unless applied to Olympic sail races) was daunting in  comparison.

When I first got my kayak I went to the low water crossing on the North River to learn to maneuver this crazy kayak vessel.  There was a place in the river where I could paddle really hard and go nowhere - not unlike one of those fancy "Endless Pools" they use to train Olympians.


Anyway, I learned to manage my boat and make it do everything I wanted except the one thing that I craved - sailing.

I knew that this river thing was not really MY thing.  First, I like to go alone.  People are noisy and scare the wildlife that I am compelled (as an artist) to photograph.  Also, the river requires an in/out point and they are generally miles apart, which is not conducive traveling alone.  What a pain to co-ordinate!  Also, the rivers often have very scary areas of rapids that can threaten the safety of my camera equipment but more importantly may damage my calm!    Nooooo!!!!!

So, I bought a sail.  I was dubious about the sailing kayak thing but I really wanted this to work so I toddled off to the lake with my new sail and kayak.  It was fun.  I achieved about 15 or 20 seconds of sailing nirvana when I managed to get the boat headed in the right direction with the wind aft but then almost immediately started crabbing (moving sideways) and lost my wind.  It was clear to me that with only a pseudo spinnaker and no keel or rudder control, this sailing yak thing was a bust.

I did some research and designed a 'kick-up rudder" for my yak.  I knew I needed a kick-up rudder because if I hit a rock or log in the shallow water, my rudder must be able to spring up over the obstacle and kick back into place without ripping off the back of my boat.


 I knew that if needed, in higher wind that I can use my paddle as a keel for added stability and hopefully solving the "crabbing" problem, allowing me to sail off wind on port and starboard tacks.

Well, my neighbor (a brilliant wood worker) made the actual rudder for me.  It is mahogany and a beautiful piece.

My hubby (a brilliant electrical engineer) re-worked my design into a lightweight aluminum contraption that is a delight to behold.

 I added the final bit where I can lift the rudder for easy access in and out of the water (without damaging my beautiful wood).


My dopey dawg (Chloe) provided my steering unit (the  blue Monster Ball dog toy).

My rigging is as simple as I could manage with a series of pulleys and the "Monster Ball" that I am using to anchor my rudder center and steer port or starboard.

I have the next few months now to learn the nuances of sailing a yak on highland lakes.  It is likely someone will get a photo of the crazy creature in the lake attempting to sail a kayak.  It will probably make the papers even!  I can only imagine the headline: "WV-Wild & Wonderful and Weird Too!"

So, here is the scoop.  I love my sailing yak but I will not take it to my college reunion in southern MD for several reasons.  The main one being that they have "real" sailboats there and would laugh at my little contraption.  But they have no idea of the challenges a sailor faces in the mountains and they will never get it unless they try to sail there.


I have no shame for my beautiful and perfectly functional little sailing Yak that I have named Shutter Sprite.

After the Vacation

Many folks take a summer vacation and invariably upon return discover that they also took a little break from healthy habits.  I am no exception.  I took a short little camping trip with about 30 women that all like to cook "comfort food" then immediately spent a week with my sister from Texas who is also a big fan of southern cooking.  In that period of time the only exercise I managed to get was moving my campsite three times in as many days to avoid rising flood waters.

We had to double up on campsites.  Fortunately, I travel light in my roving American TARDIS.  Yes, it is bigger on the inside and all of that did fit in the truck!
Anyway, I gained 10 pounds over the last 2 weeks.  Ugh!  I feel like a slug!  So, I have started working out again and logging my food intake.  I am doing 30-40 minutes of cardio (either the stationary bike or treadmill) and I have already started the 30 day ab challenge,  It actually does not start until June 1 but I was having trouble getting through the first set of 15 sit-ups!  I figured that a few days of practice was needed.  Oh my! I am so sore and tired! I was already about 40 pounds overweight before the vacation that sent me over the porky edge.

So, here I am with my happy salads and blueberries. My diet will not have any comfort foods or good ol' southern cooking.  I am on the "whole food and mostly locally grown diet.  I firmly believe that we (humans) need to eat food that resembles what humans ate before pre-packaged, highly addictive preservative riddled, genetically modified food substances were developed.

So, if it has more than five ingredients, I will make it myself.  If I can buy it at the local farm market, I can eat it.  Unless it is a fruit or vegetable, if it is trucked into the area, I can't have it.  I can have one meal per day that will contain locally raised meat but most of my food will be veg-based. That is my diet.

I will likely be blogging about this subject again as I work through the next few weeks.  I think the 30 day ab challenge should be interesting since I have never tried anything like that before.

