Middle of July Check-In
July has been quite a busy month so far. A lot of deadlines are approaching. In my personal life, I have a minor surgery coming up this Thursday, so I’ve been working hard to finish a bunch of things by this Wednesday so I don’t have to worry about the deadlines immediately after the surgery in case I need lots of time to rest and recover.
What I’ve been working on:
I finished my painting of Joshua Tree for the Wildling Museum call for art. The submission deadline was pushed back a week, which is nice, and I took the extra time to review my artist statement for my artwork a few more times. I had a lot of help from friends who proofread and edited my statement, and I’m content with how it turned out. It’s hard to know when painting and writing are “done”. I’ve reached a point where I just needed to stop painting and editing tiny details, so I guess that’s my definition of “done”. I’ve photographed my painting and uploaded all my materials to the submission website, I just have to hit send. I’m going to sit on it for one more day and then submit tomorrow.
For the San Francisco Open Studios (SFOS), I’ve been accepted to the group show at the Intersection for Arts building in the Westside of SF! I’ll be part of the second weekend of studio visits for SFOS on November 4 & 5. I’m very excited to be part of this group show! Even though November is months away, I’ve already started listing out what I need to do to prepare for my first open studios event. Now that I know where I’ll be for SFOS, I was able to finish my registration for the event and I’ll be in the printed and online guide for the whole SFOS event.
I’m currently painting four 8”x8” canvas panels to submit for an art show hosted by a local coffee shop that are due by July 28th. I learned about this art show from attending an Artist Mixer hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Art in San Jose and talking to some other artists who know so much more about what’s happening in the art scene in the San Jose and South Bay area. Two of the paintings are pretty much done and in the middle of working on the other two.
On the business end of things, I filed and paid my 2022 California Sales tax. This is the first time I filed and paid sales tax for the whole year. Previously, I had been filing and paying sales tax by each event I participated in. But at some point last year around this time, I decided to get a permanent sales tax identification number, which means I would file and pay on a more regular schedule. The filing process was a little different from how I filed my taxes by event, so I had to update my tracking methods a little bit. Overall, I think I’m doing a really good job of keeping track of my sales and taxes, and I hope my processes will scale well as my business continues to grow.
Inputs
I finished reading The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. I’m not sure what to read next, so let me know if you have any book recommendations, both fiction and non-fiction! I think I’m going to have some time on my hands where I won’t be able to do much as I recover from my surgery and it’d be good for me to read instead of scrolling endlessly on my phone, so I welcome all recommendations!
Outputs
As I mentioned earlier, I attended an artist mixer and I met other artists and learned about resources for artists in the San Jose/South Bay area. I have a couple other applications that I have submitted or am working on related to calls for art and small business training that are also due this month that I learned about from these resources. I’m really glad that I went to this event, even though I debated about going for a long time and had a lot of resistance to going. I’ve been working on getting to know more about my community and have been trying to push myself to meet new people, so this was a great opportunity for me.
Okay, I think with that lengthy update, that’s all for me for now. Hopefully, by my next update, I’ll be recovering well from my surgery and I’ll feel a little less busy. Thanks for reading!
