Saintly St. Ana

Welcome to the new year! I've been slacking with blogging (like months of absence) but I'm back at it. If nothing else the new year at least motivates me to do things. It just feels like a good time to get shit done. New year, new bed. Lots has happened since the last time I posted. 1. Got not one, but TWO, new jobs. My "day" job is at NMSU working for a department called Media Productions. We're stationed within the college of agriculture and I work as a graphic designer for print and digital media. Basically I make logos and promotional media for different groups associated with the college of ag. The agriculture department is one of the biggest on campus and has programs all over the state so I'm getting to do work for a variety of different clients. I made a joke with an old colleague that I'd be editing pics of horses all day but that has yet to happen. The main program I'm working with focuses on nutrition and cooking for those on S...

Long time no blog! I'm back. I've been somewhat busy recently with a new project a few friends and myself put together- Rio Sangre Print Collective . A little over a month ago we all got together and decided to split the cost of some paper and the rest is history! JK, not really though. A lot of stuff happened between then and now but that's essentially how it all got started. Our booth at the Southwest Print Fiesta This past weekend we participated in the Southwest Print Fiesta in Silver City. It's the first event of its kind in Southern New Mexico (as far as I know) and I'm so grateful we got to be a part of it! Basically printmakers from Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico got together to print, talk about prints, and buy prints. Pretty much a bunch of nerdy printing stuff. The main part of the event that we participated in was setting up as a vendor and selling our prints together. Being that we're a rather new collective we don't really hav...

Image via Elizabeth Gilbert I recently started reading the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and so far I'm loving it! You probably can't really tell from the title, but it's essentially about living a creative life. She has a pretty interesting philosophy regarding ideas, inspiration, and how humans interact with them. I suppose it's technically a self help/ user guide type book, but she doesn't approach it that way. She simply writes about her own experiences and the observations she's gathered from others. Still, it's pretty interesting to learn about someone else's perspective on creativity. Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of the famed novel Eat, Pray, Love . I never read the book (sorry, just didn't interest me) and fell asleep during the movie (sorry again)! I had no idea until I started reading this book that it was by the same author. For someone who had a book on the New York Times Best Sellers list for over 200 weeks and then had ...

Yo, I finally put together a version of  my portfolio . It's in the beginning stages and some of the photographs aren't where I want them to be (looking at u, NMSU) but it's a start. Check it out! I'm currently working on some business cards and basically "my brand." I'll probably update the look of the blog soon too, so keep an eye out! I'm always open to feedback and critique, but, you know, play nice.

GET OUT OF MY NOOK. So my last post was a little bit of an experiment. It was exciting for me to write because it included a lot of topics that I'm really passionate about, but I also wasn't sure if it was too IN-YO-FACE . I mostly wanted to see what it would be like to share some of my very strong  personal opinions and then see how I felt about it. Overall I feel good but it still feels weird... If you couldn't tell I'm still trying to decide what kind of content I want my blog to include. There's so many options! I've thought about focusing on opinion based/current event writing like that last post because, well, I have a lot of opinions guys. While that idea is appealing to me, I also feel like it could very quickly turn into me just complaining about lots of things- like isn't that what Facebook is for? I've also thought about focusing on physical and mental health since I'm personally working on both, but it's a very slow (and maybe no...

Drawing. I have a love/hate relationship with it. It's one of those things where if I feel at all pressured to do it, I simply won't. P.S. I'm really a toddler. Jk, but for some reason I've always had that (toddler-like) approach to it. I think all of us love to draw when we're little, and it totally makes sense! We finally learn how to hold a pencil, control our extremities,  and it keeps us occupied for like 10 minutes which has parents everywhere rejoicing. It involves dogs/flowers/dinosaurs/other "kid stuff" and probably tons of colors. It's a skill set above coloring (finally, am I right kids?!) that we can master before learning cursive. Anyway, what I'm getting at here is that I loooooooved drawing when I was a kid. Aside from reading and eating Cheetos, it was like my main thing. Fast forward to approximately 10 years later: I went to college and majored in art and I was like forced to draw all the time. I hated it. Something a...

