This month I put on an art show from my home!! It went so well, so much better than I ever could have imagined!! I had around 50 people come by which was so cool to see. I wanted to do this to feel more connected to other creative people since I don’t get on social media as much these days. My master plan worked... I feel incredibly lucky to know so many special people and I learned so much about their work. In the weeks leading up to the show, every time someone dropped off work (which was a lot of people) we ended up talking about why they made what they made, how, when, the list goes on.
I think my favorite discovery was that the motivations behind some of my work was very similar to other peoples. Ive been struggling to put this into words, but that made my scary and confusing mind feel less scary and unique (in a good way). I feel lucky to be able to take my personal experiences and make something out of them. Even if its subconscious in the moment of creating- it usually is. But looking back I can always see myself in my work and feel what life felt like at the time. It makes past painful experiences a little more beautiful. And the same to good times- I have an impression of that time forever. A shitty drawing of say.. a pony galloping.. is not going to tell the tale of life at the time to the viewer, or even me. BUT, I can look at it and say ah yes.. when I was making that, I was going through x,y,z. I was eating this. I was listening to this podcast. It’s like freezing a vibe in time. Like if a photograph of a vibe existed. It’s kind of like when a song brings you back in time. Hope that made sense. If not, just pretend I said whatever sounds cool to you. I’m awesome at writing words!!
Anyway. The show.
Huge thank you to all of the artists who participated:Hunter Gonzales, Cecilia Nord, Alex Skorija, Will Weinstein, Anna Wiber, Mikey Yates, Jorden Durkee, Margaret Kraus, Taylor Carter, Alaina Colleen, Ellie Closen, Tessa Bulger, Craig Auge, Skyler Baker, Nash High, Anna Meacham, Eden Faulds, and a performance from Joel Stratton.
Here are some photos.
I made this cool sign out of wood and hung it from my front balcony!! I was very excited about the chains. Yes, they're practical for this application, but I mostly wanted to make something with chains. Then, participant Skyler Baker’s work had chains too!!! That was very exciting to me. I felt very excited that someone else thinks chains and wood are cool together. Thank you to participant Jorden Durkee for the sensational video.
Flashback
time.........
My first solo show (and so far only) I ever had was in a bookstore in college. (It happened March 6 of 2020. You know what that means.) I got to do the show because I asked, and I asked because I was angry because some old man told me I was bad at graphic design (lol). Getting to take control of a sad experience, and make a good experience out of it felt very exciting and special to me. I had no idea what I was doing, and I very badly taped things to the wall, but it was all my work all together and I was so proud of it. At the end of the night, a band came in and performed in front of my art. I’ll never forget how awesome that was - to see people create something out of thin air, with my art as the backdrop, in front of people that came out of their homes.
SO because of this special memory, I knew I wanted to have some sort of music element with all of the art. So I had Joel Vs Joel (Joel Stratton perform.) I had a talent show about two years ago and he performed for that too, so it was so cool to have him bring his magic back in my new apartment. There's nothing like putting every chair I own in one room and having people sit on them squished together to hear a human being make music. At the end, he had us all sing along and it was so fun to be in my home with a bunch of people singing a tune.
It was of course so special and you should check out Joels new album, Smile in the Mirror. (PS- I did the cover art for it!
Here is a video of everything before people showed up. The music is courtesy of a playlist made by participant Anna Wiber. You can listen to it here. At least I hope you can. She has amazing taste in everything, especially music.
Thank you participant Ellie Closen for these snazzy pics (both above)
Some of the name plates. I had to google how to format these so many times. Turns out, there is no right way.
My work! I showed my yarn thing I talked about in my January newsletter, my house lamp I talked about in my August newsletter.
I also showed one of my favorite illustrations, in a frame I made out of wood- I glued the actual print to the wood and I love how it turned out.
All in all, this was a wonderful night. I met lots of new people and I highly recommend putting on an art show even if you don’t know what youre doing because I sure don’t and it turned out great.
Painting
This is the first like 20ish min of a painting. I ended up messing it up really badly lol but I DO want to try again. Oil painting is something I want to be good at so bad and I need to keep working at. Ugh dang flabbit it’s so annoying to not immediately be good at something!!!!!
