Holiday Retrospective
Looking back on "Year of the Artist" and what I've accomplished.
I’m an avid goal-setter and towards the end of the year, I like to reflect on what I have accomplished or areas that need improvements. I have high expectations of myself and often feel I have not done as much as I had hopes, despite evidence suggesting the opposite. So it’s helpful for me to take some time and actually list what I’ve been up to over the past year to help curb this feeling.
Am I an “Artist” yet?
My yearly theme for 2024 was “Year of the Artist” and this simple statement set the overall tone for everything I have worked on. I had clearly been working as an artist by creating several collections of my own alongside some contract work for others. But it was bespoke experimentation without a clear focus — learning new techniques and applying them creatively — and I was caught up in the crypto mania of the generative art movement. Now that things have died down and I have some experience under my belt, I felt like what I was doing wasn’t yet what I wanted in an art practice.
One big different between making art and running a practice, in my mind, is the way you operate yourself. Can you efficiently create works? Do you have ways to share what you’re working on and engage with potential collectors? Does your accounting and tax strategy support the work you’re doing? Have you found a distinct style or over-arching motif that unifies what you’re creating?
The past year was focussed on building solutions to these kinds of questions:
Incorporating a business — OWMO Studio LTD
Establishing bookkeeping practice via accounting software
Moving business related accounts under my “omwo.studio” domain email
Develop a new website with a professional tone, presentation and statements
Focus on a newsletter engagement strategy and automating social media posts
Work on developing my personal brand to align with my creative focus and ideals
Reduce dependency on platforms for creating and presenting my artwork online
Standardize my development workflow and introduce automation, by developing my own production framework for seed exploration and distributed rendering
Explore fine art printing and develop a collection intended for the medium
Establish an online shop and design branded materials that can be shipped
Each of these meant learning a lot — much of it is completely new to me, and thus it took more time away from creating artwork than I originall anticipated. I could write an entire newsletter on each one, but I’ll spare you the tedium!
Suffice to say, I was feeling a lack of accomplishment because my mind filtering for artwork results (of which there far were fewer), and while I got a monumental amount done, my brain was simply tricking me because they weren’t as satisfying to complete.
Well brain… what do you think now?
🧠 — “Okay, I’m an Artist… Now what?”
While working on these business focussed tasks, I’ve collected creative ideas as they popped up — some new, some refinements on the old — and now that I’ve had some time to reflect on them, I’ve noticed a few recurring themes:
Composable Collections
Where individual works in the collection are distinct but have a strong correlation or connection to the collection as a whole. I experimented with this in my Flux collection, where each edition can seamlessly shift from one to another.
A new concpet of mine is to use a parent-child relationship (bi-directional) to make a connection between a digital work (NFT) and print editions made from it, using a motif of slight changes introduced when duplicating, like a photocopy. There’s a bit more to it, but I don’t want to spoil the surprises just yet. The idea of a collection of individual pieces feeling unified something I want to incorporate into my works.
Art Generators
Making DIY screen-based artworks running natively on an embedded Raspberry Pi that are individually seeded and continuously generates a styled artwork. Having a seeded generator is nothing new, but being able to have a no-fuss solution to get my artwork on a collectors wall is compelling.
It also scratches my itch to work with my hands and physical mediums, while still working to my strength digitally. It also could offer a unique chance to add sensors to the enclosure (ex: light, microphone, sonar) that could be used to influence the randomization or interactivity using real-world inputs.
Maker Prototyping
Askew from my art practice focus, I have sketches of boutique products that I want to prototype that would need relatively simple circuits. For example, a habit tracker that uses arcade buttons with colored LEDs to show your progress, or a stringed instrument that detects touch / audio signals to send MPE MIDI data to synths. I think these are worth exploring and could complement my desire to make more creative screen-based installation works.
My new yearly theme will be Year of Innovation as I want to push my creative mind towards exploring more ambitious ideas, as opposed to what fits the current meta. I love interactivity and digital, but want my work to get off the computer / phone and into real life spaces. This next year, I’ll be focussing on ways I can achieve just that.
Random Highlights
Not everything I’ve done fits into the preceding narrative, so here’s just a few more :)
My collections are now explorable on my website, including live previews for my animated / interactive works, and full sized images — ex: WaveShapes
I’ve curated and prepared the initial 12 editions of Entropy Alpha, which will be available soon as 16x20” prints on 17x22” sheets — viewable on my website
A set of 100 widescreen, borderless Entropy renders are now on Artlum.io — a subscription based artwork presentation service now shipping with LG TVs
My Online Shop is ready to go… but Canada Post is on strike (returning to work soon) so I couldn’t make anything available before the holiday season :(
That’s all for today. Have a happy and safe holiday season, I’ll be back to sharing more creative updates with you in the new year!