001for welcome everybody uh my name is Walt Kowski and if you're a regular viewer bevcam uh you'll recognize me as the host of the longtime bevcam series Northshore Journal but enough about that we're here today in Bev Cam's brand new Studio B auxiliary Studio on cabat street and uh today happens also to be the day that Beverly has its annual artsfest and uh we've got some people we're going to be interviewing some of the sponsors we're going to be interviewing some of the uh uh the artists uh to give you a feel of what's going on here at artsfest and what better way to start off uh I have with me the executive director of Beverly main streets Ain Truax and she has brought a guest also uh John Andrews welcome folks thank you for
002having us so uh Erin I'll start with you um uh how long this is I understand what the what the 21st annual so tell us a little bit about the B of the Beverly Arts Fest and how long it's been going on and kind of about how many booths you have and just kind of give us a an aerial view of what's going on absolutely yes so we are in our 21st year artsfest Beverly is produced by Beverly main streets we're a nonprofit based here in Beverly Massachusetts where we promote downtown Beverly we really support the economic Vitality of our downtown and celebrate the arts and culture that this city has to offer so artsfest is a fantastic way to do that in our first year we're fortunate to have 150 vendors today we'll be
003uh running the show from 10 to 4 um of those 150 vendors those were selected out of 250 applicants so really really excited to have so many folks that were interested in joining us uh we have a variety of activities so not only is there going to be art for sale but there's great kids activities engagement opportunities and a lot of our sponsors are going to be here providing uh services so it's just it's going to be a great time weather's looking great it's a really wonderful opportunity to celebrate arts and Beverly and for those folks who might need a little snack to perk them up tell us about you've got some uh some food uh wagons some U food carts uh yeah so we are on cabitt street so we have a lot of
004great restaurants that you can support some restaurants are also going to be vending as well and then if folks aren't based in downtown they're also in a food court so we have Joe's on a roll we have saw from solvia Kitchen on ranol street they will actually be vending uh just off of cabitt street so variety of options I know the castle is serving up milkshakes which is probably great for the weather that we have today uh we have delines just a variety of really really great vendors so there really is something for everyone very good and I'd like to remind our viewers if you've just tuned in that we're here at the Bev Cam's brand new studio at 161 is that the address three three sorry three 261 oh I'll get it right uh
005261 uh cabat Street in downtown Beverly uh and we are uh we're simoc casting and we are also live on bcams two of be B Cam's three channels and now we don't want to leave John there by himself twiddling his thumbs so eron introduce John and tell us what his affiliation here is with uh with the artsfest in Beverly Main Street sure absolutely so Beverly main streets is really fortunate to be members of the creative Collective which is a really really great business that together creatives across the NorthShore they produce a lot of events themselves as well but John really has a a strong purview and pulse on what's happening in the Arts community so was really excited to have John join us and share a bit because he knows a lot of these vendors
006and again his business is just a really great connector for our artistic Community right very good so tell us a little bit about creative Collective John sure um so our organization was built to be a support system for creative and non-traditional businesses um and we also have a really strong passion for Community Building Place Making Place keeping and events like the festival this Festival we had our Festival in Salem last weekend um the critical importance of what this means to the downtown to the economy the critical role that organizations like Beverly main streets and other main streets play in the downtowns we want to Foster and support as much as we possibly can can we've built a significant Following over the years so we're able to really amplify the messaging you know incentivize people to
007want to come out and shop all these local creators and makers you know some people don't don't remember the fact that just because they don't have a storefront these are still our neighbors these are still the people that go to our coffee shops and Shop locally themselves so really fostering that cycle of of Community Development economic devel velopment plac making and making people really feel like you know we're back completely we're Gathering completely and community building and Community gathering around arts and culture really seems to be the path to Healing so all of that seems to be really in line with the mission of Beverly Main Street well wonderfully said yeah now you you said nontraditional uh businesses Define that for what would be a non-traditional business so unfortunately some folks that are leaning heavier
008into the Arts category um the world doesn't treat them like traditional businesses so you know maybe the guy that makes fake raccoon Tales something like that that you would see at a festival like this but you know traditional thinking people aren't like oh that's part of our small business Community we think everyone can be part of the small business Community like that these people pay taxes they show up they shop locally they have kids in schools so we try to really bring a little bit of equity into the not your typical downtown business but they're still part of that ecosystem so would they be like no brick and mortar or would some of them a lot of them don't I mean I know that there's some folks out here vending today that have both but
009there's a lot of folks out there that this is the hustle this is what they do and for some of them this is not their full-time business they may do this you know have a to and you know they paint at night right up in the French painter up in the Garrett right right and part of what what we want is if you want to be that full-time business if you want to give up yeah that N9 to-5 we try to find a path to make that happen yeah so more opportunities more connections small business grant small business support all that kind of stuff now you're how big a net do you throw John what by that I mean how how far a field do you go from Beverly like how many communities do you
010serve um we have our our primary focus is Beverly Lynn Salem and PE but I have members all over the state um because a lot of you know what Co did for us is it showed that you could have a lot of meetings and give a lot of support and you don't need to be in person and because of the great work that the local organizations do there is a wealth of opportunities on the NorthShore so just because someone's from Lawrence doesn't mean they can't make a ton of money by doing the festival Serv circuit in the summer coming into Salem in the fall so our our net pretty much extends we have some members in marac Valley we have some members up in hail we have some New Hampshire members but I would say
01185% of our membership is p Sal Lin and Beverly and you'll see that really reflected in this Arts vest today you're not going to see a bunch of vendors that are just Beverly based we really did cast a wide net we've been fortunate enough to bring folks from out of the area in so again when you look at the vendors that we've brought in there's a variety of different categories but we were really intentional in making sure that what you're finding is unique uh there's different offerings it's not necessarily something you're going to see at every other festival we really work hard to ensure that we're bringing new folks in yeah I was curious uh your selection process you said you had about 250 applications but only chose 150 so what what do you base
012what Criterion do you use yeah so we have an artsfest jury that gathers and so we are still fine tuning and we're always updating and constantly evolving but we really look for diversity in our artists we consider categories so if someone if is doing something similar to someone else we we base it off of that so we're not 150 jewelry makers or you know 200 shirt makers so we do it according to various categories and then uh another piece is just making sure that folks are established and are able to set up their vendor station so we want to make it as as painless as possible in terms of of participating so there's a a variety of factors but again we use a a jury with residents um local business owners and others to to
013help make those selections so um constantly evolving and improving that process right now has have you ever done a count of how many uh uh patrons uh come through does anybody kind of I know you don't stand there with a little clicker but do you estimate how big a crowd you get we get over 4,000 people and we're we're pretty confident with the weather the way that it is we've seen the Arts Fest last week in Salem festivals continue to Trend in the direction of larger and larger so we anticipate this is going to be our largest to date we have a lot of really great engagement activities I know we were talking about it before we went on the air we have our our first year doing our Wellness Hub so a mental Wellness
014Hub in partnership with mental makeover uh that's a really great opportunity for folks that might be a little overwhelmed with the size and scale of a festival they can go and um have a safe space where they can relax use um some some activities to help sort of regulate their emotions so we really tried to come up with activities that were very intentional uh and again drive a bigger crowd yeah now how did that come about were there incidences that that caused you to think we got to do something about these in can you yeah so we're really fortunate to have received funding from Mass cultural Council through a universal participation Grant and when you look at trying to make spaces more Equitable there's a lot of intentionality around physical spaces and impairments that might
015impede someone from being able to move freely which is completely understandable and really valuable but when you look at it from a perspective of someone that might have impairments whether it be mentally or social emotionally there wasn't a lot of intentionality in making sure that folks could feel comfortable so this is the first um opportunity for us to do that we just really saw it as a great way to partner with mental makeover they're in our school systems they do a lot of really great work it's a great organization uh and we just really wanted to constantly think if someone is coming are we creating the most welcoming space possible and we felt like that was a very easy opportunity to partner highlight a great nonprofit and again just meet people where they're at so
016it is the first year it's a little bit of trial and error but we're pretty confident that it's going to be well received and hopefully we can continue to do it in the future wonderful and overall of course uh uh I've been coming to these since 2003 I think bevcam has been uh uh doing this broadcasting from here since 2003 so we have practically as long as you've been here but uh but overall it is a very uh family fun oriented uh you know dogs are allowed on a leash of course yes yes one last question for John John where do you get your funding where do you get your money is this a member based organiz we're we're we're member based and we also do um a bunch of projects right so things that
017fit in that category of that intersection for us um one project we did in Beverly a couple years ago is we work with the city of Beverly to help them do The Artisan residence program that popped up at the old Kean yeah okay yeah so when there's a certain situation that needs a little bit of like how did those two worlds how did the municipal world and the arts and culture World kind of talk together um how do we help that make that happen great um so it's a little of both right well folks thank you for stopping by I enjoyed our our little chat we've got other folks we want to talk to a little bit about and I've had eron X who is the executive director of Beverly main streets who puts this
018whole Arts Fest on thank you yes and I'll offer just one more a quick thank you to our Visionary sponsor Endicott who helps make that possible through a monetary donation we are a nonprofit organization so folks would like to contribute again entirely free to participate we're members of the mass cultural council card to culture program so we keep our programs free we do that as a nonprofit through donations so if folks would like to give they can do so on our website or at our station today very good very good and John John Andrews thank you very much for coming by and chatting with us I don't have the same type of pitch because that was impressive I will say if if you're a business in in the arts and culture space and you're looking
019for some support we can help very good so I'm looking over at the floor director uh and uh we're g to uh we're going to say goodbye to you folks thank you for stopping by and uh as um I just like to remind our viewers that um we're here at uh be Cam's brand new studio on cabat street and of course the excitement today is not only the opening of the studio but it also coincides with uh Beverly's Annual Arts Fest and we're going to be we've just had the executive director of Beverly main streets who is the uh main sponsor uh and producer of this organization of this of this artsfest uh and we'll be having some of the vendors come by and I just to remind you that we are broadcast casting live
020on Bev Cam's two of Bev Cam's channels and streaming as well and now I'd like to introduce my next guest and let me see you are let me guess uh Judy I am you are Judy yes Judy welcome Judy George yes Judy George and you are can you move your seat up a little bit you want to try to be as close to the microphone as you as you can and um Judy has a has a uh a booth here obviously and your booth is called what my booth is Judy George art Judy George art and I have to say Judy that I did a little bit of research and I I saw your website and I I am just taken with your your paintings you do you do paintings and they're very to me
021very evocative and they really they're not uh they're not like a picture photograph you you kind of put a mood into the into the pictures uh and that that's that's a a tough thing to do you you you I and you're selftaught I understand mostly yeah mostly selftaught but did you go to art school before so I went to monzerat before it was here when it was moner used to be Behind the norer Music Theater okay um and then I've studied with a lot of local artists over the years but I never formally went and got an art degree yeah and and has this been uh how long have you been doing Judy George Artistry so this is my formally my actually uh 11th year 11th year um yeah I've always worked in art in
022some way shape or form but this is my 11th year since I began the business formally uhhuh now you uh do you have a a a space outside your studio though you do your or you do it like in the basement in the Attic or in your living room or do you do most of your art so most of 100% is done in my home but my home used to be shops in the front and a house in the back okay and um when my husband and I got married the front was like a dining room and a kids' room and now it's gone back to um shop space and a space where I do lessons and I actually paint in the do my paint and formal work in the way back where my guinea
023pigs live oh really now i i al you mentioned something uh else you mentioned that you Al also do workshops and classes now is this for any age group or primarily for children or what's what's your clientele for that so I do um my regular classes are geared probably more for like 14 and up um those are my Reg regular classes however I do camps for younger kids uh about 10 and up um I can take younger children if they're super interested in art but um much younger than that and I think that they're not interested in what I'm doing but I um I also do things like paint nights and I do um something new I'm starting which is selfcare and it's for people um anyone that wants to try art just to relax
024but it's also I've worked in special education for something years okay um so I'd like to bring in a lot of people uh um maybe on the Spectrum or where they're not comfortable in other places where they can come in and we can work together not so much lesson as just a safe creative space yeah and and and it's amazing that uh um the the interplay of the mind with art or something more I would say I I don't want to use spiritual in that I I want to use it in a sense that that it works your body your your your body as well as your like like you have uh you have service dogs and you have comfort dogs that go into hospitals and I've heard stories about someone who has been uh
025not said a word for six months and and they put a little puppy a little service dog therapy dog and I do that therapy dog yes and and I know that we had uh my wife and I had a therapy she's passed away since then the therapy dog not my wife uh and uh and uh she used to go around to the Hospitals and Clinics and things like that and and uh it's it's amazing how I bring my dog to a lot of different places but one of the places is dver High School where I'm just retiring from this week um but he goes in and you can see the kids change like they'll you'll I'll see him in classes and their faces are down and they're and they'll see him in the hallway and