Baby Camera
I got this camera for toddlers that prints the pictures on receipt paper. It’s so fun, and there are so many creative possibilities with it!! You can color on the photos. Exciting. I got it here.
Animation
The video won’t play and I can’t figure out why. so here is a link to it. LOLI made this using the baby camera. I knew I wanted to do a stop motion video, but I didnt know what of. Quick.. run around the apartment and think of something before you lose interest!!! Ah! Matches. That would be cool. But what do i burn... magazine... yes. I head to Hunters collage station and start flipping through the magazine waiting for the perfect image to jump out to me.
I found an article in a 2006 issue of TIME about how millennials are emailing and obsessing over their hot new tech gadgets. The article went into parents being afraid of what all of this tech will do to their child. TIME reassured them they should just lean into it and accept it because what the point of guiding the younger generation. Progress or submission? How do we tell. Don’t ask me. It sounds too familiar. This felt like the perfect thing to burn.
I used like 500 matches, burned this sassy gal, took the pictures and printed them out (With my hot new tech gadget, the camera for babies that prints thing on receipt paper). I colored them with oil pastels, scanned them in, and animated in photoshop. I love it. Yay
Wooden Clock
This is a clock I made out of wood and clay. I am not 100% done with it, but I am for now. (I want to eventually make different hands). I made the base and the rim part out of wood (i can cut wood in a better circle than that i swear i swear i swear. but I wanted it to look kind of clay and clunky.) I made the numbers out of oven clay, glued them, and sprayed it all with lacquer over a course of many days. I am not sold on this... but I think it will eventually be cool.
Ive got another wood thing in the works. Stay tuned
Favorite shots from my Camp Snap Camera
My niece took this photo. Good job!
Here she is waving to a robot.
Damn!
Back to basics
When I first started writing this a couple days ago, I was not feeling creative at all. I was feeling generally pretty bummed for no reason. Then I banged my fists on the dinner table and said ENOUGH OF THIS... and I put a date in my calendar to just shut up and make stuff. I felt like a cop at the end of the month trying to fulfill a speeding ticket quota. I felt like I needed to make at least one thing I was proud of. So, instead of setting out to make a grand masterpiece, I loaded up my backpack with a bunch of my favorite play around art supplies, headed to a coffee shop, and started playing. THEN... I made stuff I liked. Nothing that is earth shattering, but that doesnt matter. I was experimenting and I felt good. Here are some of those things.
Watercolor man from my brain with oil pastel on top. Painting inside of a coffee shop is a very fun experience. Is everyone looking at me? Are the baristas mad?
Baby camera print of my view while painting with oil pastel on top.
Shitty horse from memory with a fountain pen on some really soft weird paper. It bled really nicely. And of course... oil pastel. When I am feeling uninspired, oil pastels always get me amped back up.
Then, I took a photo of the horse and printed it with the baby camera and colored it with marker.
I recently got a label maker to make drawings with, so here is a water color wash with some words made with the machine. I wanted to draw a bunny but I fucked it up, so I just took a picture of the reference photo on my phone with the baby camera, and you guessed it, printed it out. I had this lacey fabric leftover from a sewing project, and I shoved that in my bag before I left because I wanted to play with that. To stick the lace and the photo to the paper, I did not have glue or tape with me, so I used stickers for this very newsletter that I had in my backpack. Yay!
This just in: Hunter made a substack
You should check it out and follow it, he will be posting some of his art and photos and general thoughts. (“Who is Hunter?” you may be asking. He is my boyfriend and the long haired man in the photo above. If this newsletter has no typos, that means he looked at it first. If it does, he did not see it. He has been waking me up every morning for 5 years and he is the only reason I am brave enough to learn new things. Without him, I would be sleeping until 3 p.m. every day.)
He does a lot of collage work, he is an amazing skateboarder, photographer, generally a sweet gentle person, an amazing writer, and he is a mechanic so if any of those topics or vibes interest you, follow him! substack.com/@hgonz
I have been loving watching him explore writing his own poems with his little letter stamps on top of magazine clippings. here is an example of one of his recent works that I love:
The end!
