... or, why cardmaking? (This will be long, but there's a treat at the end.)
Where I am today with my card making seems like an obvious outcome, given my artistic history.
I drew and painted my way through my childhood and entered college as a drawing and painting major. It wasn't long into my college years before I realized that fine arts didn't seem like a place one could really make a living, so I opted to graduate in secondary art education with a specialty in printmaking. While in college I had the good fortune to end up working in the college silkscreen workshop designing, hand-cutting stencils, and silk screen printing posters for campus events. I realized that I was gravitating more toward graphic design but my college didn't provide any kind of graphic design courses. This was the 60s, computers hadn't arrived for art yet, and anything at the University of Oregon art department that strayed from the fine arts was considered a "sell-out". But I knew my interests were more suited to something that would provide a living.
At marriage I ended up in Southern California and after a year of substitute teaching I went screaming into the wind looking for a job in graphics. I landed in an advertising art studio where I did everything from working in the camera to keeping the books for the owner. What a goldmine of experiences that was! I didn't do any design layouts yet but I hung around the designers looking at what they were doing and learning more about the field of graphic design.
My life in Southern California was a whirlwind of new experiences - marriage, jobs in print shops and music publishing houses, a new baby boy, and jumping into my own graphic design business in Redondo Beach. Then back to college at UCLA to learn about interior design and several years of interior designing commercial projects in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles.
In the 80s I migrated back to southern Oregon, had many changes, and in 1988 I opened my own commercial interior design office. In the 30+ years of business I've done projects ranging from small medical clinics to large corporate office buildings, schools, restaurants, and hotels.
In 2007 my business partner and I had some Christmas cards custom printed that arrived with her name misspelled, but it was too late to re-order them. So we decided to use the printed envelopes and custom make Chinese New Years cards. WELL! These were a huge hit and we continued doing them up until her retirement at the end of 2010. This opened a whole new area of artistic expression for me and I started hanging out at stamping and paper stores and having way too much fun experimenting and making mostly Christmas cards. One thing led to 25 other things and before I knew it I was making editions of 25 cards for family and friends at Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. In addition I send out cards to my design clients at Thanksgiving and Christmas. About 2014 I started photographing my cards and cataloguing them onto a Flickr site. In 2015 I started discovering all of the onsite blogs and fun challenges - and here I am today!
Since this is where it all started, I'll leave you with a couple of photos of a Chinese New Years pocket card and envelope I made in 2010 for a friend/client who gifted me with some US stamps printed that year for the Chinese New Year. I used one of the postage stamps on a card to thank her.
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