Our Frame of Mind

Artist Shelby Grubbs was our Featured Artist Contest winner for the month of February. A very young artist, she strikes me as someone who is going to make a name for herself someday. A recent grad of Notre Dame University, she tried to pursue a practical path in life by studying business, but it was just making her miserable. So she switched to art on her own terms and has not looked back since. Her work is focused on the female figure: highly original, beautiful, yet often disturbing images, she explores loneliness, and desolation. In her own words, “I primarily explore the relationship between the individual and the external environment. I explore the combination of the mental and the visual landscapes”. I expect great things from Shelby in years to come.

LJ: Hi Shelby it’s Laura at American Frame
SG: Oh hi!

LJ: I have here with me Aubrey who runs our social media and I am the president of the company. We are so happy to make your acquaintance
SG: I’m really excited!

LJ: I was reading a little bit about you on your artist profile. It says here “recent grad of Notre Dame”.
SG: Well it’s not so recent anymore. I graduated last May.

LJ: That’s still pretty recent. That’s good for at least a couple years; you can stretch that one out.
SG: -laughs- yeah I plan on doing that

LJ: So how has that been for you? Have you been making a lot of art since then or are you working in another area?
SG: Well I’m doing a little bit of both. For awhile I was just working several part time jobs just to save up some money while I figure out what I want to do with my life. But I sort of have a little bit of ‘Peter Pan syndrome’ I guess. I don’t think I can make it as a freelance artist but I definitely want to continue creating my own work. But also I think I want to get into the museum industry and work behind the scenes promoting or conserving artwork. Lately I’ve been having all this creative energy and motivation for my own work. So I’ve been spending most of my time working on my portfolio. I feel like right now is the best time for me to do that. I’m kind of nervous that once I get a real job I won’t be able to spend as much time working on my artwork so…

LJ: Well, you’re right. That’s the issue that artist faces as some point. How far do you go with it, and when? Are you putting together a portfolio to get a masters degree or doing it for entering gallery shows?
SG: It’s really just for my own personal… I don’t know. I just have this need to create. I don’t really have a purpose for it yet. I haven’t decided if I want to go to grad school. I think I’m going to start submitting more pieces to galleries and that kind of thing. But yeah, for right now, it’s basically just for myself.

LJ: Great! Well, I really appreciate you taking the time for us and even more than that I appreciate you seeking us out and entering our Featured Artist Contest and promoting yourself to the extent that you won it. And even though there aren’t really a lot of people entering, because I think we make it kind of difficult for people to enter, we don’t just want TONS of artists; we want artists that are serious …Serious enough to populate a gallery and write about themselves and their mission and their education and all that. Because there’s plenty of contests out there where all you have to do is submit a picture and float it and to me that’s not really serving the purpose that I want to serve in our market for the artists that we serve
SG: I definitely agree with that

LJ: So it’s really special, and you’re young and in this creative spot. It’s pretty exciting!
SG: It’s such a wonderful opportunity! I was very excited about it and the entire month I just had everyone sort of on edge like “you better vote for me!”

LJ: “Did you vote today, did you vote today?!” –laughs-
SG: -laughs- yeah

LJ: Well you received the list of questions then, correct?
SG: Yes, I did

LJ: Do you mind if we just start into that?
SG: No! Go ahead!

LJ: Well, tell me, when did you start producing your art?
SG: I’d say my obsession with art was pretty visible by the time I was three. At least my parents did. When I was four they bought me a miniature easel and paint set. I’ve pretty much been painting ever since. I actually found this photo of me, I believe I was four, and I was just sitting there staring intently at a canvas with a paint brush in hand, all while sporting a footed pajama onesie.

LJ: How adorable! Do you have it framed on your desktop or something? I mean, that’s something that you should have out.
SG: I should!

