The unmistakable you

Advice for artists working across mediums who feel like they don't make sense

Welcome to SEE YOU, a companion for artists, hobbyists, and analog lovers devoted to a creative life—with practical ideas, inspiration, and reflections on making.

Last week, I launched my seasonal companion zine Winter Practice. Today I’m reflecting on following your whims and being a multidisciplinary artist. Join to follow along!

Photo by Katie Zhu

The unmistakable you

After years of trying and failing to stick to a specific medium, I’ve accepted the necessity and joy of doing multiple things for my creative practice to thrive.

In the span of one week I get excited about painting, going down rabbit holes of Gabriele Münter’s work and admiring the ways she uses line and color. I see my colored pencils on my desk and use them again, reveling in their softness and portability. Then I read a beautiful piece of writing and turn the phrase over and over in my head, marveling at how language can be sculpted to strike an emotional chord.

While getting carried away by these creative inspirations, I am weighed down with two exercises in explaining myself and my art—writing copy for my website redesign and drafting my artist statement for a piece in an upcoming group show. You’d think I’d enjoy writing these things but they inevitably cause a mini existential crisis. I feel like nothing I create relates to one other and that I am therefore a superficial artist, although I am a very real person. Isn’t the very fact that I don’t easily make sense proof of my humanity?

I flock to my journal as a reprieve, hand lettering and pasting cut papers to unwind. This is an exercise in design, a delicate consideration of balance, texture, color, and contrast. As I relax into the dance of rearranging, I wonder what it’d be like to lay out all of my creative whims into organizable parts on the page.

I crave to clearly see the combined picture of my practice. What more needs to be added? Where could there be more blank space? When will I feel like I can easily describe what I make to others? How can I be more “me” while also packaging the work to reach many people?

A few weeks ago I posed a question on Notes: “If you’re a creative person who works across mediums, how do you measure your progress?”

Some folks responded that they were in the same boat as me:

• “Drink coffee and hope for the best.” - Anna Brones

• “Constantly feel like I’m a failure 🙃” - Hallie Bateman

Others focus on the amount of work created:

• “I just keep making work.😅” - Loi Laing

• “The only measure I have is the piles of sketchbooks. As long as those keep happening, I figure I’m still moving forward.” - SherryR_Art

And several folks mentioned the importance of internal values and process:

• “Not feeling jumpy and agitated because I am being pulled in directions of others.” - Dr. Jane R. Shore

• “How much each thing is taking from my energy.” - Mel Mitchell-Jackson

• “Progress is something I look back on, and it’s more difficult to aim/plan for it. Create a lot and give your best to the process, be present in it.” - Núria Gispert

• “Does it bring ME joy?” - Sheri Gaynor

These responses quickly reset my perspective. Of course there is no singular way to exist as an artist, especially as a multidisciplinary artist. It’s easy to get lonely and lost, but it’s in those moments that I am oriented back to my whims and to the tasks themselves. Here is one of my favorite artists Hiller Goodspeed saying it better:

I try not to think about anything other than the task at hand when I am working. If you enjoy what you are doing, and you do it for yourself, it will be imbued with an unmistakable you-ness. The people you love will listen to your EP or taste your bruschetta or look over your garden and will know that no one else could have done it that way but you.

- “Sobremesa with Hiller Goodspeed”

My best advice for multidisciplinary artists

As I report from the messy trenches of making things and sharing them, here are my kernels of learned wisdom—ones that I keep forgetting and remembering again.

• Any inspiration you see has the capacity to motivate and paralyze creation. Consider it as a seed of something interesting, not as a blueprint.

• Following your whims is part of the practice.

• Gravitate towards sharing in formats that allow for your multitude: journals, zines, websites, video, the confines of your entire room.

• Don’t overthink your why or mold yourself to it. Know that you will have lots of chances to refine the language, and other people can help you see it the more you share your work.

Greetings from a brand new section in this weekly newsletter! I SEE YOU is where I’ll share what I’ve been seeing & enjoying on the internet this week. YOU SEE ME is where I’ll share my latest announcements!

Fall of Freedom, a creative resistance movement of exhibitions, screenings, and events across the US, is happening this weekend. Check out an event near you.

I’ve discovered my new favorite design Substack! Beth Mathews shares her process on creating vintage-inspired graphic design, including a typeface inspired by a 1959 list of mechanical parts.

Welcome to peak consumerism season! I actually don’t buy many gifts, but I love gift guides for eye candy and sketching fodder. Ali LaBelle’s holiday shop is very pretty with fun categories inspired by levels of a department store. For my stationery lovers, Marissa Neave’s anti-capitalist gift guide has great suggestions. And if you’re trying to buy less, not more, Allie Sullberg conducted a handwritten interview with her neighbor about her Buy Nothing Year.

Godmother of winter Katherine May shared my zine, which I absolutely saved to my Wins folder!

My seasonal companion zine Winter Practice and the full year subscription bundle are available to preorder through November 30. I’ve been blown away by your response (thank you!!!) and already had to order a reprint. Preorders are the only way to guarantee your copy of the zine, and they come with a bonus print!