Katelyn Betz
September
This month I put on an art show from my home!! It went so well, so much better than I ever could have imagined!! I had around 50 people come by which was so cool to see. I wanted to do this to feel more connected to other creative people since I don’t get on social media as much these days. My master plan worked... I feel incredibly lucky to know so many special people and I learned so much about their work. In the weeks leading up to the show, every time someone dropped off work (which was a lot of people) we ended up talking about why they made what they made, how, when, the list goes on.
I think my favorite discovery was that the motivations behind some of my work was very similar to other peoples. Ive been struggling to put this into words, but that made my scary and confusing mind feel less scary and unique (in a good way). I feel lucky to be able to take my personal experiences and make something out of them. Even if its subconscious in the moment of creating- it usually is. But looking back I can always see myself in my work and feel what life felt like at the time. It makes past painful experiences a little more beautiful. And the same to good times- I have an impression of that time forever. A shitty drawing of say.. a pony galloping.. is not going to tell the tale of life at the time to the viewer, or even me. BUT, I can look at it and say ah yes.. when I was making that, I was going through x,y,z. I was eating this. I was listening to this podcast. It’s like freezing a vibe in time. Like if a photograph of a vibe existed. It’s kind of like when a song brings you back in time. Hope that made sense. If not, just pretend I said whatever sounds cool to you. I’m awesome at writing words!!
Anyway. The show.
Huge thank you to all of the artists who participated:Hunter Gonzales, Cecilia Nord, Alex Skorija, Will Weinstein, Anna Wiber, Mikey Yates, Jorden Durkee, Margaret Kraus, Taylor Carter, Alaina Colleen, Ellie Closen, Tessa Bulger, Craig Auge, Skyler Baker, Nash High, Anna Meacham, Eden Faulds, and a performance from Joel Stratton.
Here are some photos.
I made this cool sign out of wood and hung it from my front balcony!! I was very excited about the chains. Yes, they're practical for this application, but I mostly wanted to make something with chains. Then, participant Skyler Baker’s work had chains too!!! That was very exciting to me. I felt very excited that someone else thinks chains and wood are cool together. Thank you to participant Jorden Durkee for the sensational video.
Flashback time.........
My first solo show (and so far only) I ever had was in a bookstore in college. (It happened March 6 of 2020. You know what that means.) I got to do the show because I asked, and I asked because I was angry because some old man told me I was bad at graphic design (lol). Getting to take control of a sad experience, and make a good experience out of it felt very exciting and special to me. I had no idea what I was doing, and I very badly taped things to the wall, but it was all my work all together and I was so proud of it. At the end of the night, a band came in and performed in front of my art. I’ll never forget how awesome that was - to see people create something out of thin air, with my art as the backdrop, in front of people that came out of their homes.
SO because of this special memory, I knew I wanted to have some sort of music element with all of the art. So I had Joel Vs Joel (Joel Stratton perform.) I had a talent show about two years ago and he performed for that too, so it was so cool to have him bring his magic back in my new apartment. There's nothing like putting every chair I own in one room and having people sit on them squished together to hear a human being make music. At the end, he had us all sing along and it was so fun to be in my home with a bunch of people singing a tune.
It was of course so special and you should check out Joels new album, Smile in the Mirror. (PS- I did the cover art for it!
Here is a video of everything before people showed up. The music is courtesy of a playlist made by participant Anna Wiber. You can listen to it here. At least I hope you can. She has amazing taste in everything, especially music.
Thank you participant Ellie Closen for these snazzy pics (both above)
Some of the name plates. I had to google how to format these so many times. Turns out, there is no right way.
My work! I showed my yarn thing I talked about in my January newsletter, my house lamp I talked about in my August newsletter.
I also showed one of my favorite illustrations, in a frame I made out of wood- I glued the actual print to the wood and I love how it turned out.
All in all, this was a wonderful night. I met lots of new people and I highly recommend putting on an art show even if you don’t know what youre doing because I sure don’t and it turned out great.
Painting
This is the first like 20ish min of a painting. I ended up messing it up really badly lol but I DO want to try again. Oil painting is something I want to be good at so bad and I need to keep working at. Ugh dang flabbit it’s so annoying to not immediately be good at something!!!!!
