An honest look at an artist’s life

Buckle up, settle back, get comfortable, because here is a Very Long Post. It is not a complaint; it is a hard look at reality.

On the surface, it seems that the life of an artist is all glamour and glory and unlimited creativity. Maybe that is true for some artists, but I don’t know those people. (I may have met one or two, but they didn’t remain in my memory.)

The reality is that to earn a living with art, particularly in the 3rd poorest and least educated county in the state, you’d better use your creativity in more ways than just making art.

Booth all set up, ready to sell!

A few years ago, someone important to me expressed surprise that I still participate in arts and crafts shows. Bazaars, boutiques, fairs, festivals—those little events that attract makers of all sorts of wares, usually those who do the making as a side hustle, always wishing they were “lucky enough” to do it full time.

As I thought about what my Important Someone said, “I thought you were beyond those by now”, I realized that I wished I was beyond those. Maybe I should find other ways to sell my work while keeping in the public eye. Maybe I should aim higher, and just stop doing those shows which I have always found so draining.

“Draining?”

I can do the work: plan, design, and order enough inventory in a wide variety of different prices, price everything clearly, decide the best way to display the items (so it looks like a nice boutique instead of a garage sale), find all the parts and pieces to put it together, figure out how to load it into cars and pickups (I used to do a show which required my dad’s pickup, Michael’s pickup, and my car, along with both my parents’ and Michael’s help to set up), and finally, figure out how to publicize it in every corner, every tribe, every location of my life, all in preparation for a hard day or two or three. This isn’t draining, only time-consuming, and it cuts into the production time needed to complete commissioned work..

“Hard”?

I can stand there all day, because if I was working in a retail store or a restaurant, that would be required. I can meet people, talk to them, learn their names, listen to them tell me about their friends or family members or themselves who draw or paint or cartoon or used to do those things. I can help them choose what fits their budget, hand out business cards, talk to them about drawing and painting and drawing lessons and murals, tell them about my daily blog, discuss commissions, and just be UP and ON all day. I can refuse to pack up early, then load it all back into boxes and crates and into the vehicles and transport it home and unload it, and yawn and limp to the bank the next available business day.

HOWEVER, I am an introvert, (albeit one with social skills and professionalism), so these shows take awhile to recover from. All that talking. All those people. All that energy and noise and cheeriness. Afterward, I need SILENCE. PEACE. SOLITUDE. Then, if the show has not been well-attended, or if it is hot, or if it is cold, or if sales were poor. . . validation comes from people giving you green pieces of paper with dead presidents’ faces, and without that validation comes all the thinking, evaluating, questioning, wondering, speculating.

The world has changed in the 30+ years I’ve been doing these shows. Publicity, demographics and economics are all different now.

PUBLICITY

Everyone gets his news from a different source, rather than a single local newspaper or billboards and banners on specific routes, or local radio stations. Facebook? —only those folks they follow; Instagram? —only the folks they are connected to; TikTo? k—I know nothing; local websites? —if they know about them.

DEMOGRAPHICS

There is a trend toward minimalism right now. People have inherited possessions from grandparents who grew up in the Depression and from parents who were raised by “Boomers” who have accumulated many possessions (some so many that there is no room to park a car in the garage), and now we all live in an era where anything can be had immediately and cheaply. To top it off, homes are smaller, younger people rent rather than own, and there is a strong bent to pay for experiences rather than possessions. Collecting anything is no longer common, and as far as I can tell, older people’s homes are already decorated while younger people don’t care about such frivolity.

ECONOMICS

Gas is $5/gallon, groceries haven’t dropped back down in price (although eggs are no longer $7/dozen and I recently paid a bit less than $4 for a pound of butter), cellphones cost a lot to keep updating (no longer does a single landline serve an entire household), and art is a luxury, especially when you have already inherited some, received some as gifts, bought inexpensive decor at Hobby Lobby, or simply prefer to frame a pretty card that someone sent you (because who actually sends real cards anymore?? This makes a card a real treasure.)