MayApple Story

Most folks that know me know that I enjoy morning walks in the woods with my old dopey dawg, Chloe.  Spring is a particularly great time for this.  There is just so much to see on the mountain and it is a magical time.  I enjoy letting my imagination run wild.








When the dogwoods and the wild begonias are blossoming on my mountain, the MayApple valley comes alive with the faery folk, woodland sprites, and  every kind of magical & wee folk from all over the world.   Spring is the time of the gathering in MayApple Valley.








There is so much to do and eat in the valley for the faery folk...It is the time to look for morel mushrooms and fairy potatoes which grow in abundance in MayApple Valley.  And don't forget the MayApples too!









The wee folk always take time to enjoy a little romp with the dopey dawg!








We love all the faery folk in the forest, however, some woodland sprites are shy and are reluctant to come out with all of the commotion and when so many different creatures abound.



Others creatures act as sentinels for everyone in the gathering.









I think the locals enjoy the company of all of the wee creatures visiting their home.  Some come back every year because this spring gathering is a great learning experience for all.

So, if you find yourself in a MayApple Valley, choose a MayApple umbrella for your brief  home away from home.  Settle in for a while and enjoy a wonderful show.  You might just see a delightful faery dance performance upon the new spring leaves.  Feel free to appreciate the moment.

When Spring Comes

Spring in the Potomac Highlands is a wonderful experience. I get itchy feet and want to toddle around constantly with my camera and share my point of view with everyone that I know.  Mostly, I like photography for selfish reasons in that I like to practice drawing from the photographs.  My photos become my inspiration for other works of art.  Sometimes I use my photography for altruistic reasons because I know so many folks that suffer from seasonal depression.  I just want to share the amusement and beauty of the world that I see and what is more fun than bug love on a blossom.
I have tried to go for a hike without my camera but I just feel lost without it. So, it has become part of my hiking attire.  It is the same with my dopey dawg, Chloe.  She is my hiking partner.  I adopted Chloe as a rescued & quite pathetic mess from a puppy mill.  She was about 3 or 4 years old and had never been out of a breeder cage and had no understanding of the world around her.

 At first, I thought she was blind because she constantly ran into tables or chair legs but she just never developed any sense of space.
She was terrified of everything including ceiling fans, dog toys, leashes, walking sticks, and any sounds.  I was her last hope because the rescuers had decided that she was not adoptable.    It took several months of patience and we started going for little walks.  I will never forget the first time she broke into a joyous romp in the grass. She had finally managed to coordinate her front end and back end in a weird pacer type of run and from that point on it was "game on" for her and she became my hiking partner.

So, every spring we start our day with a little 1 or 2 mile morning hike up or around our mountain. Sometimes we go to a park for a hike around the lake or to find a new waterfall or just a new trail. I enjoy toddling around the mountains with my camera and my dopey dawg all year long but especially in spring.  We hike around the highlands until we get snowed in and are forced to hike around the mountain again. We always see something wonderful where ever we go.

Writers Group

I am exploring a new artistic medium (for me) called writing.  In fact, that is exactly why I started blogging.  I figured that my attempt to create a coherent essay each week would be a good way to enhance my writing skills in a way that a personal journal cannot accommodate.  A personal journal is written for a single person - the self but a blog actually has an audience.

One can imagine that the audience is a variety of friends from Facebook, Google+, Twitter or other media savvy adults.  But the truth is that you have little indication of just who your audience may be.  I recently discovered that I have a following of young high school students and that discovery both delighted and frightened me.  It made me realize that I may actually have some influence (hopefully good) upon some youth that surely will make a difference in the future of this country.  That actually caused a bit of trepidation with publishing my last post.  I actually went back and re-read every post to make sure that I can be proud of everything that I said.  I am.  Thus, in a brief paragraph, that is the difference between a journal and a blog.

So now, I want to lighten up and share a wonderful experience that I had with my writers group meeting and recommend that anyone who likes to write, blog or journal get involved with a prose &/or poetry writing group.  We meet regularly and take turns sharing a brief story or poem and get feedback from peers.  It is a wonderful and positive learning forum! I learned some incredible facts about WWII military cover-ups and how families cope with those types of tragedies; I shed tears listening to a poem about one of my artistic idols; and I made everyone laugh with  my own short story called "Bingo Hell."

As much as I would love to share details of the other stories and poetry, I cannot.  However, I am going to share my little Bingo Hell story.  Sorry there are not many photos this time but this was an exercise in visual writing.  So here is my funny little story in its first publication...