Baby Camera
I got this camera for toddlers that prints the pictures on receipt paper. It’s so fun, and there are so many creative possibilities with it!! You can color on the photos. Exciting. I got it here.
Animation
The video won’t play and I can’t figure out why. so here is a link to it. LOLI made this using the baby camera. I knew I wanted to do a stop motion video, but I didnt know what of. Quick.. run around the apartment and think of something before you lose interest!!! Ah! Matches. That would be cool. But what do i burn... magazine... yes. I head to Hunters collage station and start flipping through the magazine waiting for the perfect image to jump out to me.
I found an article in a 2006 issue of TIME about how millennials are emailing and obsessing over their hot new tech gadgets. The article went into parents being afraid of what all of this tech will do to their child. TIME reassured them they should just lean into it and accept it because what the point of guiding the younger generation. Progress or submission? How do we tell. Don’t ask me. It sounds too familiar. This felt like the perfect thing to burn.
I used like 500 matches, burned this sassy gal, took the pictures and printed them out (With my hot new tech gadget, the camera for babies that prints thing on receipt paper). I colored them with oil pastels, scanned them in, and animated in photoshop. I love it. Yay
Wooden Clock
This is a clock I made out of wood and clay. I am not 100% done with it, but I am for now. (I want to eventually make different hands). I made the base and the rim part out of wood (i can cut wood in a better circle than that i swear i swear i swear. but I wanted it to look kind of clay and clunky.) I made the numbers out of oven clay, glued them, and sprayed it all with lacquer over a course of many days. I am not sold on this... but I think it will eventually be cool.
Ive got another wood thing in the works. Stay tuned
Favorite shots from my Camp Snap Camera
My niece took this photo. Good job!
Here she is waving to a robot.
Damn!
Back to basics
When I first started writing this a couple days ago, I was not feeling creative at all. I was feeling generally pretty bummed for no reason. Then I banged my fists on the dinner table and said ENOUGH OF THIS... and I put a date in my calendar to just shut up and make stuff. I felt like a cop at the end of the month trying to fulfill a speeding ticket quota. I felt like I needed to make at least one thing I was proud of. So, instead of setting out to make a grand masterpiece, I loaded up my backpack with a bunch of my favorite play around art supplies, headed to a coffee shop, and started playing. THEN... I made stuff I liked. Nothing that is earth shattering, but that doesnt matter. I was experimenting and I felt good. Here are some of those things.
Watercolor man from my brain with oil pastel on top. Painting inside of a coffee shop is a very fun experience. Is everyone looking at me? Are the baristas mad?
Baby camera print of my view while painting with oil pastel on top.
Shitty horse from memory with a fountain pen on some really soft weird paper. It bled really nicely. And of course... oil pastel. When I am feeling uninspired, oil pastels always get me amped back up.
Then, I took a photo of the horse and printed it with the baby camera and colored it with marker.
I recently got a label maker to make drawings with, so here is a water color wash with some words made with the machine. I wanted to draw a bunny but I fucked it up, so I just took a picture of the reference photo on my phone with the baby camera, and you guessed it, printed it out. I had this lacey fabric leftover from a sewing project, and I shoved that in my bag before I left because I wanted to play with that. To stick the lace and the photo to the paper, I did not have glue or tape with me, so I used stickers for this very newsletter that I had in my backpack. Yay!
This just in: Hunter made a substack
You should check it out and follow it, he will be posting some of his art and photos and general thoughts. (“Who is Hunter?” you may be asking. He is my boyfriend and the long haired man in the photo above. If this newsletter has no typos, that means he looked at it first. If it does, he did not see it. He has been waking me up every morning for 5 years and he is the only reason I am brave enough to learn new things. Without him, I would be sleeping until 3 p.m. every day.)
He does a lot of collage work, he is an amazing skateboarder, photographer, generally a sweet gentle person, an amazing writer, and he is a mechanic so if any of those topics or vibes interest you, follow him! substack.com/@hgonz
I have been loving watching him explore writing his own poems with his little letter stamps on top of magazine clippings. here is an example of one of his recent works that I love:
The end!