So, IF folks happen to stumble across an art fair, they might be inclined to stop simply for the experience. It is fun to see what people make, to talk to artists, to listen to a local musician and eat a Frito-boat (I guess it is, having never had one), to enter a raffle (because often “free” trumps minimalism), and to run into people you know doing likewise.

Does it make sense to continue participating in these shows? Do I need to do this so that I can meet new potential students and customers? Are there better ways to publicize? Has the era of the craft show come to an end? Is this the best way to remain in the public eye?

I can’t decide now. I’m going to limp off to the bank with a little pile of money from selling a pile of little things.

And One More Walking in Visalia* Post

This is an enormous empty lot in Visalia, and I took the photo because I am astonished that it is green! It rained in September and October, something that doesn’t always happen around here. See those enormous trees in the distance? Valley oaks, quercus lobata, the largest oaks in the country (or the world? I forget). They follow waterways through town, just like they do in Three Rivers; that is Mill Creek over there.

I even spotted wildflowers in the lot—morning glories are actually an invasive weed.

Those car places aren’t always boring.

Are buildings ever built with rounded corners any more?

An alley full of succulents? Yeppers. I wonder if it is profitable. I saw it there about 6 years ago, so maybe it is.

I saw the sign for Component Coffee Lab, a place I have heard about but never knew where it was. Looks as if they rent one place to do their roasting, in another, not far away, tucked into a walking alley, is their very cool coffee shop. It was full of people on devices, with plugs available by every seat. Their logo of 3 circles is too subtle for me to understand, and their back entrance could use some landscaping, but everything else was excellent.

What is this?? I didn’t walk right up to it, but saw it when I was in the back of the coffee place on a street parallel to Main Street. What is the significance? That is where Foreign Auto Works was when I first discovered them in 1983. (More oaks along Mill Creek).

*Visalia, population 146,000, is the county seat of Tulare County, about halfway between Bakersfield and Fresno, California’s flyover country. No one knows about it, no one cares, but we feed the world. Might be more helpful to know it is about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, each about 200 miles away. But really, no one cares, and I like it that way.

Learned in October—or more accurately, Eight Messes

  1. Home Depot is a mess. In 2021 I bought a mini-refrigerator. It only worked for one year. In 2022 I bought another one, which wouldn’t fit in my car. They put it in their Will Call department (or something similar) and I returned with the pick-‘em-up truck to retrieve it the next week. They couldn’t find it. I chose another. Did I or didn’t I take it? I sort of remember canceling the entire transaction, and I think a friend got me one from Costco instead, but my memory is a mess. Home Depot sent me a refund check, which I returned to them. Two years later, I got another refund check from Home Depot. This time I decided that if they are dumb enough to keep giving money away, I’ll take it. In early October, I received a third check from Home Depot. After about 7 or 8 phone calls, I found a human who told me that I had purchased 3 refrigerators from Home Depot. Hunh? It took them three years to refund my money?? I cashed the check.
Hey there, Jackson.

2. I am a mess in my bookkeeping. Why do I not know if I got a refund or not for all those refrigerators? Ugh. I’d rather draw or paint or teach people to draw than fiddle with numbers, paperwork, phone trees, and records.

Finished and mailed 2 red scarves to Foster2Care in Cleveland. Now I have to figure out how to use the leftover red yarn.

3. Phone calls are a mess. For many years after Kodak croaked, I used Shutterfly to print my photos and to create photo books. Several months ago the site stopped working. My photos won’t load. I postponed calling them because those kinds of phone calls require much time and patience while listening to menus, terrible hold music, and people with difficult accents reading polite scripts. It took 45 minutes for Shutterfly to determine that the problem is DuckDuckGo. I told them that I will no longer be using Shutterfly because I am unwilling to download another browser.

Redbud trees become yellow-leaf trees.

4. Keeping life simple creates a mess. Well, not exactly a mess, but some sacrifices and some work. Since I insist on keeping life simple by not downloading another browser, I will not be able to print photos or photobooks unless I spend time looking for another company.