026they go there's peanut and it's the same with the staff you see the like it's like flipping a switch and I bring them to a lot of places like nursing homes um and what a difference between the the uh people the residents and the staff yes and you know because uh animals are so non-judgmental and what you see is what you yeah you don't have to worry about a about some ulterior motive when a dog is waving his uh tail and and and putting his paws up you know that that's that's real genuine it's genuine yeah now do you uh typically U uh attend a different kinds of fairs like the the the Beverly Arts Fest is that part of how you promote yourself I do some but I do mostly uh holidays I don't
027do it a lot in the summer just because I I don't outside is so tough with the weather and you don't know what the weather's going to be like so I do indoor um fairs mostly I'd say November December some in October um and I do artsfest because it's Beverly and it's artsfest and do you live in Beverly yep all my life yeah oh right now when you when you do these workshops and these classes how many how many people normally would you get in a class um I have had like if the ones I do at my house I've had up to six but I don't like that many I like to keep it between two and four because I can do individual instruction I don't work in a um I don't have a
028syllabus today we're going to do this and this I like to work with I start everybody off um one way which is basically looking at how they do a still life and that only tells me where they are and where we need to go and then I can work each individually so that way I don't have to try to gear every lesson for everybody I'm very much in the um individualized mode I think that's my special ed background right well when when you when you do with that creative stuff you can't regiment that it's not like an assembly line like building a car it's it's so individual you got to meet them where they're at and you got to encourage them where they're at yeah yeah very good very good so uh we took you
029away from your booth Y and so so uh Judy George yep thank you very much for for coming by and talking with us and we'll let you go back to your booth Duty and I'm going to stop by before because I thank you very much I'm sure that your paintings look a lot better in person than they do on on your website I was very impressed with your with your thank you very much nice to meet you so it was Judy George who has a uh a booth at the Beverly uh artsfest and just to remind our viewers we are uh broadcasting on two of Bev Cam's channels and we are also uh streaming live uh with this podcast from Beverly Bev cams brand new Studio B Studio Annex what what do you call this
030uh uh Liz what is is this bevcam downtown bevcam downtown is the official yeah I see Rob Chapman the executive director nodding at me this is called bevcam downtown and it's a wonderful beautiful space I wish we would have done it under my command but kudos to you well and I have now with me you are she's I'm just here for emotional support okay I'm Eva from emc2 crft emc2 could you move up a little bit so you're a bit close closer to the to the microphone yeah so EMC craft and and your name again is Eva Eva and what's your last name Cooper Eva Cooper okay so uh and you are mallerie her mallerie okay mallerie and so tell us uh uh about EMC uh 2 or emc2 crafts yeah it's not EMC squared
031right well you can say even yeah you know you know you EMC squ is a very very famous equation don't you okay so was that on purpose you did that all right okay just lots of people say it wrong so we kind of go with either one yeah okay great yeah my initials are Eva Michelle Cooper so that makes EMC too oh wow so and then my business is the second one so it creates the square wow I I I yeah you are so precocious that that is unbelievable yeah that that's that's that's wonderful so what what tell us a little bit bit give us a snapshot of what what you're about uh and how how you started this up now how old are you I'm 14 14 okay so tell us how EMC squared
032uh uh came about so it started last August where I started creating slime because I have OCD and I started pulling out my hair due to large amounts of stress and I also have ADHD so that slime was my way of fidgeting and I wanted to share that with other people and then I moved to more more crafty things so it started off as emc2 slime and then it moved to emc2 crafts so I crochet now which is my part of dealing with my ocv and I sell it to other people who you know they might need like slime to stop doing whatever they need to do like with pulling their hair maybe picking at their skin so it's usually all helping with neurod Divergent people and then I started selling crochet because that's what
033helped me yeah so instead of pulling their hair they crochet right that that energy is going into something creative right yeah that's exactly why I started doing I have to tell you that my mother was a fantastic crocheter and and she she was uh she did needle work she was a what do you call those people that do um bordering cross stitching well she she she would do um what do you call it when you when you do altering she worked in a in a well anyway but she could she could upholster a couch that's how that's how good she could with the piping and everything that's amazing yeah so and now how long have you been doing this Eva I only started in January for my crocheting but last August I started up with
034slime I've always been looking into like Arts since like I was very little I've been doing craft bears for about that long yeah um we did we my parents are authors and I'm also an author so we went to a bunch of Book Fairs book signings and that really started up with me wanting to do craft fairs yeah so then I started doing the crocheting stuff that January which is also my birth month and so I started doing that and now we're here wow now you say your parents are artists what kind of art do they do um I'm sorry art art authors go ahead I do like fantasy I haven't made a book in a while but my parents do sci-fi oh mallerie also does mostly sci-fi my parents do romance okay and what
035do you do um I have one children's book when I when I made when I was around like and my parents you got a late start didn't you yeah yeah my parents had it Illustrated and written into a children's book and then I have a short um chapter novel where it's um a fantasy book and it's very similar to Percy Jackson CU that's what I really liked when I was that age and I haven't written a sequel yet but maybe one day yeah you know they have a program at at the at the library uh called Monday mornings at the library and uh I I know I know the folks that run the bevcam has been over there uh a lot uh and maybe maybe they could have you on as a as an author
036and talk about how you other bols now you have something here uh maybe you could hold just hold it up right here so the camera can get that now tell us what this is this is a looks like a giant uh strawberry is that what that is it is a giant and and you knit this whole thing I crocheted it I'm sorry it's crochetting okay I I have to so what's the difference between knitting and crocheting um there are multiple differences crocheting is same with loops but they're connected from the bottom and to the side so you do it in this motion but with knitting you also do with two needles and there's a reason why it's very different from knitting one of those reasons is that a machine cannot crochet but it can knit
037oh all crochet items you see are you know handmade and if you see them in the store either they're fake crochet or said they had someone crochet it wow I'm more comfortable with eal mc² than crocheting I me my goodness this so complicated but uh that's that's absolutely wonderful and uh this is probably your first time here at the Beverly Arts Fest this is our first time now you live in Beverly um we live in Danver in Danver oh just right next door right next door right so what would you what would you say to other uh uh other youngsters in your age group about if they have a creative impulse or creative Bend H how is it how how best to uh to uh uh get that going and get that in motion what
038would you what would you advise them there are a lot of places where you can find cheap stuff that you can probably buy with your own money so go thrifting and don't let anybody tell you that it is not a job it will become one if you spend enough time on it in work but it will not become a job immediately you have to work with it and have a lot of time with it and it will create this thing that's long lasting there's so many people on YouTube for so inspiring who've had their business for years and they're now just hitting the peak so you really have to wait and just keep going with your craft and not get disappointed with anything that you're getting yeah yeah and and of course there's no right
039or wrong in art is there because it's so so individual and it comes really from the heart and and from your your creative Spirit doesn't it yeah there's there's like no way that this a machine could make this so that makes it even more personal that somebody had to handcraft this and now you have their handcrafted work yeah and and now how much would you be selling this for um it's $20 $20 I have a $200 giant strawberry that's like half the size of me really and what's what's inside here like foam or something um it's polyfill and I use yarn scraps to try to reduce my yarn waste cuz whenever you create a crochet project there's going to be so many scraps of yarn so you can just reuse it into stuffing this is
040wonderful you know what I'm going to buy this from you I'm going to surprise my wife cuz she loves strawberries okay so just put so so put it aside or I'll I'll you can put it there and I'll I'll give you $20 okay is that is that a deal yes that is I hope I have $20 you can always come by and pay with card we have card let's see you you take credit card no let's see what this is what is this that is a 20 okay that so there made a sale with you sale on air okay sale on air very good no I'm very very impressed uh Eva is it Eva yeah it is Eva Eva so I'm very very impressed and you have siblings uh no I'm an only child you're
041you're an only child okay well uh Eva thank you very much for for coming by I'm I'm very impressed uh with you and I'm I'm sure that you uh you have the ability to inspire uh folks to to continue doing that and you have your you have your uh Comfort person with you and that that's that's because you you're uh if you do things by yourself you get a little bit uh yeah so so this person helps to Anchor you I hope you're not nervous of me are you no okay you seem very nice I seem very well that's I haven't gotten a compliment I had in a long time well again thank you very much uh thank you for coming by and good luck to you uh at the at Beverly artsfest thank you
042thank you thanks for having us okay bye bye well that was uh that was very enlightening and I think that's uh that's kind of a lesson not only for young people uh but for everybody who has a creative uh creative bent uh explore it because uh as we said there's no right and there's no wrong it's such an individual uh thing art is uh and I like to uh remind our viewers that we are here in Bev Cam's uh Studio on uh 261 I got it right that time right two 261 Cabbage Street this is Beverly downtown did I get that right okay I got to learn this is brand new brand new uh facility uh just opened and I think this is this is the initial is this the initial day that we've been
043doing this yeah all right rob you want to come down and sit down like talking to you off camera yeah so uh for those of you who don't know uh this is Rob Chapman and Rob is the executive director of bevcam and I want to congratulate you on on putting this uh together uh and we tried to do it under my regime but we we just didn't have the money to do something like this but this location so so tell us how this came about and uh and uh what we're looking at here it's a it's a huge space a beautiful space is from the beginning when I first took over for you when I took as on the executive director job uh the board has been talking about we want to U expand operations
044we want to get downtown on cabitt so you know we've been looking for a year and a half and then one day I got a call from Liz who's our community engagement manager and said the place next to delines is opening up and I'm like that vitamin store the new leaf and they're she's like yeah I said that's a nice spot right there on the corner of cabat you know that's really where a lot of the activity on cabat happens right so and with right everything we've been wanting was you know enough square footage uh some window space so we could let people know that we're here uh so I I came in and kind of grabbed it that day yeah did you really it was pretty we were pretty aggressive carpm right you don't
045want you know I even brought him some money and said you know here's my Earnest I got $635 we're serious we want to be in here yeah uh so yeah we uh they let us know they were very the landlords very excited that it was a community based nonprofit that was going to be coming in so yeah uh that was really kind of I think helped in our favor as opposed to another store or something like that so um we're you know um nonprofit that wants to serve the community so they really kind of like that uh so we got it we got the lease we signed it and we spent most of the winter uh renovating it uh you know you know it was a a lot of work had to be done into
046it to kind of and we're still doing some we're getting the new windows next week yeah uh the sign is coming soon so all right and you even moved your office down here to show the commitment to the area right well you know I felt kind of um hidden back there at the school I wanted to get my face out there let people know if they wanted to talk to the executive director they could just stop at any right here they can just walk through the door yeah so I thought it was really kind of nice so you know we thought about you know we do still have the operations at the high school so staff we have out there Chris and Michelle are out there generally uh and we thought about where the best
047place to put Rob and others so right right now now for those people who don't know now beev cam has four channels now we do we got we gained a high defition channel right right so that's something that's something relatively new we we we struggled I know we struggled for years and years to try to get that into our contract our agreement yeah you know every other channel you watch is highdefinition so we're sort of the last people that are yeah and when people turn that in or turn you're showing your age showing my age it's clicked it's like this now yeah so uh so tell us about that the high def channel so you're picking and choosing certain progr yeah so it's not you know typically the three channels the standard definitions we are
048are sort of separated between public education and government right uh so we were like what are we going to do with the the high defition channel so we wanted to really kind of showcase you know there's stuff that's really kind of prime footage or uh content you know we're talking about the the the football games the high school games and sports uh the municipal meetings if you're ever trying to watch a municipal meeting and they're showing a PowerPoint presentation and you try to read that on the standard definition but when you're at high definition you see everything all the tiny numbers so you kind of know what the city's planning and stuff like that so we look at things that really sort of that are local that is produced at bevcam that are really deserve
049sort of that high definition stuff like that so uh you know we pick and choose from what we have at at bevcam and and sort of put it on you know one point I started calling it bevcam prime or something like that but we just call the HD channel yeah and uh now you're you're you are a membership organization we are yeah so people can uh and I know that the rates are are are uh I would say ridiculously low I mean for what you get as as a as a member of bevcam you get so much you get the ability to to produce programming you get training you don't have to pay for any materials it it's really it's it's like a no-brainer it's a pretty good deal you know we have for you
050know training we now have these edit Suites down here at this location Studio we have the the big Studio at the high school we have we're planning on a smaller Studio here in this space um all sorts of things equipment that can be signed out uh um it's really just a uh all for you know a pretty nominal uh fee as a m which hasn't changed in 20 years we're looking at changing that but maybe increasing those rates but it's still a pretty good deal I think and I didn't I didn't realize that until you just said it you've got editing Suites over there I didn't I didn't know You' have yeah now if somebody wants to come in here uh and um they should just consider it that that if they're bevcam member they
051can do anything here that they can do in the main Studio but now if they want to do something like a podcast like this they just they just call in and reserve space how would that work yeah exactly it would just be like you know I'm I'm thinking I want can I schedule the the podcasting Studio down at 261 MH um for this time and if it's free we say yeah if we make sure we have staff here to help you with the setting up the technical stuff and and go ahead and start talking yeah and I know that the students at the high school are doing more and more of this kind of stuff uh we hardly uh you know I mean going back even five years three years ago there was you know