LJ: Then if you were such an early talent and your family saw that, I’m guessing that you probably didn’t have to rebel to pursue your art education. If they supported you so early at four with an easel and paint set, how did they feel when you decided to take it up seriously?
SG: Well actually, my parents are obviously very supportive and they just kind of figured that was the natural route for me to go; to go to art school, to become an artist. And it was actually me - I was my own biggest obstacle. I grew up with my father and my brother and they were both very business oriented and politically minded. So I grew up with the Wall Street Journal and the stock exchange and constant heated political debates and so it was always difficult for me to reconcile that deeply instilled rational way of thinking with my creative thirsts. Even though I was an extremely active artist all throughout my adolescent years and schooling, I actually received scholarships to a bunch of different fantastic art schools, I had myself convinced that I just couldn’t make a career out of art and that it had to be a hobby. So instead I set my sights on the number one business school at the time, which was Notre Dame. My plan was to go to Notre Dame, major in business and basically just throw art out of the window, even as a hobby. But it wasn’t until my junior year that I finally accepted the fact that art was essential to my core and business was just making me miserable. So, one day after a lot of contemplation and inner conflict I finally took the plunge and switched out of business school to focus full time on my art degree. That was the best decision I ever made, I should have done that to begin with. I feel like I wasted three years on business school. But it was a lesson learned.

LJ: Well, I will tell you that as a businesswoman who grew up in the arts, now running a business in the arts and supporting the arts, I will tell you that you didn’t waste your time because I feel that artists who have that training and that basic understanding of how the business world works are more equipped for life as an artist and making a living as an artist long term.
SG: That’s a good point.

LJ: You absolutely did not waste your time. You probably did yourself a favor even though you would’ve much rather been creating and maybe you missed out on some classes that you wished you had time to take but now you have that solid foundation and you have that to launch with. And with a fine school like Notre Dame, that’s going to say a lot, especially if you want to go work for a gallery or for a museum or even open your own business, gallery, studio. If you need financing, banks look at your background. You’ll just have so much; you’ll have a really good jump on that. Don’t feel bad! You didn’t waste your time.
SG: That’s a relief!

LJ: With that, let’s switch gears. What kind of studio space do you occupy at this time? Are you living at home or are you on your own?
SG: Well yeah, so I’m currently living with my mother and step-father in Indianapolis. My bedroom is my studio space, but it’s always kind of been. Even though I sort of romanticize the idea of a personal studio immensely, in reality they just really isn’t my thing.

LJ: Really!?
SG: Yeah. I mean I’ve been provided various forms of formal, personal and communal studio spaces throughout the years, but I never actually use them. I would always just end up back in my room on my bed with all my materials stacked up and a huge mess.

LJ: Isn’t that interesting?
SG: Yeah, well I’m a bit of a recluse and I get really attached to my bedroom. It’s basically my sanctum sanctorum. I essentially do everything from my room.

LJ: Oh that’s so great! You’ll save yourself a lot of rent in the long term working that way. So many people can’t work in their home and they need a place to go.
SG: I imagine once I’m older, I can see that being attractive, having a separation from home and your studio and work and whatnot.

LJ: At some point you might want to have a space where you can bring clients or have sittings because you’re doing a lot of people in your work from what I see. Do you ever paint portraits?
SG: Portraits?

LJ: Yes, do you ever paint actual portraits of people?
SG: Oh, yeah!

LJ: Or are you painting images of people you create in your mind?
SG: Well, I do both. Most of my personal work is sort of a compilation of, sort of a mental database of faces and bodies and that kind of stuff and I just put everything together when I make a portrait. I’ve also done a lot of commissioned portraits and stuff like that. It’s a little more difficult because it’s more pressure to make the person look identical to the model, but yeah, I like both equally. They’re both different sorts of mental exercises I guess.

LJ: Yes, I would think so. So we touched on this a little bit earlier, so you’re pretty much not working but working on your art. Which, really, truly, right now, whether you’re selling anything or not makes you a full time artist, is that correct?
SG: I would say so. I’ve been applying to a bunch of different shows and galleries and festivals and that kind of stuff while also doing a lot of commission work which takes up most of my time. I didn’t really think that I would be called a full time artist but I guess I am.

LJ: You sound like you are! So, are you going to apply to ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, MI?
SG: Oh, I actually haven’t heard of that one.

LJ: It’s probably the largest art show in the country. It takes over the entire city and the grand prize is like a $200,000 dollar prize, which is why they call it ArtPrize.
SG: I’m going to look that up!

LJ: Oh you should, as soon as we’re done talking. You hang up the phone, you go to your computer and Google ArtPrize –laughs- I think the deadline for applying is the end of May. Basically there’s all these different venues: there’s restaurants, bars, museums and all kinds of other businesses that serve as venues. And then the public goes through and votes.
SG: That sounds fantastic!

