I read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert recently, and it has shifted my perspective on creativity so much, and helped me embrace some truths I've been resisting.

I'm moving out of my studio of seven years at the end of the month. As I've been clearing out the massive piles of artwork from every nook and cranny, I've wondered what to do with this art. Making the decision to move out of my studio has helped me decide to do something I've wanted to do, but have been fearful of- to give this work away. Just move it out and away. And then throw away everything else. Go back from whence you came!

So starting with our studio's annual Open Studio Night at the end of November, I began the process, and it feels like such a relief. Ever since then, I've been meeting with about five to ten people a week to give them work and sell them discounted prints and originals. This thing that I'm not "supposed to do" feels really good to do. It's my work after all.

I've been talking with a lot of artists about this dilemma. We are no good at running businesses but we yearn to keep creating, so what do we do with all of these things we keep making? There are some works I won't give away. I am stubborn because I want to sell them or I want to make sure they go to someone that will value them, even if they can't with their dollars. 

I feel stuck by this question of how I value my work. What do I want? What is my time and the money I spend on materials worth? But in a city like Knoxville, I have been driven mad by people's ignorance about the value of art. I wish I knew the number, but it feels like for every one person that validates the price of my work, there are 50-100 that don't get it. They don't understand that venues take a cut. They don't understand that I'd like at least an hourly wage. They would never out right say it, but they don't consider what I do work. And it is real hard to keep chipping away when you keep getting that sort of reaction. I promise, I've tried to not let it get to me, but the rate at which I hear it is too much.

Maybe if only they could say, "I see why you are asking that, but it's out of my price range." Just something that conveys that they value the time and money I put into what I do. If downtown Knoxville bars can sell a cocktail for $12, I should be able to ask $100-200 for a piece of artwork that I spent several hours making, right? To cover labor and materials and overhead? The dawn of the $12 cocktail in Knoxville has really fueled my fire...

I know so many artists in Knoxville who make work quietly in their studio and don't share it. And they are really good artists. I know one in particular that has stopped making artwork altogether. "Where will I put it?" I understand her predicament, but it sucks so bad. The world needs her artwork, her ideas. Knoxville needs it.

Unlike me, these artists have protected themselves from the rejection I subjected myself to for a decade. I feel like I thrive off the ability to show and share my work, but when it doesn't sell, show after show, there's a breaking point and a very loud voice that says, "Please for the love of God, stop making artwork! Just stop!"

I do sell work. I do, and even though it's been a lot, the countless hours invested compared to the income gained has become too difficult. And a lot of times when it does sell, I can't sell it for what it's worth, and I haven't found a venue in Knoxville that can advocate for me. Very few First Friday venues proactively sell and market artwork on behalf of the artist. 

This has led me to another question and sidetrack: Is it Knoxville or is it me? Will it work somewhere else? I want to find out. I do. But I need a break.

It helped to read Big Magic this year as I process all of this. I don't want to stop creating, but some things have to give for me to delight in it again. I have to stop pursuing those things that are open opportunities in Knoxville because they won't lead me anywhere. They never have, they never will, and I know it. It's the hardest thing to give up, but with enough misery, giving up becomes easier. And I am ready to let go of the things that aren't working, and get back to the real work, my joy. 

Giving away this artwork has been a symbol for me then, of making this change. It is a symbol of saying, I still don't know what they hell I'm doing, but I'm going to keep going, granted, in a slightly different direction. Even if the work I make going forward does not sell for a good price, it doesn't mean it doesn't hold value. I am desperately trying to come to terms with this, this inability to market what I do well. To come to terms with what I feel is my calling and my inability to make it work. 

I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!

Amen.

When I was little, my family went on trips to Gatlinburg. One of my favorite shops was owned by a man from South America, and everything in his store was from his home country*.

I loved all the different textures and colors in his shop. Hand-painted beads, little knit animal finger puppets, thick colorful sweaters.

I'd buy small things with the money my parents gave me, but one glorious trip, they bought my sisters and me each a sweater. I chose the deep blue one with colorful mountains, 3D people sewn on, climbing up to the top, toward the bright yellow sun in the sky.

Whenever I'd wear it, I'd feel all the different textures. I thought it was beautiful, and I wore it with pride. I, too, had been known to climb mountains, and this was my way to show the world. I even immortalized it that year in my school picture**.

Thinking back to the happiness of this time, I am 99.7% sure it was absolutely not a cool sweater at all.

While my friends wore sweet t-shirts to convey what they deemed worthy of their adoration, I chose a garment that looked like my grandmother had bought it for me, or maybe worse, made for me. But the beautiful part? I didn't know it wasn't cool, I just liked it, and I rocked that mofo out with a big ole bow on top of my head. A BIG BIG bow...