052nothing like this but I think I think the the co lockdown and uh and uh you know the the uh virtual working virtually and so forth and uh that's really changed a lot of lot of way people do business and communicate especially right so you're able to to do that kind of stuff a different there's been a shift a noticeable shift in how people do stuff so yeah very good well I I my congratulations are in order I I me I I know what it takes uh because I've been in your seat so I have to congratulate you on a job very well done uh Rob and you've got a great great crew uh my old friend Chris Harvey back here doing the technical directing he's he's one of the best absolutely no it's been
053we've had a big shift in in staff at Beth cam too so you know we've been able to hire Liz as our community engagement manager we've now brought on Amanda who's our education uh manager so that's a lot of the work that she's been doing that you talked about with the students yeah um so uh and then Michelle's our content manager she's the one who does all the scheduling for the channels right right uh they're they're great crew to work with so I'm glad to be here well I want to I want to do a shout out to Liz who's who's on the other side of the cameras there taking pictures but uh but she's great to work with and uh she communicates very well and uh she does a great job making sure that
054the visibility oh look at that she's blowing me kisses so very good well Rob thank you very much and congratulations this is a wonderful operation all right am I leaving stage and you're going to close it or we closing well I'm looking for a signal from Liz should I close out close out okay all right rob you can I guess you can sit here all right well uh ladies and gentlemen uh thank you for for watching uh my name is Walt Kowski uh the regular host of Northshore Journal which uh has been running on Bev Camp since 2004 so uh yeah 20 years uh and uh I'm very pleased and honored to be here to kick off the brand new uh uh Beverly on Broadway no Beverly downtown I'll get it right bevcam downtown uh
055and uh we we are we're going to be doing this uh all day today right Liz nod your head yeah so there'll be some other folks coming and sitting in this chair uh doing some podcasting so uh for right now I'd like to sign off and say thank you for watching uh and keep watching bevcam [Music] Siri play that one song Diego sent me okay oh how to do that with apple intelligence it's AI that gets you on your Apple products iPhone iPad Mac with built-in privacy and you can make your own Emoji yeah make your own Emoji make your new profile pick with image playground pull up a photo by describing it or clean up an otherwise very cute pick you can make a movie your life plus a description plus your camera rooll
056equals sweet memories wa Siri when's Mom's flight landing oh where are we eating after ah how do I share a password what if I forget all this stuff just ask Apple intelligence can tldr your long messages and highlights the important ones it can just find stuff deep in your phone like your driver's license number come [Music] Wix gives you the power of AI to build the website you need with full business functionality and a design tailored just for you customize every element of your website and watch your vision come to life in minutes control everything from the biggest tasks to the finest details personalized optimized ready to go live [Music] Old Spice party I hold Matt fin [Music] welcome back to the Beverly Arts Fest here at bevcam downtown our brand new location right next
057door to delines and across from uh paper Asylum we're right down the street from monserat yeah we're like in the middle of everything it's so fantastic come on down to the artsfest or if not you can continue watching us on TV and YouTube We're uh currently streaming live on Channel 8 HD channel 1073 and on Bev Cam's YouTube and if you happen to miss this this is the recording welcome from the past to the Future my name is Lizzy Fury and uh I am here with some very lovely ladies um why don't why don't we start with you Beth this is Beth yes go ahead go ahead good I'm Beth price Morgan and I'm the career design studio director at monserat and also a writer and illustrator and I think that's the basics that we're
058going to start with what oh of what of what okay yes yes yes so um I do write and illustrate picture books but my big thing right now is young adult fantasy novels so for the young adult age group group focus on fantasy and I'm also illustrating it so my current project is a novel called the breathing Stone lit and it's fantastic it's really fun it's great and then we have Betsy go ahead yeah I'm Betsy Eller I am the author of my dog is not a scientist which is a debut that came out last year picture book I also write novels and um I I work at Endicott so we got the two Beverly colleges are two of the Beverly colleges covered here and um yeah I don't know I have published independently uh
059Anthology two years ago yes and I think that's me yeah in a nutshell and uh as I said I'm Liz Fury if you didn't notice yes we are all Elizabeth's we'll talk a little bit more about that later and uh the other thing we all have in common is that we're all uh picturebook artists illustrat uh uh authors illustrators um so in addition to being the communic wow the community engagement manager at Beth cam I'm also the immediate past president of the graphic artist skills and have worked with many a independent uh independently published uh children's author um so uh many of them who are local to the norshore area uh so we are going to be talking about picture books a lot um but in addition to that we're also going to be talking
060about like how you start your first major professional creative project what it's like being a creative professional um especially as an independent and the different types of publishing options that people tend to look at and or or go through in order to publish their very first ever big professional creative project be that a picture book that they wrote themselves or that they are uh wanting to work on with somebody else or any of those things um so yeah like where do we want to start here well maybe the reason why we got together to talk about this in the first place that's a we all sat together at delin which is the restaurant next door one day because we had a common problem this podcast is not sponsored by Dophin we just really love her
061we had a common problem and that's this sense of whenever we mention that we write or illustrate or both picture books everyone comes to us with like oh yes I have a book and it's ready to go um at monat's career Department I get a lot of calls from people saying I just finished my first picture book an hour ago and can I get a monzerat student to illustrate it please it's always an hour ago an hour ago yes just recently did this thing I'm really excited it's going to be a bestseller and I just need an illustrator to work with me for free on this project um and maybe a student would do that since they're just starting their career too and so there's a couple things wrong with that question if you've been
062that person don't worry this is not a shame and blame game but we this is a educate and get you going to the next step I I think it because it was defin like at book events people would come up and ask me like okay I'm ready to go like I'm traditionally published how do I get traditionally published Scholastic wants my book like I can want this out next year and I was just like in a very positive way I'm like this is more than a five minute conversation and so I think we were all kind of sharing that so we were trying to capture some answers and some jumping off points which is more than an hour conversation too but like at least we can get you guys started and yes um so that
063that is a really good starting point um because like while while I was being like a full-time freelance illustrator and I was working a lot with um uh independently published authors like just like with the student situation I would get a lot of requests where it's like I'm willing to pay a great price of $50 a page um which is very little money um in order to to do this thing that I have a great idea for and um again we really really want to stress this is no shade all of us have been there we've all like had that enthusiasm on our first project and been like this is what I think um how do I take the next step and then who do I reach out to and this is who I think
064I should reach out to so what we want to do here is really kind of like slow the rooll a little bit um and uh and you know just like talk about some of those first questions you should be asking yourself as a creative like as the author as someone who wants to have their book made into a real thing um rather than just an idea you know what are some of the initial questions that you have to ask yourself um and I I know that one of the things we were really uh talking a lot about was just like why do you want to do this project um you know what is what is your motivation but like what are your goals goals for the project I think I think and I think this
065question actually relates to all creatives and you know here we're in this amazing Arts Fest I think this is a question that really needs to be asked by painters photographers poets everyone because I know you know for me it's been a a journey of ups and downs over the years and I think that was the best advice I ever got was like really really sit down and think about what you're doing this for like do you want a memory for your grandchildren do you want for me I when I ask myself question what I came back to was I really I love the creative Community we have an amazing creative community on the NorthShore and so being part of that being part of a writing Community gets gets me back to it um you know
066if you really want to be famous like a global household name that's a different set of goals um and you can totally work towards that but it's really like focusing in on what you do it for is it just something that like needs to come out of you and you want to create it um so I think like asking that question for any artist is really critical cuzz that's like the load stone that will keep you of like the ballast in the ship that will keep you going um during the journey which is definitely a tumultuous one absolutely and it's okay if that why changes over time for sure um I know I was in first grade when I decided I wanted to write and illustrate picture books you too um I not a lot
067of people know who this is now but back in the 80s 90s um Stephen Kellogg was a really big name in picture books he wrot wrote books like Paul bunan like he was doing ret retellings of like American folktales and also he had this book called The Pinkerton series about an enormous great dane that would get into all sorts of trouble anyway he came to my first grade class and he read books and then he had time talking individually to every single kid while he signed our books and this is formative for me our teacher said like if you are too scared to talk to this person if you're too nervous um just Pat him on the shoulder so I just went in there I was like and he was like zoom and like all
068this creative energy and power sucked from stepen kog into me and I was like yes this is my moment this is this is my destiny Spiderman Spider bik that's what I that was it that was it and you know what picture book pow sounds so much better than radiation like it sounds a lot better healthier for sure it really is it was like creative power yeah um immense creative cosmic power um so yeah so that was formative moment and so from then on I was like oh this is my thing I'm going to be writing and illustrating picture books and then like my why was like well I'm going to be the youngest published picture book author and illustrator because I've decided when I'm seven to do this I'm clearly on on a role here
069yes yes and you know so then I turned nine and I was like oh no I I think there's other 9-year-olds have already been published and they turned 13 I'm like oh no there's other 13y right that went out the window real fast yeah yeah so there was that was an unhealthy why like it was a like I in our defense they didn't have self-publishing that was nearly as easy back then that's true all right so we were at a little bit of a disadvantage I want like tag onto that I feel like we can all maybe share that great story but I know for me like I I went to college for creative writing to undergrad and I um right afterwards I I teamed up with I also studied theater design so that's like
070my background so I wrote a lot of plays and I ended up writing a musical that got picked up by a dramatic publishing company so that's and it got and I honestly because I I know in college most colleges really emphasize um literary writing and so I was like really trying to be literary and like that like my novels weren't really getting anywhere and then this play happened and it was just fun and it's a family musical it's an adaptation of um a little princess so it was just fun and I loved it and so I was like I'm just going to write what's fun and so you know like over the years I've written picture books I've written novels and it's just like I write what's fun and I know for a long time
071I was trying to write this awardwinning the Great American novel and it was not fun and I could never finish and you could tell it wasn't fun and honestly I wrote my picture book in like three drafts which is unheard of um and and and most of my other picture books are like 30 drafts cuz there it's a lot harder to write a picture book than you think and we could talk about that but but like um yeah like I wrote it in one and I think the reason that it was the first one to get picked up traditional by a traditional publisher is that you can feel the fun in it like because I had fun writing it yeah and that's what a lot of um editors and art directors will say is like
072um if if the artist is struggling with the work you can tell like if you're having a tough time creating the work other people can tell and you know it's not that you shouldn't create things when you're um having a tough time that's actually really important to do um but you know it's it it just speaks so much more when you are able to let go of some of those maybe you've got expectations on yourself maybe you've got like other pressures that you're putting into it and able to just like understand what the core reason for doing this is um I was just like I was so caught up in your in your origin story your origin story it's an origin it is it is it's like then the heroes training con commence you know
073um but like I I feel like this is such a connecting experience with people who want to create something major and and I guess like by Major I mean something something that's major to them something that's major in in terms of like the amount of power and energy and and creativity that takes to make not necessarily talking about its impact right because like you could have a global impact you could have a really really local impact you could have just one person as an impact and that like it it could still be a major work that doesn't like change um yeah oh can I show another story yes AB like my favorite story of like probably my whole writing life so my book my dog is not a scientist it came out last year like
074I said and you know it's a like ye whoo press which is my publisher they're like kind of um smallish midsize like they're not you know we're not Scholastic they're not um you know I don't know one of the other ones so I'm totally drawing a blank on all the other Publishers when you get in front of a camera the big five this happens we we know what it is you guys know who they are so you know I wasn't expecting it to be like a household name and but it was still really good I had a good turnout a good reception especially locally obviously cuz that's where my biggest reach is um and I had lots of people say like oh I loved it this and that when it was you know nice but
075then you go to book events some are well attended some are not as well attended which is hard but still fun because you can connect one onone and I remember I did an event and it was a pretty well attended one but there was this little boy and his grandmother said it my book was his favorite book and he had he had that look they're like he's like and he's like following me like I like I was like this is great like I am famous to one person and that's all I need for the rest of my life I mean hopefully future other things but at this moment my life is now complete I have one Super Fan the first time like I I I published uh one of my first books um uh which
076was uh the Enchanted Island preschool um by uh oh my God I am blanking on every name right now I am so sorry um but it was AAL local author um and so I worked with a local author we self-published it and um it was published during the pandemic um which as you can imagine um you know there's challenges there um but my neighbor um texted me and was like oh I bought a couple copies and your book is my nephew's favorite they ask for it every night a so cute and I was like I just like that meant so much to me I love that sometimes sometimes you just have that effect on one person and um but like you know the the amount of energy that went into making that book like and
077I didn't even write it like you did like you wrote yours and and the the illustrations for mine took nine months I think that project was nine months to get it published um and which is quick by the way yes yeah for so self-published books tend to go faster than traditionally published books and we can kind of get into the um the uh you know the nuances between those two branching paths um but yes just for the illustrations nine months and then to have like that be the impact like made it so worth it um and you know like I definitely had these visions of grandeur at one point in my career was like I'm going to be the most famous illustrator in this universe just you know I was a little humble just this