LJ: You obviously have some experience with that, right?
SG: -laughs- yeah

LJ: So, Shelby, how would you describe your artistic process? When you sit down to create, what’s your flow? How would you describe it?
SG: Um… I don’t know that I really have a strict process, for the most part I’d say 90% of my time is absorbing and mentally processing every moment of everyday, no matter what I’m doing. I’m constantly adding to that stockpile of inspiration and ideas for new work. Whether it’s just an image or a few words that I read or have overheard, or a piece of litter on the ground I find as I’m walking my dog. You know, it’s just every single little thing that I come across; it holds such significant and equal weight in my artistic processing and so it takes a lot of time for me to sort of go through all of that information and filter it out. I’d say less than 10% of my time is actually spent in the creation of a piece. I mean, I’m really bad about keeping a sketchbook and doing preliminary planning, even though I know I should. I have a giant cork board that fills up my entire wall, filled with all these scraps and paper. I just sort of sit there and look at all of that and just jump into a project full force and hope for the best. Recently I’ve been working more with mixed media so that has something to do with that. I’m working a lot with fabrics and textiles and so I have this giant pile of fabric that I got from thrift stores and you know, just sort of, cutting pieces and putting stuff together and sewing and seeing how things play out. And then I go in and add in my figures, which I have in pretty much every piece. But yeah, I guess my artistic process, it changes a lot.

LJ: So you’re more in the moment with your process? It sounds like, you gather all these ideas and when you sit down to work it’s all, it’s just in the moment; it’s not planned. Each piece just develops.
SG: Right. When I was in school, I did a lot more planning and I was very focused on getting every single detail right. Such a perfectionist! But I don’t know, maybe its that I’m out of school and I have more freedom to play and experiment with new materials, so it’s completely changed the way that I create and it’s fantastic. I love it!

LJ: Isn’t that wonderful? You get your basics in school, which everybody needs, but it’s what you do with it when you leave. And you don’t have anybody standing over your shoulder anymore, making you do this for a grade. Would you say, are there any common, underlying themes to certain bodies of work? You seem to be very interested in the figure. Are there any messages you’re trying to convey?
SG: I’m extremely bad at articulating this. But, I primarily explore the relationship between the individual and the external environment. I explore the combination of the mental and the visual landscapes. Last week a friend was asking me what I was working on and then he immediately retracted the question and said “Wait let me guess. It’s a solitary female in a desolate landscape.” And he was joking but he was completely right. So that’s a definite common thread in all of my pieces.

LJ: Oh, that’s wonderful, he did it for you. He answered it.
SG: He did!

LJ: He prepared you for this interview!
SG: I think the individual in the environment all stems from my sort of unhealthy obsession with existential philosophy.

LJ: Did you study French when you were in school?
SG: I did not study French, I should have though. Lots of my favorite authors write in French.

LJ: Camus and Sartre. Who else?
SG: Camus and Nietzsche. Nietzsche has probably influenced me the most in my work.

LJ: Besides this philosophy, is there somebody - a person or another artist who influences you and inspires you?
SG: Gosh, that’s a difficult question. I feel like I have an infinite list of artists who inspire me. I guess if I had to pick my top, I guess, the one person who influenced me the most or inspired me the most are Sally Mann, the photographer. She did beautiful portraits of her children. They’re actually kind of controversial but I love her work. I’m also influenced a lot by fashion design. I think that’s where I get a lot of my inspiration for my figures, since they’re females. I actually took a summer course at Pratt in New York. It was a fashion design intensive program. That has definitely played a huge role in my work, especially now that I’m working with textiles in my mixed media pieces. Also, I have to cite Alexander McQueen; his “Savage Beauty.” I love that. Also, I would say Japanese prints and Greek mythology have had huge impacts.

LJ: I was going to guess you would say Hopper, because he painted scenes that make one feel like you’re peering in on his subjects’ intimate moments, people who were just going about whatever they were doing and weren’t necessarily posing or wanting to be watched.
SG: I can see that! I’m really glad that you did say that though, that makes me really happy.

LJ: I think that what I was looking at online here, is very much kind of a Hopper-ish approach to your subject.. So how do you keep a fresh perspective in terms of working through creative blocks?
SG: Yeah, so, I wouldn’t say, I don’t necessarily have creative blocks. I have these periods of time where I’m just sort of paralyzed and I cant actually create, like I have all this creative pent up energy constantly in my head but there’s often times where I go through these year long periods where I cant get myself to put my pen to paper. And I think there’s something about standing in front of a canvas, it’s this palpable gap between what you expect to do and what you actually do and, that’s the fear that paralyzes me and prevents me from actually working. It can feel kind of devastating but I don’t know how I get through those periods. I wish I knew, but every now and then out of the blue all of that pent up creative energy sort of outweighs the fear and I work up the courage and it all just comes pouring out of me. If there is an answer to getting though creative blocks, I’d love to know!