So I got a new book and I think it's awesome so I'm gonna share it! As I've mentioned probably a million times before, staying motivated is kind of a challenge these days so I was intrigued when I stumbled upon Adam J. Kurtz' book 1 Page at a Time . I initially found Adam's work on Instagram (of course) probably through some dumb hashtag. I'm dedicated to dumb hashtags. Anyway, I instantly fell in love with his sense of humor and illustrations. I pretty much admire anyone that can draw because it's hard and I think it's 10x harder to actually develop your own style. He does both of those things while making awesome products like balloons, pins, books- you name it! Clearly, I was obsessed. At first this book seemed kind of cheesy but then I realized that it's a-okay to be cheesy. I contemplated buying it online for a while but I haaaaate ordering things online and waiting. If I can get the same thing in a store and have it in my hands in ...

If you've read my last couple of posts you know that I've been busy putting together a zine for the ABQ Zine Fest which was just this past weekend!  The final product along side our custom pins! We ended up pulling together a pretty good variety of work to put into the zine. Early on we decided to keep it purely visual and use as little text as possible. I thought it was a pretty interesting approach considering that most zines I'd seen either had a combination of both text and visuals or just text. I'm not sure if that idea just wasn't as appealing as I thought it would be or if it wasn't the right audience, but we didn't end up selling that many. Initially I was disappointed with the lack of sales, but  it wasn't because I was expecting to make a ton of money.  I was mostly disappointed because it didn't seem to grab people's attention like I thought. I guess some people are just into certain things and you can't really control the w...

We're making a zine! And by "we" I mean my friend, Anne, and I.  There's an annual zine fest in Albuquerque and this year we're going to collaborate and attend! Anne went last year with her own zine and had an awesome time. When I realized that the event was coming up again, it seemed like a good idea to finally attend since I had been meaning to for a while. I was interested in collaborating because I wasn't sure if I could come up with enough content to fill a zine (and keep it engaging) by myself. It's also fun to collaborate in general. I think Anne and I have similar aesthetic interests so it works out well. We're also having other friends contribute so it's going to have lots of different styles and perspectives in it. I'm so excited to be working with friends again. It's something I definitely miss about school. It's easier to get inspired when you have other people's feedback and are able to bounce ideas off each oth...

Art is never finished, only abandoned. —Leonard0 da Vinci Yeah yeah Leo, I get it. I remember a professor quoted this to me once and I like barfed in my mouth. Who quotes Leonardo da Vinci in an intro level art class? Like who are you??? Well now I'm quoting it at you. It's probably one of the cheesiest things I've ever heard related to creativity (there's a lot of that ish out there), but now I know it's sooooooo true! I feel like every one has looked back at a piece of work and thought to themselves 'I wish I would have done that differently' or at least wondered what else it could have turned out like. Hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it? I was always under the impression that those tendencies were those of a perfectionist. But I don't think I am a perfectionist, at least when it comes to most things. I stumbled upon this post that led me to the conclusion that, "m aybe creativity is the  act of embracing perennially unfinished ...

I've been going through such a slow and unproductive time creatively. Honestly, most days after I get home from my 8-5 I'd rather just watch mind-numbing television than try and throw myself into a creative frenzy. That probably makes me sound lazy but at least I can be honest with myself about it now. I often used to push myself way too hard because I was afraid of being labeled as lazy when, in actuality, I just needed rest. Anyway, those days are over and I'm down to indulge in some trashy reality television shows whenever my brain just needs a break. Today wasn't one of those days though. I found myself thinking about some collages I made a while ago and I remembered how I had planned to expand on those digitally. I really love working with collages, but it's always nice to give your X-Acto blade a break and be able to Command+Z some ish when you need to. I found a few images that emphasized texture and manipulated them using shape and color. I've ...