078universe like all the planet um uh but I never really thought about what that meant like what that means like how I I what what does it mean to be that famous like in what circles like to who um and kind of like as I was going through my career trying to like navigate that industry and understand who I am as a professional artist and what sort of projects I want to work on um uh that that goal kind of changed for me to be like no I want to be really influential to the people who pick up my work and that's that's what means the most to be that's my goal I want whatever I make to be really influential to the people who pick it up absolutely even if it's just one person
079yeah yeah I think that's a really that's a really a good way to focus cuz if you're focused like you can't control in any inde artistic Endeavor you can't control how it's received you can't control um Beth is agented I am unagented and I'm unagented and uh Liz is unagented I've been traditionally published you know even though I don't have an agent which is pretty unheard of um it just I've met the right person at the right time so I think it but like you can't control that so it's you know we can talk we haven't talked about querying querying is the process of sending your work out to agents um I know people and or editors and like if you you can send out 10 and get picked up you can send out 300
080and never get picked up and and you don't have control out of how they receive you um so you have to that becomes very demoralizing and most of the time it's never your fault whether or not you get rejected right it's like it's like it's not that this isn't right for me it's not right for me right now yeah I have two novels that I've um been sending out and they both of them very consistently got you know requests for full and like there's a whole process that we can't get into all the nuances but they like get through a whole bunch of steps with a whole bunch of people and then they're always like this is fantastic but it's not what the market wants right now and I'm like how what like I can't
081control the market and I don't have a crystal ball so um yeah I feel like I don't at this stage I don't get to moralized when I told you I published that play and I got performed a few times but I was very young and I was like I am now going to be famous and I'm going to sit back and wait for the fame and I didn't know anything about the business of writing and like marketing myself and so that was a hard lesson and then I got so demoralized I didn't write for oh like 10 years wow I mean I I was always writing but it was just like not sending I have like a drawer I now have enough stuff from that 10 years to like write for the rest of my
082life but but yeah I had I wasn't writing really because I got so dejected cuz my load Stone wasn't quite in the right place so I feel now I'm like I don't care if nobody wants it I'll self-publish it it's fine yeah it's recalibrating absolutely and I think it's really important to remember too this is my like career design studio director coming on like go back to that why and come up with a mission for your life that is consistent across everything you do right so one of my mission statements just one of them is being a midwife of other people's dreams and my own right so like helping creativity be born right and I can do that as an author and with a book that's published or not published like I can join critique
083groups with my unpublished work and help other people's creative dreams get born right I can do it as a Creative Design Studio director as I help art students figure out how to get jobs and as a published author I'll also be able to do that with whatever I do for my author platform right so it's really important to kind of go into that place in yourself and be like this is my consistent Mission and even if I'm not agented even if I'm not published yet like I can still be doing this thing and succeeding in my creative life without getting someone else's yes you know you be your own yes the the Liz the Liz RZ is very strong so Beth and I know each other because we were critique partners and so I think
084you mentioned that word and I know because this is sort of like introductory level we should talk about that talk about what a crique critique groups honestly for me is absolutely the most essential thing and again I said my my my ballast is that I love the creative community and I just always want to be a part of it even if nobody ever bought another thing I wrote um so I love my critique group and Beth and I wanted a different critique group but we became friends because we would critique every month and get together and like formed that relationship and it is it's like just sharing works with each other is like refreshing so at least you aren't just writing quietly in like your room and nobody ever sees it it's like a very
085least I'm like my joy like what keeps me every month is like I know I have my novel writing picture book and like I'm going to submit 15 pages to them at least so like eight people are going to read 15 pages every month and if nothing else I've done that you know you're accountabil buddies you're accountabil buyable for lack of a better reference um but oh my god when I first uh so my my like switch into being a full-time artist was uh like basically my uh just like a little backstory my husband like sat me down at one point and he was like we're never going to be this financially stable ever again if you wanted to try going solo now would be the time to do it that is so kind and
086and I looked at him and I was just like why would you tell me something so scary this is horrifying and then like 24 hours later I was like let's do this um so I quit my job and and became a full-time freelance illustrator right before a pandemic somehow it was okay that's amazing yeah I got my I got my first major job right at like after the pandemic it started because I guess when that happened like everyone was like I've been wanting to write a picture book for ages now I can focus on it um that's true uh so like the fact that I was able to give power to them and you know do something cool for myself what was I talking about I was saying I was saying critique groups yes one
087of the first things I knew that I needed was a crit group um you know coming from art college which is not necessary but like that's where I started um and so I knew I needed that but like didn't really know where to obtain one I didn't know anybody in the area and like being able to find like first thing I did was look for trade associations um so that's how we all ended up like meeting through the scbwi um and uh as well as me joining The Guild but like um one thing I didn't understand about crit groups before I joined one was that it's not just a support group for your art and your work but it's also a support group for like all of the trials and tribulations of trying to get
088the work done and and going through that rejection and going through um you know the the down times and the art block and like uh the impostor syndrome and how much do I charge for this how do I negotiate for this how do I uh how do I do any of this um but everyone's kind of like in that General same situation maybe there are different points in their career but you're all focusing on that thing it's so easy for professional no for any artist to just work in a silo all the time and not realize how like isolating it can be well I think that ties with two things first we should I just want to I'm going to Define terms I'm the I'm the dictionary for the book but the scbwi is the
089Society of children's book writers and illustrators it's we're all members it's really like if you're interested in writing picture books to young adult like you should check them out and the GU is the graphic artist Guild which is the trade Association for the business side of being a creative yeah because I think like so if we're talking about how to get started in the industry one of the first things that you really need to do is learn about the industry because there's two HS to the creative arts whatever art you do there's like the creating the work and then there's the business of being a writer or an artist or an illustrator um and so you know most of us get into it for the one but you have to do the other one or
090no one's going to see your work and so these guilds are like a great way to learn about it it learns like what is the market looking for like what and we this is is some of the stuff um that we get asked a lot which is you know people come up and say that they have a picture book it's 2,000 words well like for and I again I'm going to speak more from the traditional publishing side they won't look at it if it's over like 500 750 is an extremely long picture book so if your if your picture book is 2,000 words you need to find a critique group and find a way to shrink it down or maybe it becomes a middle grade book or an early reader or something like that so
091that if when you start to like learn about the industry you'll be like oh no this idea was good but it's not a picture book it's actually like a I have picture books at home from when I was a kid that are 2,000 words long yes and they will also say that if when you send it out you usually send it with like titles like my book is like this and like this and they say they need to be less than 5 years old because they need you need to know what the Market's looking for now so yes Dr Seuss is extremely long but I'm going to actually say as a parent like when my son would pick Dr Seuss for bedtime I was like oh it's so long I I literally skip Pages yeah
092I did too like I love this book but like when you read it 25 times you like enough already so like I get where they're saying that the market needs something short and that's why it is so hard to write picture book because you're trying to write something 500 Words that has a lovable character an emotional Arc some kind of a plot with conflict well written it has to be unique idea like it has to have all the stuff that a novel would have but in 500 Words so that's when I said that it's like I write both and sometimes picture books are harder they are so hard yeah so you know these are all the challenges but this is I loved learning it and like honing the craft so that sounds like overwhelming like
093when you have this idea but you can get there you know you get there with your critique group you get there with like taking classes online and learning about the industry um and that can it's probably good Segway so like if you are interested in traditional publishing all of those bullet points I just listed you will have to meet or you will not get looked at like it's not even you put it in your query letter if your query letter says your book has 12200 words they won't look at it you know so if that is not for you and you know when you determine what your goal is um obviously with traditional publishing it opens some doors you have more opportunities to go into like public schools and stuff like that but if your
094goal if you weigh that those things in the balance and the work that you're trying to create you know doesn't fall in those then definitely uh independent publishing self-publishing is an option and I know you can speak to it from finding an illustrator you can speak to it from doing it like what don't you start absolutely what your question is what do I start when how do you start if you if you have a book are you asking like if she has a book or someone has a book and they want to find an illustrator um so so like what are what are like when somebody calls you yes with an idea what are what's some of your basic advice for them absolutely no just to get them started so good well usually I'll just
095usually when someone comes to me and they say I have a book and I need an illustrator I asked them well would you like to be traditionally or self-published and usually people hear those words and they have no idea even what that means right so then I'll be like well with self-publishing you are putting the money up front to get your book published right so that means that you need to have between 5 to 10,000 probably set aside to get this book off the ground um at least I'm like 5,000 would be a very very cheaply done book um so like you need to have like a nest egg or a plan to raise money for it um one of the two crowdfunding um you would have to choose like okay it's cheaper if you
096just do like an online version um it's more money if you want to actually hold the book in your hands later and depending on how many copies you want to produce so that's one way but you have 100% creative control over that project right you can decide that book is done and you there's no gatekeeper besides your finances to get that book out into the world right so you could even be like I just want to make that book for my grandkids and do 20 copies and I'm going to be happy and it's like that is a doable project for sure right now if you're not an artist you still need to pay your illustrator and that is a good portion of money and um I feel like Liz is going to be the best
097person to talk about that um but that's on the self-publishing side but then on the traditional publishing side you're basically saying okay I want my book out in the world to a larger audience I want a team of people helping me so I want the marketing team I want like you know editors I want this whole group of people and I'm not going to have to put money up front but you know what you are going to have to work very hard to understand the market do your research and get yeses from multiple people along the way before your book will see the light of day yeah it takes a lot longer I think it's definitely um you know you said you had a book come out in 9 months um mine was actually very
098fast for a picture and it was like 18 months um I know a lot of people with with traditionally publish books coming out where it's like 3 years 5 years and that's that's from being agented that's not like from you know when they wrote it that's like that's just how long it took because it can take two years for like a publisher to find the right illustrator and stuff definitely I'm going to look straight to the camera if you want to be traditionally published and you are not able to do both the writing and the illustrating traditional Publishers do not want you to come to them with an illustrated book they want to pick their own illustrator people in the I know if it's traditional publishing they want their own illustrator which is a very
099interesting experience I have to say a lot of people bulk at that I and I feel like when you write a book you always see like the illustrations the way the picture books that you loved as a kid were so I had this Vision in my head of very sort of like waterc colory illustrations and then I got my illustrations and they not like I was like I was a little bit like and then like and then I read it and I read it with the child and I'm I'm like no these are the perfect ones they're much more like Richard scary like even more colorful my book because it teaches the scientific method it's a little on the long side yeah and so I can still read it to four-year-olds because they don't necessarily
100get all the big words and stuff but the illustrations are like there's like Easter eggs I'll just be like when I start my book events I'm like everybody find the bird on every page and there's like lots of stuff and the publisher absolutely knew the right look for the book which I didn't so it gave me new appreciation for that Synergy and that's definitely something something with traditional publishing which you'd actually get If you hired an illustrator also that um they bring another part to it and you have to kind of trust that process to like yeah that it's going to come together and my editor CU my publisher actually publishes they always publish other books in China and the US so there were certain things that they're like that sentence and that like or
101that Dynamic isn't going to play as well around globally and I was like oh okay you know so it was it's an interesting process to work with that but you have to be willing to work with that like I think a lot of people I've heard stories of that want it the way they want it and that is not how it works in traditional publishing the publisher is going to want it the way they want it which is usually good you never even meet your illustrator in traditional publishing L she's in Spain I'm like I am here my publisher is in California and she lives in Spain my lives in Spain so like going back to the uh independent side of things um and and talking about cost especially like so yes can you get
102the book done fairly quickly not in time for Christmas but fairly quickly next Christmas give give me a year if you want it to for Christmas but like uh but you know much faster than traditionally published book one of the reasons that that happens is because like one of the things that's happening on the traditional side is all of the marketing strategy and you know like looking at translations and looking at like making like getting all those Partnerships together for where the book is going to be put and the supply chains and printing in bulk and all of this stuff when you're doing it on the independent side um you're in charge of all of that so the illustrations may only take nine months but the marketing you can get into public schools you can
103get into Barnes & Noble you can get into all of those local bookstores and and all of the the bigger bookstores you just have to do the leg work um so you know it's you know going to Book Fairs and and arts festivals and uh doing the networking and going to yeah it's Just Energy on your side it's a um uh Sweat Equity is a good word for it yeah so I will also just add on to that um I do want to dispel the myth that like you don't have to do a lot of work when you're traditionally published and I'm not just saying that I'm not just saying that because I no no no no I know what you're saying and that's absolutely right but it's mostly the marketing side because I do
