Finding my niche

If you've read this blog (or any of my other ones) for very long you've probably figured out that I multi-task almost obsessively.

I like making jewelry and beaded objects and quilts and plush animals. I draw paperdolls and playing cards and greeting cards. I knit sweaters and animals and afghans and dish rags.

Most every kind of material is interesting -- wool roving, cotton yarn, gold lamé, rubber stamps (especially cutting my own), broken glass (run it through the tumbler!), colored pencils, markers, paint, glitter, stones, tubes of tiny beads, paper, cardstock, and any other item that strikes my fancy

ooooh, shiny thing --- pretty! now what can I do with that?!

Ok, you get the gist here, for a while I've been beating myself up over the inability to focus on just one thing. Especially every time I have to fill in those applications for art shows and select a catagory to enter in. I think of myself as a kind of renaissance woman --- I WANT to do lots of things and learn about lots of things and let the creative spirit guide me along from one material and process to another and not feel guilty about not being focused.

Part of this is having spent all that time in corporate jobs, where focus was important, it's still a hard thing to just "go with the flow". I need to give myself permission to experiment with all that as long as I'm actually getting something done in the end, not just wandering forever.

But I digress from where I was going with this (no surprise there)

This morning, as I was contemplating rewriting my "artist statement" to submit with a show application, I decided to go and check out the whole catagory of "multimedia art".

The usual definition that comes to mind now days has to do with collage or assemblage work combined with paints.

But as I looked around the "world wide web" I found some artists that have self named their work "multimedia". Oh look, there are other folks out there experimenting and creating in as many medias as I do (some of them even in the same ones I do).

I have had my eyes opened folks.

I am a multi media artist.

The joy of marking that box on the form is just this: If I can actually get juried into a show in that catagory by submitting pictures of the MANY things we do instead of trying to stick to just one, I also have the freedom to take to those shows the many things we do.

If I had any doubts about just how well this title fits, all I have to do is look at that indexing list on the side bar and see how many catagories there are.

Yeah Niche!