"Bingo Hell

I hate Bingo.  I hate it more than anything in the world.  It haunts my childhood memories like a recurrent nightmare. I would seriously consider self-mutilation just to avoid going anywhere near a Bingo hall. It stresses me out so badly that I have an uncontrollable urge to find a liquor store and a shady Zanex dealer in a nearby dark alley when I even think about entering a Bingo hall.

There are a lot of folks that think my aversion is an irrational phobia.  Well, to my knowledge, there is no clinical affliction labeled Bingophobia.  I do suffer from a mild form of arachnophobia but I don’t really remember associating Bingo with scary octapedal creatures.  Now that I think about it though, some of the denizens of the Bingo hall did seem to have oddly incomprehensible body extensions.  They would shuffle about with large sticks or push metal trays on wheels that they would occasionally sit upon. Some are hunched over bearing ugly backpacks emitting weird repetitive hospital sounds with clear tubes emerging from their face resembling insectoid antennae .

In fact, these Bingo hall denizens are very frightening indeed.  Bingo creatures dress in the most gaudy of oddness with uniquely flamboyant accessories.  The hall is filled with a writhing sea of polyester pant suits in colors that span the spectrum of powdery pastel to neon.  Often they wear red and purple hats with big pink flowers.  They carry large orange bags with embroidered sage green leaves.  These bags are filled with totems, offerings, charms and other strange items that are required to appease their personal Bingo gods and to ensure their Bingo success story.  Some would emerge from the writhing mass to find a spot to settle and arrange their totems and charms around them in obsessive detail. 

Before long the writhing mass has paid their tithe and received their sacrament of dozens of Bingo cards.  They move to find their place and settle in for the long vigil. Each one takes a few moments to analyze their cards and arrange them in meticulous order of best to worst from top left to bottom right.  Then they would light up and nearly disappear in a cloud of smoke and ash, while muttering softly and stuffing their face with a variety of pre-processed foods carefully stored in mini plastic bags and arranged around the edges of their altar.  While awaiting their Bingo blessing to begin, the soft muttering rises to a cacophony of cackles and shrieks as they relive past Bingo glory amongst themselves.

Suddenly there is feedback in the microphone and the silence is instantly deafening as all eyes focus upon the “One” that has the power to endow them with Bingo salvation. The number calling mantra begins.  Each devotee has brightly colored ink tubes to mark their devotional progress.  With every number called they violently slam their ink tube on the unsuspecting cards causing the entire table to shudder.  Then, one of the frailest of the denizens erupts in a one word explosion of sound: “BINGO!” Thrusting her card toward the heavens, the joyful creature quivers from the exertion.  Meanwhile, the building itself seems to shudder with the collective moans of the congregation as they all eye the lucky recipient of the Bingo blessing with overt disdain."

...I am so glad that there is not any force in the universe that can make me deal with this ever again...

Find Your Talent

Remember the old saying;  "Find something you love to do and you will never work a day in your life."  One does that by finding their talent.   Everyone has a talent and it can be a potential for success.  

I have seen the most amazing talents. Some are sound based like musicians or singers. Some are very left- brained based like folks with ridiculously accurate mental calculating abilities.  Equally amazing are people with the ability to maintain calm in the face of insanely provocative behavior or the ability to light up a room and make everyone happy with just a look.  
Some talents are somewhat obscure and rather unheralded.  I have one of those types of talents.  I notice things.  It sounds so simple and perhaps that is exactly why I believe it is a true talent.

Most folks go through their world with blinders on solely focused upon what is important to them in any given moment.  When we cruise down the road, we notice what is happening on the road in front of us.  But what about in the trees above the road or the fields along side or the woodland pond that we pass along side? What about those folks that always notice the 4 leaf clover  in an entire field of normal clover or those folks that always notice the diamond ring on the beach or the $20 bill on the sidewalk? It is a talent.
My own powers of observation may just be noticing details but I think it is more than that.  If I am in the forest, I notice the creatures around me and believe that is why I am a good wildlife photographer. If I am in the city, I notice the people around me and how they interact with the world around them.  I recognize their cultural differences and perspectives through their subtle physical language.    It is a more visceral sense that (in my interpretation) seems to be an amalgam of visual, tactile, & aural observation with a touch of empathy. 


Anyway, the point is that I notice the physical communication as a creature (human or otherwise) interacts in their environment.
Any artist is always searching for a way to communicate a feeling - an opportunity to illicit an emotional connection with their audience or viewer of their work.  The fact that it may be somewhat different than the artistic intent is often a delightful surprise.  If a person can identify the relationship between things then they can successfully exploit it in a way that is personally beneficial.  In other words, find YOUR talent and practice using it daily.  That is the best way to find something to do that will make you happy every day.