104think that like there's there is like a misconception that like once you have a traditionally published book that again like I thought in my 20s I sit back and wait for the fame to come to me and that is not how it works so unless you are um Stephen King or James Patterson you're not going to have full-time people marketing your book you still have to do the leg work it's still expected of you and in fact again like talking the hard facts but like not everyone but a lot of mostly agents less so Publishers but agents when they look at people they will consider like how what their social media presence is not that you have a million followers but just that you're posting that you know how to do it when the time
105comes for me that's like the hardest but that's when I need my load Stone because I hate social media but like it's the job and it allows me to like get my book out to more people so I just have to find ways to do it in a way that's less draining like this this is not draining cuz this is a fun CH but you know I think it's like that is still going to be part of the job whether you're traditionally published or not I've actually because I have um the Anthology which was uh independently published and the picture book and like I did about the same amount of marketing work for each and I I probably made the same amount of money because like I get a much smaller percentage I sold a
106lot more picture books but I more of it goes to publisher which is like the Anthology I sold this all comes to me so like and I that's not I'm not the only person who will say that is that in terms of like actual the amount of hours you put in marketing for the return which is why I try not to think about my writing in terms of how much money I make that's a really good way to depress yourself absolutely you really want to like think do it because you're getting something out of it Beyond just the money because you know let's say you get a really you're traditionally published and you get a big Advance yeah $100,000 what you're rolling in it you can quit your job no because here's why not because
107that $100,000 needs to be spread out over the multiple years of the publication and the writing and so forth and $100,000 split over four years or five years is not a lot like so unless you know for a fact that you're going to be getting that 100K how many times in a row which you know doesn't happen it it's not going to be enough to sustain your life so you do need creative people you need a good day job one that helps with your creative life hopefully you know one that like you can pour stuff into it go home and then focus on your creative work we I feel like I feel like that's something cuz my so again I said I studied theater and writing I don't know why it was really funny I
108like my an undergrad my masters was in uh theater design and my my backup plan my uh like second degree or whatever was in um my major sorry was theater side and my other major was writing and I was like doubling down on the like safe jobs so then you know I ended up going back for my masters in interior design because it was like I wish someone in college would have been like you need to actually have a viable way to make money and still be creative and still like make space for your creative life because now it's great I'm actually I'm an interior designer for Endicott College so I'm kind of creative by day but like the other half of my brain and then I have it's a pretty good life balance I
109can write and I think yeah yeah and the the independent side of publishing is pretty similar in terms of the writing uh I'm sorry in terms of the the cost and the amount of money that you're getting in return um uh on average somebody who P publishes a book on say Amazon's uh KDP um previously create space uh independent publishing which is one of the most popular ways to self-publish um they sell maybe a th000 books maybe on average um and you're you're getting like a a percentage of the um like the price that people are paying when you're like getting paid for that so you're not getting like if you're selling your book for $23 you're not getting the full $23 you're getting like uh 30% maybe or 15% or whatever it is that
110you've set um and so a lot of a lot of people like think oh I have a lot more control over my finances if I do independent publishing but that's not necessarily true to depending on how much leg work you're going to put into it um so I often times the conversation that I'm having with people who are looking to self-publish it's like okay how much are you willing to invest and and do you care about making back that investment um this goes back to the loadstone this goes back to your goals is this a labor of love project that you just you really need to get this out into the world you want it to be around for your grandkids you want it to um to just exist in which case like that's really
111important to know you don't need to worry about whether or not this is going to make a profit or break even at all but if you are planning on breaking even or making a profit um you just have to have a plan in place you need to know like what you're going to do with the book afterwards and like how are you know think about that like when you're writing it too like how how are you gearing this um uh you know maybe you're you're not going to be sharing most of the time you're not going to be sharing your profits with the illustrator because in self-published scenarios you're usually playing a paying a flat fee to your illustrator there royalties um uh CU really no one no one's got time to like to to
112track their illustrator after the project is done and have to pay royalties that's that shouldn't be your job the illustrator doesn't want to deal with that it's fine just do do that flat Fe yeah leave that to the publishers publishing you do so like yes so when you publish a books I think I think if you um are traditionally published with a novel you get 10% typically it's like standard and like with a picture book you get five because five is for the illustrator five so just brass TX that's what you're getting back so 5% is not very much but I think um let talk about happier things too I feel like we're giving a lot of a lot of brass taex but I do want to say one one thing um which we didn't
113quite say we kind of skirted it which was um the cost which again I'm not an illustrator but I know um I know we talked about how much the books cost and just talking about illustration you guys can definitely talk to that I'm just going to throw in one statistic because the other Illustrated thing that we haven't really talked about um is graphic novels and I know there's a lot of market for it and um just for anyone interested in graphic novels I will say that I was talking to um kensaw who illustrates the graphic novels for the babysitters club she's also a Beverly resident and um I know she mentioned that one of her graphic novels took three years to illustrate so when we're talking about you know the cost of illustrators if you're
114thinking of graphic novel project asking someone to work on something for 3 years is a lot I actually had a publisher interested in a graphic novel series I wrote the script for and they're like we can't like illustrators won't commit to a graphic novel that they don't want to so if you can go and find one that really is excited about your project and ready to sign on and it was a book in series they like for the rest of their life to write the story then come back to us that was like the one exception to the don't bring your own illustrator yeah they cuz it's such a time commitment absolutely so so like one of the one of the best ways that you can kind of like prep yourself for what a picture
115book or graphic novel might cost to self-publish um other than buying like the graphic artist guilds pricing and ethical guidelines handbook which um is a great uh purchase but is really more useful for visual artists so if you're just an author um maybe that's not the book that you want to purchase but like maybe your illustrator might want to because it it has uh some empirical evidence about like you know the scale of what uh just uh projects can cost across the country um but I I think a really like just kind of like easy back of the napkin kind of uh way of figuring it out is think about like how long this project is going to take 9 months 3 years whatever what would somebody need in order to live on for that
116time you're you're talking about being more or less their primary client for a year so if you would pay like if somebody would normally get paid what like $330,000 uh for to to do like part-time work or whatever for a year maybe that's the cost of your book right and you know like when you're thinking about what's the cost per page which I really don't recommend I really recommend doing like like the the flat fee sort of structure um just because scope creep is a thing um which is where the project tends to get bigger and or things change and to account for all of that it's just more professional I think uh to to you know like figure all of that out oh this is really brast hacks I'm sorry but like I just
117get into it but like um you know I I have had people I have had people ask me like oh is $50 a page like you know reasonable price or I have $3,000 to do a picture book um and $3,000 is a lot of money to an author I totally understand that is a large chunk of change especially for something that they're like I really want this to happen and I've never done this before and this is what I've been able to pull together it can feel like a lot of money but when you're thinking about hiring somebody who is going to be able to help you out with um uh making your book like translate through another dimension talking about being able to have it marketable um you know they're uh they're likely going
118to be having to negotiate some copyrights in there um which we really don't have to get into this discussion that's really brast tax but um uh and uh and and and the fact that they're not going to be getting royalties on this book they don't get any of that profit sharing um think about how much somebody should get paid for any other type of job that would take that long you know you're talking six to eight hours uh per day or or per page uh no probably way more than that actually six to eight hours to do the finished work after all SK after all the sketches and everything else um all of the communication time most of the time isn't even taken up by just doing the drawing it's just it's through communication and
119trying to figure out what the right Vibe is and and what you know how to deal how to communicate properly with the client and and making sure all of those priorities are taken into consideration and then you get to do the drawings um so that's all that's going into that price it's not just the cost of a few hours of work in order to get a pretty picture illustration is not just a pretty picture it tells a story it's Dynamic there's a lot more going on in there yeah which I think it's definitely we should also mention like I know cuz I know like AI graphics and stuff like that like you know that's like a whole thing and I'm going to like I'm like just address the elephant in the room but like just
120like oh we are addressing that elephant AI is amazing and but like you don't get that it's an amazing to you don't get that Synergy you don't get that back and forth that aristic process you don't own it that's you don't own it you can't sell it so I think you know there's a lot and and there's way more that we can cover in this hour but I think um yeah I think too that if you work with an illustrator maybe and especially when you have that load Stone and maybe you're doing something just for like your family like your local community or something you want for yourself or something the great thing about um self-publishing or independently publishing is that you don't have to have a traditional format so maybe um it's you know
121three pages and they're Illustrated or maybe you can work with an artist to help you use your own family photos or something or like use your own creativity like go online and play with canva and come up with something and you know it doesn't have to be like it could be a frame story like there's you like you if you have a story to tell and I think like a lot all of us have a story in us and you it's dying to come out like don't let all this facts get you down I think like when we said like from we came to this topic it's like so many people come and they see this one path for their work and not everybody's story that they need to tell it belongs on that traditional
122path like we can there's so many paths and I think you know thinking about it that way is like really noral like book rout like it doesn't have to be a hard cover book for it to be a legit like very valid real valuable product um and making a poster out of your story or a framed thing or like you know a couple of illustrations that you can give to your children like those are amazing ways of making your story special and or even having it marketable without it being in that Normal book format like you can you can be more creative than that and you can maybe even find a format for your work that fits it better than a regular book like I I feel like a lot of people think that if
123it doesn't look like a hard cover book that was traditionally published then it's not valuable yeah that is so not true yes and you know this is just one podcast right we've touched on so many different things in this we've talked about like what to pay an illustrator what to like we we brush cost right we brushed on query letters and public traditional publishing and all these things okay so this is not like necessarily the one and done thing like if you're interested in this this is your call to like if we didn't explain something clearly or at all to go like oh I probably need to research that um put on your Hermione Granger hat and go to the library go to the bookstore start talking with people if you know anybody in your
124life who's written Illustrated books and have them out there just start asking questions and then join some of these professional organizations who can really get you started you can you can reach out to us too because we're we're we're setting up a class so like you know let us know if you want to like we can uh we're probably going to do with the Beverly library and like just like get people in go into this stuff break it down more slowly in a more organized way and like teach teach a more higher level class but definitely connect to the scbwi and some of these other organizations look it up online and actually too like because I always again people come up they ask these questions I feel like I Crush their dreams it is not
125the crushing of your dreams it's just that this is maybe the start of a journey not like like I've written this and then I will do this and then it'll get published and all that like I have actually loved over the last however many years like learning about the industry and like trying like I said I wrote like a graphic novel and then I wrote some picture books and I write novels and I'm like oh it's fun and I'm like I got feedback a year ago from an agent about a middle-grade horror novel I have and I was like I hate this book I'm never everyone hates it and then like I looked at it again a couple months ago and I was like oh God that was genius and I understood and I just
126felt like growth as like a writer and I was like that's it I'm like that was so smart I just wasn't ready at that point to hear it and it's like that Journey it's like just loving that journey and I keep getting better we keep getting better I think if there's one takeaway that we want people to have from this conversation it's use these use these facts to just like open your mind to the possibilities of your project and what it is that you want to make just like be curious uh be persistant and and be courageous and like all of these things like anything that feels overwhelming or scary or whatever like all of that kind of melts away if you're just willing to do those things um yeah like it we really don't
127want it to be discouraging right like one of my favorite things is for people anybody strangers to come up to me and ask how do I make a picture book I will sit down with them I will give them a half hour an hour of my time any anytime I'm asked that because it's one of my favorite questions to answer I want like one of one of the things in my load stone is like my goal is to make uh the industry better for the people who come after me coming into the industry right like that's why I do my volunteer work with a graphic artist Guild and whatnot it's um let's let's make this industry better for those those people who are coming in after me so like don't don't be discouraged ask questions
128like be curious and be brave yeah be be a just a little a little bit Brave I mean persistence really is the key in the industry if you have something that a story that you feel like is worth telling and you want it to get out there into the world yeah just keep working on it I think that so um I do have an agent right now um but I the book that we're working on sending to Publishers right now I came up with the idea for it in 2008 okay this is a much longer Journey than most people take with the book by the way um but I just wanted to share that like it it's not a shame to have a longer Journey than most if you are enjoying it and learning along