LJ: I think you’re our 6th Featured Artist that we’re interviewing, and people pretty much say the same thing. They just have to get away from it for a little bit and do something else, then come back to it. We had one gentleman say that he used to try to take classes, but he found that the more classes he took the worse it got because the technique interfered with his ability to execute what he wanted to create. I know some people who just start slapping paint on a surface until it takes shape. I took a color class from a painter years ago. She just had this giant canvas full of layers of paint and all it was, was her experimenting with color. She would start mixing colors and start throwing them on the canvas. And the canvas isn’t really a painting; it’s more like a blob. But she would just play with that, with some ideas on that thing before taking it to the actual canvas.
SG: I think I’m going to steal that!

LJ: Doesn’t it sound fun!
SG: Yeah, it does! I think it could actually work!

LJ: Because you can make something without really making something.
SG: A lot of artists say that all you have to do is force yourself to sketch every day, no matter what it is. But the problem with that is, it’s much easier said than done.

LJ: So this is another question I love asking. When you’re working and creating a piece, how do you decide when it’s finished?
SG: Why do you love this question?

LJ: Because it’s different for everybody. How do you make that decision that a piece is done? I think that is simply the final difficult decision to make, besides deciding what it is you’re going to make, and how you’re going to make it, and then working through the process. How do you know when its done? How do you know when to quit working and move on to the next?
SG: Yeah, I definitely think that’s probably the hardest part. For me, my wor never finished, ever. Essentially I just sort of reach a point where I think it looks finished to an outside observer and I accept that and move on. Usually I finish a piece, or I guess let go of it, when I’m more excited about an idea I have for a new piece that it outweighs the interest I have in what I’m currently doing.

LJ: Oh that’s interesting! Otherwise you’d just work that one piece forever!
SG: Exactly!

LJ: So, how can I ask this? Do you ask other people or do you just decide for yourself?
SG: For the most part it’s just me deciding for myself, just because I get distracted easily and prefer to move on to the next thing. I used to be really afraid to show people work that I thought was unfinished but now I’ve started to open up more. I’ll send images to my friends from art school and ask them “What do you think? Does this background look unfinished or should I do this or that?” and it has actually helped a lot. I kind of wish I had done that more often in the past. I don’t always follow their advice but it is nice to get a different opinion and step back and take a fresh perspective on it.

LJ: I’m glad to hear you say that you don’t always listen.
SG: -laughs-

LJ: I think that would be an easy trap to fall into.
SG: I rarely actually listen to them. I sort of mold what they say to fit my own opinions and standards.

LJ: Perfect. So what does a typical day in your life look like? Do you get up at 4 am to start your day or do you stay up until 4 am painting?
SG: I’m both a night owl and an early bird, which makes things more complicated.

LJ: So you do 24/7? Do you pull all-nighters?
SG: Yes, yes, lots. But I like to wake up as early as I can, just because I spend a lot of time getting ready to exist. I need a couple hours with my cup of coffee and myself just, I don’t know what I necessarily do during that time but, I don’t know, it keeps me sane. I have a few hours in the morning when no one else is really awake and its’ peaceful before I have to start worrying about everything to be donethat day. So, yeah, aside from that, if I’m not going to work, I spend a lot of my time alone in my inner monologue.

LJ: Just talking to yourself in your own head?
SG: Yes –laughs- there are days when I can spend 12 hours locked in my room working feverishly on a new piece or just jotting down different things or I’ll spend the entire day going from thrift store to thrift store looking around and just finding found objects and interesting things that give me some excitement and inspiration. I don’t really have a typical day I guess.

LJ: Some artists say ‘I need to be in my studio by this time’, but your bedroom is your studio so you’re always there.
SG: Yeah.

LJ: So what would you say is your biggest accomplishment in your field so far?
SG: This might be a little bit ridiculous but I would say it was winning a gold medal for my painting at the National Scholastic Awards.

LJ: Really!?
SG: In high school.

LJ: Tell me about that!
SG: Do you know about the National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards?