Hey Pippin, I’m tryna keep Mom’s car clean here. Do you mind??

5. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life was a mess. My favorite blog, The Frugal Girl, posted What I’ve Read Lately. One of her books was Prairie Fires: the American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser. That book sparked more discussion than any of the others mentioned. It also led me to Wilder, a podcast by Glynnis MacNicol which completed and corrected (and stole some of the magic from) the Little House books. The impact and influence of those books is worldwide, transcending several generations, and now, sparking controversy. Warning: the final episode on the podcast was full of vitriol and cussing so I didn’t finish listening.

This door was a mess until I painted it. It’s more interesting as a photo in its messy state.

6. Staying current with computers is a mess. While editing a new book, Word lagged. The spinning beachball of doom responded with rotations every time I did anything on the book. I went online to see if there was any help. The main information was that Word needed to be updated. In attempting to update, I learned that my laptop must first be updated. I called Apple and learned that my laptop is maxed out in terms of updates. (They think a 2015 is old?? Listen, punks, I have a NEW car that is a 2004, so what are you talking about??) So, wanna know what I did? (I figured this out all by my lonesome—please be impressed.) I divided the 187 page book into 2 documents, so there! Now I can keep my 2015 going, while all those know-it-all children keep buying new things (probably made by slave labor) and putting their old (probably functional) machines out there into landfills (or their mama’s basements.) But I’m perfectly reasonable and calm about it all.

7. AI is messing things up. But if you want to find things on the internet, information NOT created by Artificial Intelligence, type what you are seeking into the search bar, followed by a space and -ai. That’s a minus sign with the letters “a” and “i”. I haven’t tried it yet but learned about it on a non-AI using blog.

My herb garden is a mess, so I’m showing you this photo from a previous year.

8. AT&T is a mess, and they are messing with me. In 2023, I tried unsuccessfully to get a phone reconnected at the cabin. AT&T had no humans available who could handle landlines in California. They couldn’t understand how to flip a switch to activate the phone, which was already in place from previous years. They insisted that a tech guy needed to drive up the hill to do the job in spite of merely flipping a switch in the past. Alas, the road was unpassable for the AT&T giant truck. So, we decided to do without a phone and have managed without one for three summers now. A few months ago I got a letter from a collection agency that I owe AT&T $666. (evil number!) Au contraire, they provided no service, I had no phone, I never received a bill, I owe nothing. However, this crock of barnyard fertilizer has cost me several hours on the phone with the collection agency, and several dollars in mailing things in a manner that no one will be able to lie about receiving my documentation. They insist that I owe them, and I insist that I do not. I wonder if I can get through to Dave Ramsey so he can tell me how to deal with these stupid hon-yocks.

Why can’t I remember whose screen door this is?? Apparently my memory is a mess.

BONUS—This made me laugh: A dear friend recently said, “You can lead a man to knowledge but you can’t make him think.” Gotta be thankful for dear friends!

Perhaps November will be less of a mess and we can learn some good things together.

Thinking Aloud About Old Notecards

I’ve been getting my art printed on notecards since 1987. In the olden days, a package consisted of 2 each of 5 designs. In the olden days, people communicated on cards and mailed them with a stamp rather than talking into a little machine and tapping something. This meant that I had 1000s of cards printed at a time. Some of those pressruns produced uneven amounts of cards in a set, which meant leftovers.

What if I make packages of those old designs and sell them at a discount? There are six different designs, all in random amounts in a box, collecting dust on a shelf.

The ones circled in red are what is available. (For the curious reader*, the sets from left to right are Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Tulare County Landmarks.)

These were printed a long time ago. If someone had told me back then that I would become a blogger (a what??), an oil painter, a painter of murals, a knitter, a resident of Three Rivers, and that I would drive an automatic transmission car, I would have laughed out loud in disbelief. (And if someone would have said “LOL”, I would have looked at them with puzzlement. It used to mean “Little Old Lady”.)