129the way so like you know it came up with the idea it took me a long time to write it because I'd written one other novel but this is kind of like the first novel that I was trying to put together with an actual story structure rather than just short stories kind of sewed sewn together you know and it so it took me years to do it and I rewrote it a bunch of times after one critique round another critique round and then in 2018 I queried it for the first time I got some interest but no offers and they gave me reasons so they went back to the drawing board and I revised it again and I queried in 2022 a little bit into January of 23 to to over 200 agents and this
130is my like if I don't get a yes on this thing I'm done with this book because I've worked on it for so long and sometimes you have to say that like you sometimes you have to just basically be like okay I've worked on this thing for so long that if it's not right for the world like I have other stories in me let's focus on some other things too move the elf over and put this on the shelf right exactly so I started working on some picture books to cleanse my palette of this you know novel that I been working on for so long and um I sent out the picture book query to just like about five agents it wasn't a very long it was not the hundreds that I had sented it
131out to before um after not getting any offers um on those and um that's when I heard back from my agent and she had liked the picture book idea but had gone to my website and seen that I had this novel was more interested in that asked me to send that in too so long story short there was a revision in there there was almost a year like now that we're finally talking about it maybe a year after I sent that initial packet in to her um and we're now sending it out to Publishers maybe a year later but it was a big process and I needed to be patient and persistent and but to be honest that year where I've been like working with on a revision for this agents and like getting our
132submission packet ready to go on publication went by so fast because I had already developed this like sense of patience and understanding that it's a journey and that I have multiple things going on that's taking my creative attention so it didn't feel heavy or too long waiting it just felt like no publishing is slow creative life is slow and I'm in it to enjoy the journey and and let's just see and you know what I got a lot of congratulations I I announced it formally just yesterday that I was working with an agent online so yeah y so like all of like my family and friends online are like oh my goodness I can't wait to hold your book in my hands and I'm like so earli that that can happen a couple years exactly
133I'm like minimum you have two years um and that's would be if it happened very fast um and so you know it will be some more time lots more waiting but you know that's that's part of the journey and you can do it not wa absolutely working marke we talk about traditional and um independent but there's always like hybrid too so like like I said I have some novels that I like they weren't right for the market at the time so I can sit on them and wait and see if the market turns around or where I at like now at least like one of them cuz I have a couple and I'm like there's one I'm like I just wanted out in the world I love this book I just want it out I
134know there's like people will read it I don't care if like it touches 10 people and it is true that traditional Publishers will not typically publish a book that's already been done but at least it's out there and I'm like I have other books in me I actually have other books already written but like even if not like just you know if you don't if it doesn't find its home then just like put it out there write the next thing or you know picture books like the good thing about picture books is they're short so like they don't tend to take 10 years to to write sometimes they do sometimes they do sometimes you don't find the way to fix them but like you can just write more you know so just like do it's
135all the different paast like you can look at it in all different ways there's no like one way I feel like we could talk about this forever um but maybe maybe we don't need to [Laughter] today um I would uh I would say like what are give us like a final takeaway from each of us uh just to kind of like wrap up the conversation let's start with you Beth yeah um I feel like the main thing that I want to say is like don't let all of these barriers that we've talked about be the things that keeps you from starting the process of your creative life and your creative journey I think it's helpful to have the reality but don't turn that reality as like a weapon against yourself to keep you from starting
136um I'd say find that piece in it that brings you Joy and follow that joy and work your hardest make friends and use those friendships to like make your journey go on and move forward yeah yeah and for you that stole my ideas um no she plagiarized my journey I was I was I was like in my head I was like find your joy oh she said that and then I was like find your people oh she said that too yes obviously like I think those are the two biggest ones but um yeah like find like it is like I if I can't have those two I'll say find small things and big things so I um have had some life stuff going on but I used to do this like monthly author profile of
137local authors I'm going to be starting that up again cuz I miss it so much cuz it's like it was something I could give back and like I knew that at least I would have one thing coming out like every month and you know uh my friend Susanna she does like an online Journal that's like 500 500 words no 100 words it's called five minutes sorry numbers but um you know and it's like a short and like I can just write one of those every once in a while like I like you have to have small Joys and big joys especially if you write novels and it if you're in trying on a traditional publishing route it's going to take a while so like find those little moments too and celebr celebrate all of them
138like never diminish yourself like I think it's very hard sometimes to not be like oh well it's just like a 100w piece like no you got a 100 word piece and it's really good and you know or whatever like I I'm here today I'm going to celebrate that like celebrate everything like don't diminish yourself like find your joy and then celebrate all the steps on the way yeah I would say um decide what success means to you and and and keep that like recognize that it can change uh be flexible but like have have have your reason for uh for persevering it like you're you're going to have hard times you're going to have those moments where everything seems insurmountable you're going to have I mean goodness depression is almost an occupational hazard for artists
139like like um so like there's just there are going to be those times where you have really hard stuff to overcome so find find what success means to you find that thing that you're going to keep striving for because it means so much to you that you're going to persevere anyway um and and and stay flexible absolutely yeah and know it's a craft so write one book and then write another and then write another and the right another and keep writing my my first novel that no one wanted I now read it and I was like yeah yeah that was the training wheels one yeah mine too oh man mine was a Sailor Moon fan fiction at least you finished your fan fiction I read a lot of Star Wars unfinished fan fiction long as
140it brought you toy so good uh Beth Betsy thank you so much for being here today in our lovely new space at the Beverly Arts Festival how can they find us after o um so look to the north star and why don't why don't why don't you say your contact information uh we we won't have up on the screen because we weren't really that well prepared that's okay but but you can rewatch this recording later on Beth's YouTube absolutely so um you can find me on social media at Beth price Morgan or at my website Beth pric morgan.com um yes I have an equally easy to find name which is Betsy Eller and all my social media is Betsy Eller so you can look that up and if that is does not stick in your
141memory my my book is my dog is not a scientist which is a little more memorable name if you Google that you will find me and definitely reach out with questions like we all said we love supporting the artistic community and we love talking to people who are starting the journey and uh I am uh parlay at Lizzy byd design.com that's Lizzy with an ie not a y um and you can find me on Instagram at Lizzy bydesign so uh yeah thank you so much for being here and thank you for watching uh come by sometime and see the new space and I don't know like you know get on the microphones yourself what are you waiting for stop being stop being so like worried about everything be brave and everyone just like be brave
142oh my God amazing but yeah thank you so much this has been awesome I think that's a wrap thank you [Music] in [Music] for [Music] for [Music] e for [Music] he [Music] for [Music] e [Music] hello hello hi I'm Kaye Blandon uh I'm from do Delaware and uh I'm a junior here at monserat studying animation or going to be sorry not a junior anymore a senior at this point hello I am Brianna Costa and I am also upcoming senior in martialart college I am from Rhode Island and my majoring is animation yeah uh today we're just going to be asking each other questions mainly about our like college experience as um art students um personally like how we've dealt with certain situations and other things we've come up with a couple questions for each other
143um I'll go first um did you have any an experience before coming to college for me definitely a no I have definitely touched a little bit with procreate on my iPad but that was during high school and my senior year and we just had to make a full-on capsule little film it was literally a one minute animation and it wasn't the best it really wasn't but overall I think uh monster definitely helped me out yeah with improving my animation skills in general how about you um I really only I I barely did anything it was like I dabbled in a couple little uh shorter animations um but other than that I really didn't know very much about it or take any classes about it I didn't know much about digital art until my like halfway
144through um my time at high school and even and then um I kind of stayed more traditional until my senior year oh yeah that's interesting how since you're transfer how how was your experience with monster so far yeah um personally I like it here um better than where I was I started off at Delaware College of Art and Design which as of this year is no longer an institution um and then I got my associates there and then I came here to monserat it's been a little bit different um I was very close to home obviously at Delware college ofart and design about 45 minutes to an hour so it's very different getting used to being here about being about six hours away um but I do enjoy it up here I like the area
145like Beverly uh it's just interesting the one thing I would say I miss is my friends that I've made uh have made a lot of good memories with people at dad so that's good um kind glad that you're having a really good experience with monster even though I was there since freshman year to now becoming a senior a lot things has changed especially since Co hit for firstman year now we have more of in-person contexts cuz now there's icon and there's now a lot of events now for with within Beverly and Beverly such a nice nice place at I really love Beverly um I would say why did you choose to go to moner I have a very specific story behind my story of how I came here so I was interested to hear about
146what yours was I defitely apped for a few but the one thing that definitely caught my eye for mon is their scholarship little program that they have cuz they literally just give me the most out of the other colleges that I play to and for me as a a poor poor family of five literally that was like oh that's like that's a good offer it's it's like uh for scholarship having a good amount of taking off and everything it really helped me a lot especially for student loans so what about you what's your experience me it was kind of a it almost like fate I um decads was only a twoyear school you only could get your Associates so I was looking for somewhere where I could go finish my um bachelors's and it just
147so happened to be that more College of Art which is in Philadelphia um has a portfolio day where there's a bunch of schools from Ringling to um Cal Arts I believe is also goes schools all over the country come to there um and I just kind of went you go from Booth to booth and they look at your portfolio um and I just so happened to walk by Monera and saw that they had no one there and I looked on Dad's old website and saw that there was they took all of my credits they had agreement with them so I kind of just went over and they looked at my portfolio really liked it and then my mom and I decided to come up for a tour and then we kind of just decided that
148this was going to be the place for me I didn't feel like going in a city again um so we came up here loved it and I've been up here for a year now yeah that's good oh I don't have another question oh jeez hold on give me a moment oh I can I can so steal this one um what event in college that's like really memorable For You especially within like moner oh specifically at moner yeah or defitely well specifically at Mona there there's um we had some fun trips at decad but specifically at monserat um so [Music] far I had I'm trying to think of all the stuff that we've done this year I icon was fun no my icon is great but um here my little ad for our Film Festival that
149we do oh yeah of course Mash mash yes I was one of the I was the producer for Mash this year if you don't know what Mash is Mash is our basically yearly monserat Film Festival um and we have student current students in alumni can apply and we show films at the cabbit it's free admission for people who come um and I it was funny that was also kind of our um the person who kind of took over for the seniors this year uh I was in a class with him and I was his producer for a film that we like a short film we did for one of our classes and he enjoyed working with me so much he pulled me into mash and said you're doing this now essentially so um it's a
150lot of fun I love the people I worked with there um um looking forward to next year we have some big plans um but I don't know if you're going to take anything away from this is come to mash please come to mash next year don't have a date yet uh we'll be at the cabin but um and come to Icon too icon's fun um but please come to mash please come to mash yeah I adore Mash it's especially even though I didn't go to it freshman to sophomore year maybe because I was definitely shy and like MH I just didn't want to go cuz I thought it was way too long and I was like I we I had other plans but it it was so good especially for seeing everyone's work like film
151work and animation and like that's so neat seeing everything in a big screen it's so good like that's I lit really love mash and like the postes and everything for event that I can think of for monat I'll say the Art Market we had an art Market uh collabing with the cab event and it was really fun I really liked like getting yourself as a monster student to able to sell your work and having a bunch of friends of ours with side by side and just Sly each other's work and just like it just gives everyone Joy it's like oh look at this someone wants my art someone wants those sticker keychains and everything it's I really love that that was so so yeah um do you have a favorite class and do you have
152a least favorite class that you've taken so far uh throughout your college experience because I can definitely think of a least favorite for me um favorite's kind of hard because I've had a lot of interesting classes I've taken over the year that is true like moner I had really really good classes that I quite liked the classes I don't like there's two of them I I don't know like life drawing I just didn't like charcoal so I just wasn't a big fan but for uh the first animation class that I had I believe other people had uh we just it was just awful I know it was just weird how it just played out for me I think was because since I was beginning into animation I think I stressed myself way too much out
153for Adobe anime but overall I think As I Grew as an artist I was like okay I'm going to handle this I'm I'm enjoying this now get in touch with it which I do I would say one class I do like a lot which is After Effects um just post production class so helpful and it's so good I love that class I was really nervous when I got into that class but then earlier on I was like oh my God I love this and I want to keep moving forward with this and it's so helpful especially for animation and compositing everything how about you I'll start with a couple of fav faes cuz my least favorite is a story um my I would say one of my favorites has been I really enjoyed my digital
154puppets class which you were in as well um but that might just be because of our professor we love Hannah umn we all love digital puppets I really liked um I I forgetting we did a lot of like uh it was with junga it's technically animation too here I took a previe different animation 2 class at my previous college uh but this one focused a lot on like a paper puppet animation and stop motion and just like traditional media and that was a lot of fun to kind of do and go like step away from a computer for a bit and do something with your hands um my least favorite class I took at delar College of er design and it was a film history class um not saying the content of the class is