LJ: No!
SG: It’s this awesome opportunity for students in high schools from all over the country. Just their portfolios or paintings or whatever. Basically, the work is first judged at a regional level, and then I believe at a state level and then national. My piece three regional awards which then went on to national, and then I won one gold medal for the national awards and that was a very big deal at the time for me. I don’t think it will never not be a big deal.

LJ: That sounds like a pretty big deal, winning a gold medal, you said you were a senior?
SG: Yes.

LJ: So that sets the stage. I’m sure that didn’t hurt for getting into the school that you went to
SG: Sometimes I think about it and I’m like “Wow - did I peak when I was 17?”.

LJ: Do you have that piece in your gallery?
SG: I don’t think I do actually. I need to update my gallery and put more of my stuff on there. I really need to do that.

LJ: Let’s touch on the piece, Reflection 1, that won our contest. What inspired that piece?
SG: Actually that was just a school assignment. I took a watercolor painting course at Notre Dame and when I went into the course I had no idea how to use watercolor. I thought I never would use watercolor and it ended up being my favorite medium. I’ve used it ever since.

LJ: Wow!
SG: It was essentially a life changing course, as trite as that might sound. So that piece came from an assignment (I believe it was just an assignment) where we had to paint something related to water. We had to do a whole series based on a certain theme. I wish I could say that there was more to that piece other than it being an assignment but yeah, I guess…

LJ: Was it an assignment that you had to do on your own or you did it actually in the class?
SG: Both. So I’m sort of…I was a really bad student. I don’t like working in a classroom, I don’t like working around other people, so I was very bad at attending classes. I’d much rather spend my time in my dorm room or whatever working on my piece than in the classroom working on it, which my professors hated.

LJ: It’s interesting because it’s kind of a scary piece, but it’s beautiful. I mean, I find it very disturbing.
SG: Yeah, I like mixing the delicate and ethereal with the mysterious and dark, like the sublime. I definitely like the inner play of those two types of things.

LJ: Well you don’t really know if she’s just enjoying the water or if she’s dead.
SG: Right. I don’t even know.

LJ: Well, we don’t have to make a decision –laughs-
SG: -laughs-

LJ: So how do you see your art evolving?
SG: I guess this sort of goes back to what we were previously talking about but now that I’ve started working more with mixed media. It’s evolving in a very different way than I had expected. Every single thing I do is a surprise to me. Mixed media gives me a great opportunity to get a fresh perspective and provides all kinds of great accidents. I’ll start mixing all these different materials together and I’ll find a unique combination I would never think of. I don’t know, it keeps me motivated right now. All my art up until now has just essentially been paints (normally watercolor) and graphite. But now I’m starting to find a way to mix those with textiles and all kinds of different materials and the change in the material completely changes the piece and the message as a whole.

LJ: Are you making collage or sculpture?
SG: it’s sort of hard to describe. They’re still essentially 2-D pieces but the figures for the most part are just graphite and watercolor on paper. I cut them out and I put them within the background, which is normally a landscape constructed out of collaged fabrics and stuff like that. So I’ll just sew a bunch of different pieces of fabric and create them in a sort of way where it looks like an abstract landscape or environment for that figure to sit in. It’s very hard for me to put into words. But it’s a lot of cutting and sewing. It’s definitely very meticulous.

LJ: Have you tried encaustic?
SG: What is that?

LJ: It’s working with wax. Like painting with wax based materials
SG: Ohh. I have not.

LJ: You might now want to look into that.
SG: That’s piquing my interest.

LJ: After you look up ArtPrize, you’re going to look up encaustic!
SG: I have a list right now!

LJ: A ‘to-do’ list from this interview. Just what you wanted!

LJ: How do you decide what to price? What to charge? You said you do a lot of commission work, what do you charge to do a portrait or how do you make that decision?
SG: That is another very difficult question. I will always struggle with the fear of always underpricing or overpricing my work. It’s easy to get the cost of materials out of the way, but after that I couldn’t just price it on the hours that I put into it because I could spend 40 hours working on such a minute detail of a piece. So, I mean, I think it really just depends on my client or…

LJ: Like the size of the piece or the complexity or?
SG: Um, yeah.

LJ: Do you say ‘hmm this is probably going to take me two weeks and my materials are $100 so I’m going to charge whatever’?
SG: Yeah, I try to do that for the most part. It’s hard to say. I know I should have a standard pricing.

