Nature’s Mad

My summer has been filled with tears, bleach, mops, gloves, face masks, and trash bags full of my labor. I’m left with sparse chaotic remains of the studio I’d built over the past decade. Disaster came swiftly while I wasn’t looking over a two week period. Nature came rushing in and destroyed over 75% of my business.

(below is the most recent “pre-disaster” photo I have of my studio)

My studio was beautiful. Now it is quite literally in disrepair and chaos as I rebuild. It will be beautiful again… I know, this is not my first rodeo. But for now I am “in it.” Part of what made my studio lovely was having my work stored in handwoven baskets and wire mesh crates. But that is also what left it vulnerable to this particular destruction. And as I sift through what remains and begrudgingly tuck everything away in airtight and waterproof bins, I know that I can’t protect everything from all potential threats. There is no fireproofing your life. There is no way to divert oncoming tornadoes… to be alive is to be vulnerable. And we can only do our best.

I am incredibly lucky that the destruction did not extend to the rest of my home and shockingly none of my hand-pulled prints and portfolio seem to have been damaged although they too were stored in my studio. I’m eternally grateful to the friends who patiently listened to me blubber incoherent despair over the phone and helped me re-regulate my nervous system; to my family for making sure that this didn’t become life-shattering as so many of us are living much closer to “the edge” than before.

Now I rebuild. Moving into the 4th quarter I’ve got a lot of catching up to do now. I need to replenish my raw materials, recreate my inventory, and get prepared for the markets and holiday-season sales that sustain most self-employed creators. So… it’s clean slate time. Literally.

I need to try to recoup at least a tiny portion of the literally thousands of dollars that this has cost me. I guarantee what remaining inventory is left was safe from the disaster and is perfectly fine, it had been safely packed in tubs from my last pop-up events.

Please take advantage of the Nature’s Mad Sale. And if you have a favorite brick & mortar shop you think might like my work… please send them my way! You have no idea how far customer recommendations go for wholesale accounts and I love building relationships with other small businesses.

I can’t really express just how demoralizing it is to see so much of my work destroyed and have to throw it into the trash; especially when part of my regular practice is to minimize waste of any kind in my process. It’s hard not to take this as a “sign” to roll over and quit. But that’s not really an option for me right now… and we’ve all gotta be more resilient than that. So here’s to fresh starts after messy endings.

(below are a few of my favorite shots of my studio from the past couple years)