155film history is very interesting it's very important to animation and to film to like anything and it's very ve is very very interesting um it was the professor that made it very interesting um I won't go into specific stories but it was a long day it was a long class we had it from like 9:45 till like 1230 and then we came back from 1:30 till like 4:20 it was long and in the morning we watched films and it was very hard to stay awake um and we had textbook chapters we had to read or not even just chapters it could have be multiple Chapters at some point um but it was very long and we were never told what was going to be on our like tests that were to make sure we read
156the chapter and in the end the tests were five questions and it was like so much content you had to memorize to the point where I would spend like at least s s or eight hours a week just reading a textbook and writing stuff down um I would recommend taking a film history class just not one where you learn from a book you know yeah no that's that's totally fair yes I have a question so like what would you say to yourself as it like your younger self or to like younger on audience what what do you give like tips of um I say it's like a someone who's younger and interested like if you're in let's say you're in high school um and you're thinking about taking art as a career um I would
157prioritize a lot of networking even like within your high school um and I would stay in touch with as many people as you can you never know who's going to be um who could be your cooworker record one day especially in the animation field um and I would recommend like I know a lot of our parents are kind of they question it and they worry like if this is a good choice for you if you should go into this and I would really like I would encourage you having a a deeper conversation with them if they're open to it um I mean you don't always have to go to I know we're college students animation is one of those fields where it's pretty prevalent where like a college degree is very important for animators uh
158but for some um degrees you might not necessarily need one um you know talk to your parents and see what's like logistical for you um or look into there's other ways you can learn like residencies and um just like internship programming uh just anything that can get you more it's networking again art is a lot of networking especially even animation where there's it's big Community if you have connections you're going to find a job um yeah again networking that that would be my biggest like advice to anybody anyone who's interested in in the Arts in general that's a really good TP like just networking and like being social just like having connections with other people or even be cam cuz there's a lot of things you can do with here but like yeah just really
159really social with your audience and be friends with anyone at least like you never know who you're going to be working withy in the future and then they can give you great connections and of course like for skill-wise and everything there's a lot of things out there now like YouTube and everything that has great advice to improve your animation and your artwork that you can like take that in cuz that's how I drew too cuz that for me in high school and middle school that's how I started drawing when I do animation so like having those things to give you support and like keep you going it really like pumps you up to be like yeah okay I can really really do this like even with the pen and paper you can just make an
160little animation with like a flip book I'd say that's been one of the hardest projects you've had to execute but was really rewarding in the end like even though it was really hard and it took a lot of effort you really liked the outcome I would say the project that we were into with um animation group projects with um the big group of other animators that was like a lot of fun uh obviously it was defitely hard cuz I was definitely helping out with After Effects and also with some parts of animation and then there was Al a little bit of maybe a little bit of miscommunication probably but overall it was like it was tough especially with After Effects and I was also still learning it and I was also still in the the
161same class during the same semester so it was like bunny heads with me like do I know this how is this going to look good but yeah I'll say that class cuz like during the end of it all just like seeing everything all together it turned out great like I think everyone who did that project was it was for phenomenal it was so good yeah how about you um there are a lot of projects that I put a lot of work into where I'm kind of just not satisfied with the end but one of the ones that I was satisfied with I would say is my uh paper puppet animation that I did um it was a during a stressful time here and I was able to execute it after some like persevering um but
162it's it was a lot of fun and I would do something like that again uh just making like a little something so delicate um like a paper puppet and making an animation with it I just it was really enjoyable um especially when you when you're in animation a lot of the focus can be on digital work uh and I I enjoy stepping away from the computer from time to time to doing some traditional stuff and that class provided a good way like example of something I could possibly do in the future that wouldn't be me sitting at the computer 24/7 even though I really do enjoy like the digital work and digital stuff um it's just nice to get a break from it yeah I can go do we keep on going yeah okay um
163I'd say your most memorable college experience oh it doesn't have to be a class it doesn't have to be anything specifically like something that has happened here that has been really memorable and fun and something that you'll kind of hold dear to you for the rest of your life I know for sure it's going to be liter my first week of getting into college I was a nervous wreck but overall just uh being social I was definitely a shy kid I was just like I don't know hello hi but it was really nice to like especially that first week of rotation just getting to know even the um 's they were so friendly and they were like oh yeah let's come on let's go and then of course with like the little pink fight thing
164happening it was a lot of fun that was definitely memorable because I was definitely nervous but then within that like short little week it you mean the confidence to be like all right I'm going to start making some friends here let's let let's poke around let's see that's it's definitely memorable and I plus that's how I met a good couple of friends of mine also that really close to and during that time so yeah it's really good yeah I um I would say some of my most memorable experiences were from my previous college um I the people that I met there I think I'll be friends with for the rest of my life and I still keep in touch with them to this day uh and it's like a we would uh come together meet
165in our uh my friend Colleen and Kayla's room and we would sit and we would play games and watch movies I learned a lot of different card I learned how to play poker in that room I learned how to play spoons I learned how to play taco cat goat cheese pizza which is a lot of fun and would make me so mad um and then I saw a lot of movies for the first time in that room um some good movies some bad movies um and we just had a lot of fun in there and I miss it I miss them um but I don't regret coming here either so um I'll hopefully be able to see them this Summer if not we'll we still keep in touch so yeah that's tell it's like a
166a a CO collection of a bunch of different things that happened um um just with the same people you know yeah I think I don't I think that's a big thing about college too especially in our college is the people that you meet um and the people who are you you're going to know for the rest of your life and I think that's a big thing with a bunch of like you know in high school still um I still talk to some of my high school friends I having that sense of community is very important to me so yeah it's to it's good definitely stay in touch and don't free afid just stay in touch even when you're graduating from high school just keep in touch like just say hey how's it going how's how's
167it going you want to hang just stay connected cuz that's really important like us human beings really do need that and plus as an artist you can get inspiration from your uh people that's around you then gives you satisfaction to keep on going yeah I think that's all the questions I had um yeah I am also s so I'm all good so it's been our experience as art school kids so far one more year left um and we'll see how that goes but thank you for listening yes thank you have a good rest of your day guys yeah [Music] face [Music] in [Music] for [Music] now [Music] welcome home beautiful beautiful discover computers now have primary control of critical vehicle [Music] functions Discovery Houston [Music] beautiful beautiful [Music] for [Music] oh my gosh welcome to
168this very special episode of on air we're live oh my goodness during uh artsfest so we're a lot of fun in this downtown location downtown downtown location downtown location downtown and the movie we did for this episode was the strangers released in 2008 yep yep let's let's let's go around what are your first thoughts on this oh mine yeah personally I loved it cuz I saw when I was very young I think honestly the acting could be a lot better it was very awkward at times but I think it's a pretty good movie I thought the acting was actually the best part about this movie or one of the best parts about this I I didn't really have a problem with the acting but yeah we can get into that guess I I felt like
169the acting was a little weak but yeah like like on like I didn't like the what was his name Jack yeah there was James James he was very awkward at times I felt like I didn't love him I think that was probably like a little intentional cuz it's like they've like he's just been rejected so like they're going to be a little awkward with each other oh yeah I felt like that part was good um but but I think the best actor is definitely Mike he he was great oh Glenn Howton yeah I thought it was guy in the sack but no it was it was definitely Mike because he his reaction to the car was like oh dang it he's like oh my God that's that's the most normal reaction what what what a
170big V just came through my windsh what that's like that's the exact reaction you would like have in real life like never speaking no I'm kidding I intentionally didn't say that a microphone I have one in front of me you leaned into his microphone it's like don't tell anyone I'm away from my microphone guys look I'm not going to say a bad one into my microphone but I'm going to say it no yeah no my microphone only picks up my voice we they only pick up our voices obvious it's that oh yeah of course um but uh what was your favorite part of the movie um I don't know about favorite part or like a part you like at least yeah I don't know it was H I think the ending was probably like the
171last scene my favorite part was when it was over I like the movie um but no I think I even I don't know what it meant but I feel like the ending was cool at least like the kids walking into the house and then I like how had the ending at the beginning I like I actually I don't really like that cuz it's feels a little cliche just be like end on like a jump that's my problem with the whole movie but I'll get into that if you were like like basically about to die you and someone like reached out to grab you you wouldn't be like yeah that was I didn't I hated that F I like when it felt cheap I was thinking more about like the part where they take the pamphlet
172yeah no that was a good part I don't know what it meant really the pamphlet was for like um it was like some like yeah it's no I know but then like the kids walking the house and stuff well cuz they're going around door too handing out the pamphlets oh I like the PO when it shows like the whole living destroy they only have three of them why would you you can't go around handing out pamphlets if you have three pamphlets we found the biggest PL in the Str mie you're aive so I like the part when it shows the kid um and James is dead on the floor and he's just staring K funny like at the beginning of the movie talking to the kid on the phone was like crying he was like
173there's everywhere I'm freaking out these kids were not freaking out he was literally looking at James like no I was talking was I was like if I walked into a house and I saw thatd be like oh my God not I'd be like oh my God but um I'd be more like the phone call in the beginning of the movie but um yeah see yeah I watched this movie yesterday with my dad and I did not like it it I did not enjoy it it's fine but it's just not that good the characters are so stupid that's my whole the entire time I was like I was begging I was like please just go back to James he's smarter than Christen like please he's smarter than Christ really he he was he was like about
174to go out and he told her to stay in the house that they both knew that the strangers could go were was when she was talking to the girl that literally had the knife and she's like um he's going to kill you when she has the knife and then she grabs like a and then he immediately gets like thrown into the house like he's like oh I had a comment about something at the start I like when the guy in the MK that she steps out of the room and she he like throws her into the wall very irrelevant no that's okay go ahead yeah I I constantly found myself being like don't go out into the Hall you know she goes into the hall and you just her into the wall and she starts
175like touching the wall on way um I thought it was a she like like when w when uh James walks into the room to find Kristen after the the guy had like just been there like at the very beginning and she's freaking out I feel like he takes it pretty well she's like there's people in the house and he's like Kristen there's no one here I feel like he was but then like once he's like the very first thing that indicated someone was actually there he like Snapped like into like uh I don't know man mode I was going to say defense mode man you're about to make me ENT man mode that sounds like some like weird commercial with like Axe Body Spray or something I'm I'm going to man out how it feels
176to drive for F50 the man man would be my supero name if I'm going man man no but um I feel like if like U Mike Glenn howerton's character had just said like when walking down the hall he said hello James it's me Mike or something he could have not he said hello before he entered the house which makes like no sense I would have been like where are you at dude wait yeah I would have been freaking out like where's my friend so when Kenzie and I were watching the movie together um uh the the part where James James shoots Mike um he goes we were Kenzie paused it and was like the the SackMan was probably going to be like dude that I had that kill dude you stole my Kill from me
177like that was we were we were joking constantly throughout when we were watching it it was really funny yeah that makes sense I remember the car crash scene where one of the girls drives the car right into them and cack because because um because she gets the car again after they get out well no that's just to make sure that the car is destroyed so they but then later they end up setting the car on fire any yeah no that was his that was I think that was the friend's car like M oh right but um so they make sure no there are no cars but um uh but what was it I was going to say uh the the the the car the when they ramm the truck into their car uh Kenzie was
178like the sack man's going to be like dude that was my car you're going to break my car man that was my Toyota dude that was my wck you wrecked my trck Toyota how are we supposed to drive but like he's not saying anything so he's just like I know that's what I'm he's probably like oh oh my gosh he like takes the ax he's just stares at the car like with the ax just like how are we going to leave guys we're in a bit of a pickle guys we're going to have to Uber our way out of here now we're stuck oh how the tables have turned now the strangers are stuck that's funny also another the the other thing about like that I didn't like is when the man in the sack
179is following him how do you not realize there's a guy with an axe follow they had the music on so it was like really loud so they can't hear the footsteps still I would have felt like hey something feels off while I'm walking he was also halfway turned like this so I don't know how oh yeah no I feel like if I'm turned like this like you could see some yeah yeah cuz especially movie does Bend logic quite a bit I like little the logic doesn't sense because I in the driveway when Mike looks away the girl's just gone and I was like what what is she Michael Myers yeah we were literally that like eight times keny and I we were talking when when she was standing outside the window and they were looking
180I saidas the window and they turn away and they turn back and she's gone Kenzie was like What if she when they turned back she was still running away I thinking about the best shot of the entire movie was the one when she was in the kitchen then he just come I made I went back like twice to be watch you were I think before that point you you were you weren't really watching the movie with me I wasn't even in the movie yeah you were doing something else but after that scene happened you were like hold on wait I need to go back and watch that scene again and we had we we had to like pause the movie I had to write down where we left off so she could go back and