Katelyn Betz
September
This month I put on an art show from my home!! It went so well, so much better than I ever could have imagined!! I had around 50 people come by which was so cool to see. I wanted to do this to feel more connected to other creative people since I don’t get on social media as much these days. My master plan worked... I feel incredibly lucky to know so many special people and I learned so much about their work. In the weeks leading up to the show, every time someone dropped off work (which was a lot of people) we ended up talking about why they made what they made, how, when, the list goes on.
I think my favorite discovery was that the motivations behind some of my work was very similar to other peoples. Ive been struggling to put this into words, but that made my scary and confusing mind feel less scary and unique (in a good way). I feel lucky to be able to take my personal experiences and make something out of them. Even if its subconscious in the moment of creating- it usually is. But looking back I can always see myself in my work and feel what life felt like at the time. It makes past painful experiences a little more beautiful. And the same to good times- I have an impression of that time forever. A shitty drawing of say.. a pony galloping.. is not going to tell the tale of life at the time to the viewer, or even me. BUT, I can look at it and say ah yes.. when I was making that, I was going through x,y,z. I was eating this. I was listening to this podcast. It’s like freezing a vibe in time. Like if a photograph of a vibe existed. It’s kind of like when a song brings you back in time. Hope that made sense. If not, just pretend I said whatever sounds cool to you. I’m awesome at writing words!!
Anyway. The show.
Huge thank you to all of the artists who participated:Hunter Gonzales, Cecilia Nord, Alex Skorija, Will Weinstein, Anna Wiber, Mikey Yates, Jorden Durkee, Margaret Kraus, Taylor Carter, Alaina Colleen, Ellie Closen, Tessa Bulger, Craig Auge, Skyler Baker, Nash High, Anna Meacham, Eden Faulds, and a performance from Joel Stratton.
Here are some photos.
I made this cool sign out of wood and hung it from my front balcony!! I was very excited about the chains. Yes, they're practical for this application, but I mostly wanted to make something with chains. Then, participant Skyler Baker’s work had chains too!!! That was very exciting to me. I felt very excited that someone else thinks chains and wood are cool together. Thank you to participant Jorden Durkee for the sensational video.
Flashback time.........
My first solo show (and so far only) I ever had was in a bookstore in college. (It happened March 6 of 2020. You know what that means.) I got to do the show because I asked, and I asked because I was angry because some old man told me I was bad at graphic design (lol). Getting to take control of a sad experience, and make a good experience out of it felt very exciting and special to me. I had no idea what I was doing, and I very badly taped things to the wall, but it was all my work all together and I was so proud of it. At the end of the night, a band came in and performed in front of my art. I’ll never forget how awesome that was - to see people create something out of thin air, with my art as the backdrop, in front of people that came out of their homes.
SO because of this special memory, I knew I wanted to have some sort of music element with all of the art. So I had Joel Vs Joel (Joel Stratton perform.) I had a talent show about two years ago and he performed for that too, so it was so cool to have him bring his magic back in my new apartment. There's nothing like putting every chair I own in one room and having people sit on them squished together to hear a human being make music. At the end, he had us all sing along and it was so fun to be in my home with a bunch of people singing a tune.
It was of course so special and you should check out Joels new album, Smile in the Mirror. (PS- I did the cover art for it!
Here is a video of everything before people showed up. The music is courtesy of a playlist made by participant Anna Wiber. You can listen to it here. At least I hope you can. She has amazing taste in everything, especially music.
Thank you participant Ellie Closen for these snazzy pics (both above)
Some of the name plates. I had to google how to format these so many times. Turns out, there is no right way.
My work! I showed my yarn thing I talked about in my January newsletter, my house lamp I talked about in my August newsletter.
I also showed one of my favorite illustrations, in a frame I made out of wood- I glued the actual print to the wood and I love how it turned out.
All in all, this was a wonderful night. I met lots of new people and I highly recommend putting on an art show even if you don’t know what youre doing because I sure don’t and it turned out great.
Painting
This is the first like 20ish min of a painting. I ended up messing it up really badly lol but I DO want to try again. Oil painting is something I want to be good at so bad and I need to keep working at. Ugh dang flabbit it’s so annoying to not immediately be good at something!!!!!