Okay, decision made, packages compiled. Each package contains 4 different cards (and envelopes), mostly chosen at random with the exception of the first one on the upper left below. I have more of that drawing than any other, so every package contains one of those. They will be $5 a package, as opposed to my current cards. (The current ones are $10 a package and are all the same design within a single package.) These will be potluck.

It will cost too much to mail them, so they will only be available in person at the upcoming Holiday Bazaar.

*For the Very Curious Reader, the drawings from left to right, top to bottom: Kings Canyon overlook, General Sherman Tree, Four Guardsmen, Clover Creek Bridge, Exeter Woman’s Club (yeppers, that is the correct spelling), the Hilliard House (burned down in 1983 but never forgotten around here.)

What’s Ahead

No reason for this photo. Just hoping to make you smile.

Some recent thinking has led to this listicle for you.

  • The Ivanhoe Library mural is getting closer. I am waiting on several decisions that are outside of my power.
  • My hope is to begin the week of November 10, but since the library is only open on Tuesdays and Fridays, and I teach drawing lessons on Tuesdays, this project could take a V E R Y L O N G T I M E.
  • The annual Holiday Bazaar at the Three Rivers Memorial Building is scheduled for November 22 this year. I haven’t participated in quite a few years, and this year I hope to do so.
  • If I don’t participate in the occasional bazaar, boutique, festival, or fair, people forget about my art.
  • When going through my notecards to decide which designs to reprint, I had a good idea. Maybe… I’m thinking about packaging leftover notecards from old pressruns (when I sold assortments) and selling them at a discount. This requires more thought, perhaps even another blogpost while I bore you to pieces with my thought process.
  • The 2026 calendar is completed but not yet revealed or on my website or ready to be sold.
  • Waiting for a special size canvas to arrive for one oil commission with a deadline and to decipher some notes for a special commission without a deadline. . .
In case the previous elephant didn’t make you smile, maybe this one will do the trick.

Learned Much in September—9 Things

This month’s list is long, many thoughts, few photos. Settle in, and enjoy!

Food

1.Intermittent fasting for three months did not work to remove me from the category of pre-diabetes. I am discouraged, disappointed, disgusted. Dis, dis, dis. Maybe it is time to accept the reality. I hear over and over that “EVERYONE” is prediabetic, but that does not reassure me. I pursue removal from that category just in case it is the cause of peripheral neuropathy, as the neurologist is so confident about this.

2. When I was with Mrs. Texas, she did something so funny that I want to share it with you. Whenever we were eating something really extra good, she held up her hands, palms out, and said in a commanding voice, “NO TALKING.” (She said when you talk, you can’t taste things as well.)

On one occasion we decided to get ice cream. We stood there awhile, deciphering and considering the flavors, and then Mrs. Texas pointed to the price for small size dish with a single scoop—$6.75. EXCUSE ME?? Nope. We left without ice cream.

Still wanting a treat, we went to Starbuck’s because I had such curiosity about pumpkin spice lattes. I ordered a 12 oz. requesting only 2 pumps of the glorious flavored substance instead of the normal 3 pumps (the employee explained it to me—I didn’t know this from experience). Holy guacamole—I had to take it back to the house and dilute it with black coffee because it made my teeth hum. HOLY GUACAMOLE — it was $6.25!

No wonder I don’t go out to eat much. (at all)

3. Serious Eats is an interesting website with tips and information about food—articles about letting meat rest, how to really clean your kitchen sponge, never cry while cutting onions. . . and that was just the first time I went exploring on the site. (Already forgot most of what I read.)

4. Some friends said they like to drizzle olive oil and then sprinkle a little salt on vanilla ice cream. At first it sounds like ice cream abuse, but they said it was delicious.

Someone seems obsessed by food in this month’s learning. Is this a result of intermittent fasting??

Work

5. Sold five pencil drawings and no oils. WHAT IS THAT ABOUT?? I learned that I don’t know what I am doing when it comes to reading my customer base or understanding my market.

