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February 2025 - Yesterday I emptied out my booth - The Muse and The Magpie, at the Cotton Company in Wake Forest. At the beginning of 2024 I told myself “no more retail” but I think when my previous location -Peak Boutique in Rolesville, shut down suddenly in October 2023, right before the holidays, it left me with a sense of incompletion. Downtown Wake Forest is a vibrant spot and an opening at the Cotton Company offered new possibilities. I opened my booth in March 2024 and have loved having this sweet little space to arrange — maybe it’s been my grown-up version of a dollhouse. But the reality of these kinds of retail spaces is that they often fail to, or just barely, pay for themselves. More significantly, I have been spending a lot of time making fun little things that are perfect for the booth but aren’t moving me toward larger, long term goals. These goals are, as of yet, indistinctly formed but there are two collections I’m aiming to complete (always a relative term in art) this year that feel headed in the right direction. One is a series of assemblages featuring mid-century china dog figurines, the other is a collection of mixed media paintings focused around abandoned houses. January and February have been a kind of warm up period as I circle in on Noisy With Stories - the painting series. In January I made reams of painted papers for collage and used some of them to complete a scene of snowy fir trees on a wood panel. This was meant to be a “one-of” project to replace a favorite vintage piece that sold in the booth. Kathryn of She Said It Cards spotted it on Instagram and requested a complimentary design - both will be featured in a Christmas card collection to be released later this year.
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