A Glance Back, and a Look Ahead At "Nashville Art & Artists"

I'm one of those people who think you ought to see where you've been to know where you're going.

I didn't get to focus on "art and artists" exclusively on this blog like I had hoped and initially set out to do ... part of that was I didn't know the art scene in Nashville. In fact, getting acquainted with it was pretty much what I was hoping to do by visiting Galleries and shows and then "reporting" on it here ... but then transportation became a major issue ... and well, golly, you can't report on stuff you see when you can't get there to see it ...!

So then I got curious. Why didn't/couldn't I follow my initial trajectory anymore? I was literally stuck ... What was I doing then, here on this blog? This has become SO much less about the art scene in general and so much more about my teeny corner of doings, thoughts out loud and opinions. LOL

Then the lightbulb moment happened.

I realized I finally, finally -- ONLY JUST THIS YEAR -- have accepted and committed to being a freelance Illustrator and comic book artist. (Intake breath ... exhale ... smile.) It's a little shocking, I know. I thought I had been doing that all along when I moved here ... but I tried to hang on for as long as I could to the "safe" little extra doo-dad jobbies that were not art ... and not fully committing to pursuing getting art-work. But when even the side jobbies finally dried up, I found myself in a corner. My art and writing were all I had left to work with. Literally. I had to get work writing or drawing.

Oddly enough, I was in a "space" like where I was when I was 14 -- only it was 25+ years later! (you know how you sometimes repeat patterns in your life until you correct a behavior?) I discovered, hilariously enough, that by setting out to focus on Nashville art and artists, I have been instead forced to focus on my own art.

So this blog currently is really more like "Nashville Art and Artist". LOL

Hopefully I will have some good art and projects to share soon, then. Meanwhile, I will have to start to rebuild this blog's sidebar ... so that will be one of my primary focuses ... and I hope to share more posts with observations, concerns, comments, etc., all God Willing, with the New Year.

I wanted to also mention that I've enjoyed the small comments I've received from readers and visitors (some comments which are published, others not) who have shared websites and articles with me and/or just chimed in when they also liked something I posted about. It always surprises me when I find out who pops by and visits. It's so nice! Thanks so much for doing so.

It's New Year's Eve today. I'd like to share what I posted over on ComicSpace:

"Onward towards a New Year ... God Willing, we will learn new wonderful things, enjoy the company of family and friends, get good work done, read some excellent books, watch some terrific movies, share happy times, observe the incredible beauty of nature, and be inspired to do great things."

Happy New Year. :)

Death, Deceit & Some Cool Jazz by Claudia Mair Burney

Oh my goodness, this novel of hers is every bit as compelling as her blog.

There are 5 key blogs (& that's not including my hubby's) that I like to keep up with regularly. These are our agent, Chip MacGregor's blog, my friend Valerie's blog Occasional Superheroine, Cheryl Lynn's Digital Femme; When Fangirls Attack (which is more of a Directory Blog) and Claudia Mair Burney's Ragamuffin Diva.

Chris got an advance reader copy of this book at the office, lucky me! Ever since I started reading Mair's blog I have wanted to check out her books when I got a chance. I thought if her books were even half as interesting as her posts, man!

Death, Deceit and Some Smooth Jazz was one of those books I could barely put down until I was done. I read it within 24 hours.

Vivid! Her prose is so vivid I could see colors and smell scents. It was fantastic. Her lead character, Amanda Bell Brown is so three-dimensional ... and it is in a way so frank it is frightening. Ms. Brown is a struggling Christian woman dealing in this fallen world. Wow. Her struggle with her sensual nature and spiritual nature was very real.

Oh, and the story was really good too. I noticed it was the second Amanda Bell Brown story ... I can't wait to find the first one.

Death, Deceit & Some Smooth Jazz ships April '08.

A Question: Sex Vs. Money

Why are adults so bent on giving pre-teens condoms at school, and yet won't at least ALSO teach them OTHER really important basic life skills -- like how to balance a checkbook? Or how to save that summer job money for college so they can AFFORD TO ATTEND without going into debt for 20+ years ...?

sigh.

The New Hill Center Mall ...

... IS SO CUTE!

You can even walk straight from Hillsboro Pike to the YMCA located on Hillsboro Circle and on the other side of the mall. NICE!

Thanks to new traffic lights and a couplea bits of new sidewalk, you can even cross from Hill Center to the strip mall on the other side of Hillsboro Pike! NICE!

Of course, it's still a wee bit of doing to get to Grace's Plaza north of the HC (still safest to cut across the parking lots) or to walk to the Floral shops and strip mall across the Pike and north of that new light because there are no sidewalks after a certain point, but this is progress. Walking around becomes more of a possibility.

Man, had there been apartments above the stores there, it'da been just like a cute little city street. (And isn't a low-rise building of no more than 4 stories above a store really more conducive to walking and neighborly-ness than a high-rise is ...? Just wondering ...)

Hill Center looks beautiful. Gotta go browse ...

The List of Books I Enjoyed Reading in 2007 (or, How I Messed Up My Sidebar)

So I began adding to my blog this morning by placing what I thought was going to be a nice and handy list at the bottom of my sidebar -- a list of books I had read in 2007. I figured I'd put it there to share, and add links to the books online at my leisure. I'd keep the book list by year, and drop off the oldest year when I ran out of space. I thought it was a nice plan ...

What I did instead was obliterate (!) my custom sidebar, which had been filled with links to all these neat galleries and artists and people and blogs and sites. Sites I had discovered in the last year that I had wanted to remember, revisit and hoped others would visit, too. ARGH.

Yep, there are way worse things, so no big. But dang is this just inconvenient. LOL

Anyway, here is what I WOULD have placed on the bottom of my sidebar, after all the cool linkies:

Books I'm Currently Reading:
The Cost Of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
New Art City by Jed Perl
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud (re-read)

Books I've Read in 2007 (List started in August):
Send In The Idiots by Kamran Nazeer
Nodame Cantabile #10 by Tomoko Ninomiya
Heroes of The Faith: Frederick Douglass by Rachael Phillips
Shattered Dreams by Irene Spencer
My Descent Into Death by Howard Storm
The Beautiful Cigar Girl by Daniel Stashower
A Deeper Level by Israel Houghton
Praying For America by Dutch Sheets
Lee Krasner: A Catalogue Raisonne by Ellen Landau
The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
Intimacy With The Almighty by Charles Swindoll
Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby & Claude King
Nodame Cantabile #11 by Tomoko Ninomiya
Brownsville by Neil Kleid & Jake Allen
The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan by Wendy McClure
Success Is Not An Accident by Tommy Newberry
The Ripening Sun by Patricia Atkinson

My list is non-fiction heavy. I noticed the more I draw the more non-fiction I prefer to read ... interesting!

Anything I didn't finish or didn't like I simply left off the list. (If you have nothing nice to say ...)

I may yet figure out how to do that placing the list into the sidebar, but meanwhile I have work to do and books to read ... so the re-building of the sidebar will just take time. Please bear with me ...

Holy Smokes, I Messed Up My Sidebar ...

... and that means I have to rebuild it from scratch!
*sob!*

Temptations Pass ...

Temptations pass ....
Just play Possum.