Since I didn’t sell any oil paintings, I will stop painting just for the fun of painting any particular subjects. Instead, I will accept commissions and paint sequoia trees or other subjects that stores sell for me.

Fun to learn

6. I finally toured the Point Pinos Lighthouse. (It ought to be Piños, but no one bothers with the tilde.) I learned so much about that lighthouse and lighthouses in general.

General Wisdom

7. Wisdom about anger from This Evergreen Home:

The late theologian and pastor Tim Keller once wrote that anger is energy spent defending what you love.. . .The next time you experience a bout of anger, be thankful that your brain has given you such a useful barometer into the things that you love. Take the opportunity to reflect on what makes you angry and whether those things accurately reflect the values you claim to treasure most. If not, it may be that the culture you live in has shaped you more than you realize, and that your loves have become misaligned.”

8. Getting older means loss. In the last year, I have sold my tennis racquet and my canoe, and this week I gave away my cross country skis. Tryna be realistic about my shrinking abilities to do stuff. The combination of a wrist problem and a foot problem have squeezed my limited activities even further. Never a fan of any sportsball*, the few activities I participated in didn’t require a great deal of athleticism. In actuality, I hadn’t used any of my gear for a long time. It just took awhile to face and accept this, and then figure out what to do with my unused stuff.

Maybe I should just join Pippin in the window, observing the outside world.

Wait a doggone minute here—why is that outdoor cat inside the house? Because Trail Guy is a pushover for this cat.

9. Clearly I need to face truth about my health, activity, business, and age. This wisdom is from M. Scott Peck. (When people use a first initial, does this mean they wish to be addressed by that initial? If not, then why even put it there?)

Truth or reality is avoided when it is painful. We can revise our maps only when we have the discipline to overcome that pain. To have such discipline, we must be totally dedicated to truth. That is to say we must always hold truth, as best we can determine it, to be more important, more vital to our self-interest, than our comfort. Conversely, we must always consider our personal discomfort relatively unimportant and, indeed, even welcome it in the service of the search for truth. Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs. (M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled)

*team sports

Driving Through the Valley After my Show

Golly tamale, that Central California Artist must have run out of things to write.

Nope. Rarely does that happen.

I drove to Tulare to retrieve my art. It was very serendipitous to pass many vineyards at a time when I need photos of them for the current pencil commission. I like using my own photos, especially when a customer doesn’t have what is needed. It’s better than taking them from The Google (although I use The Duck—AKA Duckduckgo.)

After filling the back of the pick-em-up truck with all the unsold art and securing my spinning card rack in the passenger seat with the seat belt, I headed off to visit a friend in a rehab hospital. On the way, I passed the very fabulous Tulare library, which is not only a county library, but it is administrated through the City of Tulare.

I love our library system—with my card, I can check out books from Manteca in the north all the way to Bakersfield in the south. It is possible that the Three Rivers library is one of the smallest in the system, so while I can order books (but not on their malfunctioning website with my laptop anymore), there is nothing quite as thrilling as seeing a zillion more books all in one building.

Look at the entry to this library:

The floor
The ceiling

After the library, I had a nice visit with my friend, then headed to Visalia because Aldi (a simple grocery store for frugal folks) is sort of on the way home. Then a stop at the Post Office, and finally, almost home.

Always. Mineral King road, Three Rivers, Highway 198 farther down, everywhere. I didn’t mind. The pick-em-up truck is a 5-speed, not an automatic.

Ten Things Learned in August (Plus What I Did on my “Vacation”)

Because we don’t have drawing lessons in July or August, sometimes my students say, “Have a nice vacation!” (One sings to me, “See you, in September. . .”)