Baby Camera
I got this camera for toddlers that prints the pictures on receipt paper. It’s so fun, and there are so many creative possibilities with it!! You can color on the photos. Exciting. I got it here.
Animation
The video won’t play and I can’t figure out why. so here is a link to it. LOLI made this using the baby camera. I knew I wanted to do a stop motion video, but I didnt know what of. Quick.. run around the apartment and think of something before you lose interest!!! Ah! Matches. That would be cool. But what do i burn... magazine... yes. I head to Hunters collage station and start flipping through the magazine waiting for the perfect image to jump out to me.
I found an article in a 2006 issue of TIME about how millennials are emailing and obsessing over their hot new tech gadgets. The article went into parents being afraid of what all of this tech will do to their child. TIME reassured them they should just lean into it and accept it because what the point of guiding the younger generation. Progress or submission? How do we tell. Don’t ask me. It sounds too familiar. This felt like the perfect thing to burn.
I used like 500 matches, burned this sassy gal, took the pictures and printed them out (With my hot new tech gadget, the camera for babies that prints thing on receipt paper). I colored them with oil pastels, scanned them in, and animated in photoshop. I love it. Yay
Wooden Clock
This is a clock I made out of wood and clay. I am not 100% done with it, but I am for now. (I want to eventually make different hands). I made the base and the rim part out of wood (i can cut wood in a better circle than that i swear i swear i swear. but I wanted it to look kind of clay and clunky.) I made the numbers out of oven clay, glued them, and sprayed it all with lacquer over a course of many days. I am not sold on this... but I think it will eventually be cool.
Ive got another wood thing in the works. Stay tuned
Favorite shots from my Camp Snap Camera
My niece took this photo. Good job!
Here she is waving to a robot.
Damn!
Back to basics
When I first started writing this a couple days ago, I was not feeling creative at all. I was feeling generally pretty bummed for no reason. Then I banged my fists on the dinner table and said ENOUGH OF THIS... and I put a date in my calendar to just shut up and make stuff. I felt like a cop at the end of the month trying to fulfill a speeding ticket quota. I felt like I needed to make at least one thing I was proud of. So, instead of setting out to make a grand masterpiece, I loaded up my backpack with a bunch of my favorite play around art supplies, headed to a coffee shop, and started playing. THEN... I made stuff I liked. Nothing that is earth shattering, but that doesnt matter. I was experimenting and I felt good. Here are some of those things.
Watercolor man from my brain with oil pastel on top. Painting inside of a coffee shop is a very fun experience. Is everyone looking at me? Are the baristas mad?
Baby camera print of my view while painting with oil pastel on top.
Shitty horse from memory with a fountain pen on some really soft weird paper. It bled really nicely. And of course... oil pastel. When I am feeling uninspired, oil pastels always get me amped back up.
Then, I took a photo of the horse and printed it with the baby camera and colored it with marker.
I recently got a label maker to make drawings with, so here is a water color wash with some words made with the machine. I wanted to draw a bunny but I fucked it up, so I just took a picture of the reference photo on my phone with the baby camera, and you guessed it, printed it out. I had this lacey fabric leftover from a sewing project, and I shoved that in my bag before I left because I wanted to play with that. To stick the lace and the photo to the paper, I did not have glue or tape with me, so I used stickers for this very newsletter that I had in my backpack. Yay!
This just in: Hunter made a substack
You should check it out and follow it, he will be posting some of his art and photos and general thoughts. (“Who is Hunter?” you may be asking. He is my boyfriend and the long haired man in the photo above. If this newsletter has no typos, that means he looked at it first. If it does, he did not see it. He has been waking me up every morning for 5 years and he is the only reason I am brave enough to learn new things. Without him, I would be sleeping until 3 p.m. every day.)
He does a lot of collage work, he is an amazing skateboarder, photographer, generally a sweet gentle person, an amazing writer, and he is a mechanic so if any of those topics or vibes interest you, follow him! substack.com/@hgonz
I have been loving watching him explore writing his own poems with his little letter stamps on top of magazine clippings. here is an example of one of his recent works that I love:
The end!
Katelyn Betz