I conjure up this memory and wonder, is that ignorantly blissful girl still in there, or have I done her in? Can she help the minimalist/ lazy/ practical/ (hiding) clothing wearer I have become? What wonderful marriage would happen if she hung out with the woman I am today?

I know for a fact, they'd do some damage on some KRAFT mac & cheese. That's. For. Sure.

*I want to say Peru...

**Photo to come. Still looking for it.

It's with a little sadness that I announce I'll be discontinuing the sale of certain fine art prints that I've made available for the past several years. I have a stock of these prints that I'll be selling at art openings and events until they're gone, so I hope you'll come out and claim the ones you want. Some examples are in this blog post, but there are many more that I'd love for you to come look through. 

THE NEXT CHANCE TO PURCHASE THESE PRINTS WILL BE

TOMORROW, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1

5-8pm at White Oak Gallery in Magpies Cakes- 846 N Central St, Knoxville, TN 37197

I've made this decision in order to find some much needed focus, to create some newer original works and to pursue some goals that have been on the backburner for a few years now. 

I will still be offering fashion-themed prints which you can find on my Etsy shop, but this means that all other themed prints will be discontinued, such as pools, narratives, animals, and the Dusk Love series. (Disclaimer- there may be a time in the future I roll these out again, but at the moment, there are no plans for that.)

I'm not exuberantly discontinuing these prints. It was a hard decision BUT (BIG BUT)  I am really excited about freeing up some mental space to devote more time and energy to new ideas and projects. That was enough to help me let go of this and some other things. 

So please let me know if there are any questions you have or a print you'd like. I'm happy to help get it in your sweet hands!

NAME YOUR PRICE {happens every Wednesday}

Today I'm mixing it up a bit! I'm offering 4 different fashion drawings from a 2016 series called Just Blousing and you can Name Your Price on one or more.

They are 8x10" mixed media, and if you're in Knoxville, I'll also throw in the white matte and frame.

It's easy to win!

1. Visit withbearhands.com/NYP 

2. Read all the details.

3. Fill out and submit the form by Sunday, June 4 at midnight EST.

4. Best offer will claim some original art!

If you follow me on social media, I hope you've noticed I've been posting artwork each week that anyone may name their price in order to claim it. It is aptly called "Name Your Price." 

BACKGROUND

A few years ago, I put on a show at Old City Java called Art For the People where I asked people to send me offers for the work. There were two large reasons why I wanted to do this: 

1. One of the greatest challenges of my career is selling artwork in Knoxville. Even with our huge art crawl called First Friday that happens every month, it's a tough town for any artist, especially contemporary and young artists.

But nothing inspires me more than a challenge. It's made me stretch myself and become more creative. "Art for the People" was an innovative way to sell work and learn a little more about what art interests people in Knoxville.

2. While sales are important for me to sustain what I do, Art For the People wasn't only about that. It was also about engagement with people and making artwork accessible to anyone. I wanted to let people make offers so that they could own an original piece of artwork. I also, in general, wanted to hear more from people, and I did!

STUDIO PURGE

I have so much artwork that's accumulated over the 10+ years since college and I'm ready to let it go. I've thrown out a lot of it, but Name Your Price is a way to find homes for some of it that I'm not going to show in exhibitions but someone may still want. 

It's also become very important to me to not look at older work anymore. I'm ready to move forward and make changes in what I'm making...

TRANSITION IN MY CAREER

I've hit a transition period with my work where things are moving a direction I really like. I'm experimenting more, but this means I'm not necessarily making work to to show in a gallery or include in an exhibition, which means I can't easily sustain this time of exploration. This work I'm doing is good and important and so Name Your Price allows me to recoup some expenses so that I can keep moving forward. 

SUPPORT MY WORK

In essence, this is a great way to support my artistic endeavors while I'm in, what feels a little like limbo. It's a really good limbo, but this work just feels like something I can't easily put a price on, so I'm asking you to. 

HOW IT WORKS

It's a work in progress, but NYP happens every Wednesday. I post a photo of the artwork available on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter with a link to my website giving more details about the piece. There's a form there to fill out with your name, email, and the price you'd like to offer. The highest offer will claim the piece.

I'm working out all the details, but each time there is a deadline to make your offer. It might be the same day or you may have a few days.

An hour or so before NYP closes, I send an email to anyone who has made an offer to let them know what the highest offer price is. This gives them a chance to counter offer if they want.