“Vacation”? Fall down laughing. This is what I did workwise in July and August:

  • Framed (or repaired) all the pencil drawings in Around Here (my solo art show in Tulare)
  • Framed almost all the plein air paintings done on panels
  • Finished a colored pencil drawing of a stellar jay, because I wanted to try out a new brand of colored pencils.
  • Went through an old box of photos from an artist friend who assumed room temperature about 10 years ago. They were at the gallery in case my students needed reference material, but no one has looked at them for many years. So, they got redistributed, mostly into the round file.
  • Finished all the pieces for the 2026 calendar and got it ordered in time to receive a large enough discount that the price doesn’t need to increase over the 2025 calendar.
  • Got ready for the solo show, including delivering, hanging (I helped the director and her granddaughter), attending the reception, returning to visit the show with a couple of special friends, and finally, returning to retrieve the unsold pieces.
  1. I continued learning to be comfortable driving an automatic. Sort of. I am comfortable with a 6 cylinder engine, the car has a cool built-in spot for sunglasses, a button that opens my gate (but won’t open the garage), and the CD player holds SIX CDs!

2. The library’s card catalog stopped working online after the last “maintenance” session. I spent awhile on the phone with a librarian, who told me how to email the IT department directly. Then he talked me through downloading the library’s app on my phone. Ugh. I don’t want more apps. It is much more convenient to order books on the laptop, but this is better than not being able to order books at all.

3. I visited the Santa Cruz Boardwalk for the first time in my life.

4. I saw my first skate, which I’d never heard of before.

5. I tried to solve Super Sudoku—guess I’m not as analytical as I thought. These things are impossible.

6. The SS Palo Alto was completely new to me—a ship used solely for entertainment, attached to the pier at Rio Del Mar California State Beach—fascinating!

7. I don’t really enjoy playing games, but it was fun with Mrs. Texas and her family. We played two games I’d never heard of before: Code Names, and Shut the Box. (Nope, I don’t want to own either one; don’t put those on a list for me, okay?)

8. How did I not know that Reba McEntire’s entire band died in a plane crash in 1991? I thoroughly enjoy country music, but until Trail Guy and I discovered a new station called The Legend (105.5 in Fresno), I hadn’t listened for a couple of decades, so this tragedy was new information to me.

9. A pattern is emerging that has taken me awhile to become aware of: I love to read books based on island or ocean locales. Most recently finished Alexander McCall Smith’s The Winds from Further West, Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy by the Sea, currently reading The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr. Anything based in Ireland—I’m on it!

“Salt and Light” or “Reading Rabbit”, 11×14” oil painting by Jana Botkin

10. In a random conversation with someone, I learned that non-compete contracts are not legal in California because they interfere with people’s ability to earn a living. So you can work for two competing print shops at the same time, or medical clinics, or restaurants, for example. But I still think that you can’t sell a business and then open one just like it across the street! This is what I found online:

California has banned non-compete agreements in employment contracts, making them generally unenforceable. This law, effective from January 1, 2024, requires employers to notify employees that any existing non-compete clauses are void.

INDEPENDENCE!

P.S. I highly recommend reading the Declaration of Independence today.

More Spring in Three Rivers—a Month Late

I wrote this post at the end of March and forgot to publish it. Will any of these photos translate into paintings? Maybe. No decisions yet. Just grabbing beauty when it is available.

The Lake isn’t actually in Three Rivers. The upper end is close; the dam end is closer to Lemon Cove. The lake level is even higher now, and the hills are mostly brown.

Some years there are fabulous lupine in great swaths at the water’s edge; they show in person, but not so well in these photos.

A popular turnout near the middle of The Lake (not out on the water—along the road 1/2 way between the intake and the dam) often has people pulled over taking photos. Me too. It is almost impossible to find a place to take the photo which includes Alta Peak and poppies. The poppies are excellent in the roadcuts where there is no shoulder, and the slopes are steep.

One day we were down the hill, we stopped by a friend’s orange grove and were probably 2-3 days early in terms of the blossoms being out. The oranges are fabulous. We expected to glean, but the grove hadn’t been picked yet. I gathered more photos for potential paintings.

Now get back to painting, Central California Artist!!