LJ: Well, I don’t know. It depends on, like you were saying, you’re working with so many different genres that I would think that it would almost have to be project by project.
SG: Yeah, that’s what makes it difficult. I don’t think I can really price my work by time and labor unless it’s something like a logo design or something like that where you can very easily keep track of the hours spent - that’s pretty simple. But with personal work and paintings, I think it would just be absurd to charge people for my time. I kind of just, once it’s finished I stand back and look at it and I guess gauge the price of what would someone actually pay for this?

LJ: Give me an example of the last few pieces that you’ve sold? What kind of prices have you charged?
SG: I’ve done a few commissions for free, which I probably shouldn’t have done but I do like doing work as a sort of exercise for myself. I don’t mind doing some work for free if it’s helping out someone else and I get to learn in the process. So it ranges from no charge at all to recently I sold a painting for $900 which was pretty awesome. It was just a piece on paper. That’s a difficult question too.

LJ: That’s a really commanding price. That says a lot.
SG: I’m pretty surprised and very grateful.

LJ: When you take commission work, do you finish it for them with a frame it or do you just give them the piece?
SG: It depends on the person. Sometimes they just like to do that themselves. I don’t know if it’s that they want control over the presentation or that they think I would choose something more expensive for the framing.

LJ: Probably a little of both.
SG: Yeah, but when I can I like to choose the framing just because I think custom framing is very crucial for any piece of artwork. Every single detail from the cut of the mat, to the color, to the size of the frame and its angles affect the final look. All those elements can either enhance the art immensely or it can ruin it and detract attention away from it. So, I recommend not going to a store and picking out a cheap frame from one of the stands. You have to really consider how it works with the piece of art.

LJ: Absolutely. I don’t see framing as a separate thing. You think about art and architecture and the frame is the architecture that allows the art to stand. It allows it to live in somebody else’s view, unless it’s a canvas.
SG: That’s very eloquent.

LJ: Well I’ve had a lot of years to think about this. How did you find American Frame?
SG: To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. I was looking for a custom frame for one of my pieces and somehow I stumbled upon your site and I stuck with it ever since. Maybe it was just luck.

LJ: No kidding! So how long ago do you think that was?
SG: Probably about a year and a half ago.

LJ: So it’s been a little bit. Was it for a school show that you had to frame?
SG: Yes.

LJ: So your school didn’t really recommend a source, they just said ‘go get it framed’?
SG: yeah I’ve found that most places, whether it is a school or a gallery or whatever, aren’t really going to recommend anything. They just want it delivered in a frame and ready to hang.

LJ: Right. Do you have a favorite type of frame? Or do you change with the piece?
SG: This may be pretty boring but I always just go back to a standard white gallery frame with some sort of white mat. I always have really large mats as well.

LJ: You’re speaking our language! Aubrey’s sitting here going ‘yeah me too’ –laughs- we offer a lot of choices but it’s the simple ones that are timeless and allow the art to be the central focus.
SG: Definitely.

LJ: Well do you have any questions for us before we let you go?
SG: I wish I did. I don’t know, not that I can think of right now. I’ll probably have more questions about the two assignments you gave me.

LJ: Do you ever get through our neck of the woods?
SG: Not really, but I’m always travelling all over the place, so…

LJ: I’m going to give you an open invitation, if you ever get to northwest Ohio or southeast Michigan and you’re close and want to come visit and get a tour, we’d love to host your visit.
SG: I would absolutely love that, thank you!

LJ: We’re moving and expanding and we’re putting in a state of the art Showroom and gallery for framing and for artists to gather and learn and demonstrate and exhibit and all that.
SG: That’s so exciting!

LJ: It is! It’s very exciting. It’s really been a pleasure talking to you and getting to know you.
SG: You too! Thank you so much for this opportunity!

LJ: Oh, thank you! I really appreciate you being involved with us and taking the time to enter the contest and putting the energy in to win it. Which prize did you take? The cash or the frames?
SG: I actually struggled with that one a lot but I ended up taking the cash just because I’m all about instant gratification.

LJ: Did you go buy clothes or are you going to buy art supplies? –laughs-
SG: Art supplies!

LJ: Great! Well thank you again, you have a great weekend. We’ll keep looking for your new work in your gallery. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we recently added social media icons so it’s easier to pin and share, so you can socialize your artwork that way.
SG: Fantastic! I’ll definitely update that this weekend. Thank you so much!

LJ: Thank you! Stay in touch!