IMPORTANT DETAILS

1. You can offer any amount. My hope is that this will be a number that is a good compromise between what you can afford and what still places a good value on my work. My main purpose is to move this work, so you could also just walk away with a steal! Why not try it?
2. I add on shipping cost so you can make an offer from anywhere in the continental US. 
3. All the work so far has been original, but in the future I will offer some limited edition and fine art prints.
4. I think everyone should own original artwork and while I know the value (time and cost) of making artwork, I am happy to make some work accessible for anyone and everyone that wants it.
5. I want to turn Viewers and Fans of my artwork into Customers, and hopefully Collectors. I hope this will help to get your foot in the door. 
6. I want to make buying original artwork easy, affordable, and/or accessible. I know it's not always that way.
7. I want NYP to be mutually beneficial. I can make some dollars to support what I do and move some work that is filling my studio and you can adorn your walls with something you love and will enjoy forever.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. I'd love to hear your thoughts! You can comment or email me at beth@bethmeadows.com. 

The Dusk Love series began long, long ago, when I was taking a Printmaking class at UT in 2007.

Our assignment was to make a book, and I devoted mine to one of my favorite things: driving home- or wherever- at dusk, when everything becomes dark silhouettes against a glowing blue sky.

So I drove around Knoxville taking pictures from my driver's seat with my digital camera (yes, I said digital camera), and traced those photos- the outlines of street lamps, wires, buildings, and trees- to create screenprints.

In the end, I only bound one collection of prints and had hundreds of loose pages leftover.

Several years later, as my style evolved, I added the red, gold, white, and green lights. I took those pages and framed them. See below.

Fast forward to this year when I re-visited these images yet again, enlarging and altering them in Photoshop, something I learned how to do at the print and photo studio I worked last year. The title of this series is called Dusk Love (Ret), "ret" being what we'd put at the end of file names after editing them. 

Gay Street Bridge

Computers have never been my strong point, but I liked that this project allowed me to go in a direction I could not otherwise go without the challenge of using one. Seeing the small screenprints I made a decade ago evolve into large and striking graphic prints is a nice reward for the struggle computers give my brain. 

Old North Knoxville II

VIEW & PURCHASE DUSK LOVE PRINTS

The Dusk Love (Ret) series is a series of 6 limited edition prints. Each edition is of 5. All prints are signed and numbered.

Right now, you may view these framed prints at The Tomato Head on Kingston Pike through May 1. 

Green Light

In May, they will go to one or both of these places: Nest on the 100 block of Gay St and/or the With Bear Hands Gallery at Magpies.

PURCHASE ONLINE

To order a print online, please visit my shop!

I watched Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette again last week, and it got me thinking about a piece of artwork I made in 2015:

Wooden Lady, reclaimed wood in salvaged window, 2015

Inspired by this:

I was working at The Salvage Shop then, and as usual, coming up with ways to re-use all the wood we had on hand, a mission that inspired the hundreds of mason jars I printed and painted on salvaged wood during my years there. 

Her face is tongue and groove flooring, her headdress is wood that was all ready painted white and I added gold accents, her blouse painted and carved wood. The frame is an old window from some house in East Tennessee that probably has vinyl windows now.

The carved blouse was inspired by a box I bought in Haiti that summer. Something about the painted wood, then carved, gets to me deeply, so much so I daydream about living in a different country, making colorful jewelry and carved and painted wooden boxes by the ocean...

Anyway...

The same year I made the wooden lady, I also made this:

Dolce & Gabbana, food packaging on paper, 11 x 14"

Inspired by this:

Karlie Kloss in Dolce & Gabbana

And it seemed to be a favorite of the Good Packaging series, I think because of the floral headdress and striking stare. Also probably the lace dress. It's a solid image all around. 

I always wanted to make more wooden women. "Wooden Ladies" has been on my To Do list for two years, and I'm excited because I'm ready to make more. 

So I've been searching the internet and saving images on Instagram. My goal is to make three by the end of the month. My inclination is to make them wildly intricate, but they will be a little different than the first one I made.

While we wait for them, here are some of the images I found for inspiration, the last one an added bonus because it's ridiculous. 

Good Packaging is the second iteration of the food packaging series, the first influenced by a desire to improve one of my least favorite tasks: grocery shopping. 

When it comes to going to the grocery store, I lack the knack for doing it efficiently. All of the brands and differing price points overwhelm me, so I spend far more time wandering the aisles than I'd like to. 

I also learned at a young age not to be swayed by fancy packaging, which for a visual person, really takes the joy out of looking at all those labels. 

To improve this task that I will spend the rest of my life doing, I decided to turn the grocery store into an art store, allowing myself to buy alluring items that I could use to make art. This shift has made a world of difference, and in my hunting, I do that thing I aspire to do as often as possible in my life: Lose track of time.

I'm also deeply fascinated by the fashion industry and like mixing images I find in magazines and on social media with my life in East Tennessee. 

In Good Packaging I explore:

• themes of craftsmanship in the greater design world and also in folk art found in the mountainous region where I live. 
• the inaccessibility of high fashion and the accessible materials I've chosen to work with.
• the fashion world, a field and craft I greatly admire.
• the positive and negative effects of food and fashion