181rewatch it I uh um I okay um I like how um before you really like The Strangers Like make it apparent that they're there um it's mostly like close-ups and stuff and then after you realize that oh oh no there's like people like in the house it starts being more wide shots and like it kind of makes you think that there's going to be something behind them I do like that because they're all like when Mike went into the house for example you could see doll face pop up like a little bit like if you look closely you can see them like in the wide shots at times and I do like that because it's like they're everywhere yeah I think the movie looks good to me my issue is mainly that it's you can't
182really see anything yeah cliche yeah at one point uh no my dad like uh the girl like Kristen was like in the barn and it was like really dark and my dad was like this is a dark movie and I was like yeah I can't see anything yeah no I was I was thinking that like the dark scenes are very dark in both ways I think I don't yeah no he wasn't he wasn't saying like dark he was saying this is like a dark and a and you're making a joke but I I understand their point is like they're under uh like like they're in a dark area so it's obviously going to like realistically it's going to be dark but like you still want your audience to be able to see like when when
183that happened I had to turn up the brightness on my computer mine was all way I couldn't see it no after after uh I made my kill joke get it killer um my dad was like well you can still see uh you can still see the girl and I was like yeah the outline of her I can't see anything else when she knocked on the door I know this was intentional but when she knocked on the door literally um my entire screen was black except like a sliver of her face on the side like I think it it's just a problem with my computer when I watched it but it was so like I couldn't see anything but then in the very beginning the tra traffic lights give off so much light that their entire
184face is red and GRE real traffic lights do not do that wire they so bright that is not how that works in movies a lot also I I know a very cool fact what are you going to say it I know a very cool fact oh what is it okay so you know you know how they say is tomara home yeah that's how they find out if they're home or not and then they kill them yeah I found that out like halfway wa what huh you know how okay so you know how the girl knocked on the door twice and said is tomorrow home yeah that's how they find out if the people at home because if we remember the ending the girl Christian says why are you doing this and one of them responds
185because you were home they only what does that even mean they only kill people if they're home like it doesn't matter yeah because if they're not home then there's no one to yeah that's the whole point so everybody everybody listening don't stay home no reason you were afraid of that the like the the director was like uh I I read I read a whole article about it when I was trying to find out where I could watch it before Kenzie uh got home but it was um uh it was like there was three main Inspirations there was like two like real like yeah Charles Manson like that and then it was just like direct guy own experience of like someone knocked on the door asking for someone that wasn't there to see if there's anyone
186home going to rob houses on that street so that scared the guy and so he made use that to like Inspire cuz it's like it's like random like real life kind of I do like how um James like says something like when they're like um Christian's like um why are they doing this and James is like it doesn't matter don't worry about that that's like kind of like the whole movie like like it matter no reason there's like no way and like even even later she's still like focused on the why but it does there is no why if I'm being hunted down I don't care why they're hunting me down dude yeah I I feel like that's the Le actually I found it funny when the girl said because you were home and the
187guy in the back looked at he was like he was like what did you just say but some odd and then I was and then I paused it and I was joking around with Mike and I was like he probably thought they owed him money or something he was we were like no I was like I was like why would you tell them that you know why would you say why would you tell them that I I also do like cuz I also watch the new one which is even worse than this one and no offense I don't know how I haven't seen any of the other I don't you like this one I do but it it's still a bad movie but um so the the new one that just came out the strangers
188chapter one it's also very bad why am I not in on the secrets that are happening uh wait did we did we say something anyway back to what I was saying um yeah so chapter one was bad but I miss in um because they for some odd reason the killers in the um new one have like beanies on and stuff which I'm not personally a fan of because I like that you can see that seeing the hair feels more realistic because in the new one they just have like beanies and it doesn't feel like realistic enough and also I don't like that I love in this one that they take off their mask so they can see their faces at the end because we don't see their faces they never show I mean the act
189the people characters do I watched a I watched a kill count on this and then and um you can see glimpses like I like that's like the final moment where you realize there really is no hope because the strangers are like they don't care that they that's what I like about it yeah and then like at the very end when she was crawling to grab Mike's phone he just walked over grabbed the phone and left her to like bleed out like that I loved that because it just shows how like kind of Twisted an evil like they're not there to kill them they're there to just torture them I mean they were there to kill they they they definitely definitely was to kill them but they like tortured them like it wasn't very good that
190is what they did that's what I did like it it wasn't like a fast Lasher film it was like more intense and the scenes were more like like I I one scene that I wanted to mention like when she was changing the um like taking out the uh smoke alarm and she put it down like she left it on the floor and there were multiple shots of it just on the floor and I was like what what's the signic that's going to come back in some way I was like they would do that I was kind of disappointed that it didn't like help the people in any like help no it was just to show that they were they were in that house like like that like we already knew they were in the house
191well it's it's to like reveal to her that they that they were in the house yeah also I just also remembered something you know like when the guy slams her into the wall and drags her away and then it's morning how come she was back in her dress they put her in her dress CH they changed her they changed her for what I feel like you could have guessed that I did not you could it's not a very hard you literally asked that while we were watching get it I still K you it's not a very literally went wait how did she change outfits and I literally went K they changed her they changed her Kenzie and she was like huh that was it she completely they they woke her up and was like you
192can change your outfit we'll let you but she was like okay thanks okay thank you I need to look good but but then you got to come back and tie yourself to the chair I all I my I had a question about um like why uh like when she was talking to one of the girls in the thing uh the one of the girls was like picking up the the wedding ring case and like looking at it I like why I don't know like I understand you like I I didn't get that I know but like she was already wearing the ring wasn't she or did she leave it I think she probably might have taken it off yeah I I thought she had been wearing it pretty sure in um in uh the scene
193where they're like torturing them and about to kill them she's like wearing the ring but I'm I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure it was on the wrong hand I think it yeah you're supposed to put it on your left hand yeah but it was on her right hand and I noticed that the killers are The Killers put it on and but before they kill him they're like oh wait a minute wrong that's better switch it that's better I think it'd be really funny maybe was to taunt her like like oh you rejected this guy oh you can't get married cuz we're going to kill you oh you can't get mared should have gotten married stupid stupid and that's why you get married that's why you get married that's why you don't go home
194at night yeah yeah stay at a hotel and get married Mar yeah nothing bad happens in a hotel shining refence also can I say at one point um James was uh talking about um how he had never gone hunting with his dad but then he shot Mike directly in the face know I feel like that takes a little more than like hey I don't even know how to shoot this thing oops head shot yeah I feel like that like that's like like like he had to get the perfect spin like the way they did I I remember Michael like jumped actually was quite funny wait which one when they shot him you got so scared because you were like you I was like no it's a Michael not another one they're all gone they're going
195extin no I'm kidding they're an endangered spe an endangered spe guys save all the Michaels save the Michaels save the Michaels um get that printed on a T-shirt oh yeah I'm going to get that printed also another thing that made me very mad was when they kept splitting up and then also when she says go in the house she starts she sits on the porch and just starts crying like girl you're not safe out there and then she breaks her ankle and it was I don't know how she did that like I was looking away when she did that so I just looked back and she was just like like no I was watching the entire time she tripped and fell and then she screamed out in pain and I was like what did you
196trip on you didn't even show what she tripped on she's she just so clumsy at the start when the before um what's his face is there James she's like she runs to the room and then she yells like go away or something I'm like why would you give oh sorry man oh oh you don't want me to kill you okay I'll I'll I'll come back I know was like that I didn't she starts talking to the girl with a knife pointed at her and she's like my my boyfriend's going to kill you and then she grabs a butter knut they'll know where you are I don't think it was it was pretty short um James was like got caught by the other guys and um they were like dragging him on the floor and he
197he was like run run and run and then she runs into the room and she's pounding on the window and she yells let me out like you're giving away your location are you stupid hey how about you like grab the lamp something she had a knife in her hand and she didn't even bother trying to break the window with it like I know it wouldn't have done anything but like it's still trying she's like wait they're not here and then goes out in the hall like I would not go out in that hallway but she's she's pounding on the window yells let me out at the top of her lungs and I know she's upset but like come on girl use trying to flush myself down the to the window's not open I don't know
198and then um and then and then James yells and she yells uh then she yells back Jamie like like again you're yelling giving away like she's really stupid throughout this whole entire movie both she even try to unlock the window I'll be I don't know I feel like all the characters were really question did she try to unlock the window at all or did she just she didn't she just started pounding on the window let open but like this is try this is now a Christian hate podcast she's stupid yeah we we don't really like CHR this we don't review movies anymore we just talk about how what did you say I didn't hear Christian hate podcast yeah cuz we hate her sure huh huh well my mom's name is Kristen so get any here
199dang it I no oh I messed up what what dude all of my all of the notes I wrote for this movie was because um Michael doesn't do very well with scary movies um he was SC I could tell um so I was very stressed throughout the entire movie but um um but uh but but so so I wrote things like like what is no I'm looking at my notes Theo um I wrote I wrote I wrote something at one point like um where was it not her getting not her just appearing stop and then but but I never specify who I'm talking about in the notes it's literally just like stop what is he doing or how did he get there you know like it's very like unspecific about what I'm talking about and
200I have no clue what any of these notes mean also this was like I I had watched um not watched I had just taken uh melatonin to go to bed as well so I was like half asleep throughout the entire movie so all of my so like well autocorrect fixed most of the things that I wrote there's still something like um like uh wait uh there was one it's like the ni I was oh my God yeah yeah yeah um make life in the oven not hering stop not her wait a pesing what does a pesing mean I tried to write aing oh dude me when I a pesing out of nowhere I think the character literally ping right now me too dude they just could have been a lot more smarter with this like
201when the guy was chopping down the drawer James picked up a chair and just threw it at the door yeah that was funny oh no they're breaking in oh no I my main issue with this movie is that I feel like it just it's just kind of there I feel like there's not much that's like super special about it cuz costume design is like cool but it's not like like super insane or like even that memorable it's like a bag over the head and a doll's mask I thought the bag over the head was funny it It's it's cool but I feel like it doesn't like I've seen it before and other stuff all like so much of the cool stuff it's just a very basic like yeah concept I guess that's another issue I
202feel like the the the the concept had like a good idea going and if they had worked on it a little longer and like had like um done some more like interesting and like uh it just feels like very other than like how like other than the Strang it's pretty straightforward read the I've seen all I've read something about it I really like the idea of the fact that the killers aren't doing this for a reason like that's a nice I like that concept I think it's like like like in scream when they're like we like oh she wants a motive never mind I've actually I've read something uh you Tak as I just said I'll repeat it again cuz no one was listening I've read something in a scream at the end of scream
203when they're like oh she wants a motive well it's scary when there's not a motive loves to oh yeah but this is on a scream podcast we did that already yeah we already did that I know but I'm connecting the two movies why do you have a problem with me talking about scream so much you're like this isn't we're not doing scream we're everyone knows when you're talking about one movie you're not allowed to talk about any other movie every other movie is bad thought we went over this Theo yeah come on sorry yeah yeah you got to take that mask off but that is I was going to say put it on that's the issue hide that face hide that yeah there you go um girl like a mustache mask helps me bring up
204this point but I feel like other slasher films they have something to it that makes it recognizable like uh Freddy Krueger's uh sweat sweater or his hands his claws Jason Ro's mask U Michael Myers's costume Michael and literally I'm not even kidding first off to get a sack over the head you just go get some potatoes and then cut it up and then those doll mats just just look like they just went to Spirit Halloween like prior to killing them and just Spirit Halloween trip dude we should do that dude that's that's a great idea we go to they were so unprepared to the point the guy had with the axe used their own AE I'm so smart like they literally just I'm not even kidding I feel like they just go door to door
205to find out if someone's home seen three movies with a sack head killer now yeah Fear Street uh Friday the 13th Part Two and this movie anyway it's just the unprepared we're should wrap this wrong oh yeah what your final ratings of the movie final ratings um I'm going to start for this one actually um I'll probably give it like a I'd say like a three out of five it wasn't I didn't hate the movie I don't think it's it's not my favorite whatsoever um uh it was a pretty like it it it got me you know it did its job for me personally cuz I'm a little wimp uh but so I was stressed throughout the whole thing some of the jump scares were kind of good that scared me what did he do
206he tapped me on the shoulder just like the go on the car went oh yeah uh but yeah so for me it did its job uh but it's not like the greatest mindblowing thing ever so a three out of five from me uh Theo you're next 2 and half out of five very middle of the road didn't really do anything to surprise me so you could that's the issue I feel like I could predict anything I I kept making jokes so I thought it was like very funny can ask Michael about them toward you that's why I wanted to originally watch the movie with you because I knew I was going to get scared and not be able to see every time there was a jump scare I st like laughing yeah I couldn't go
207to sleep yet I had to join the call and hang out with someone real quick all right yeah I was going to say two and a half too I'm going to give it 3.5 a little more just because of the jokes I made cuz they were funny at the time like the only good part about this movie was me the only good part was when I watched it because I'm awesome all right fine four 4.5 uh four guys I'm a better now that I thought about I thought about it I made this movie the best 5.5 out of five watch the best is the real experience anyway watching it with me was the Delight I'm the real movie okay okay okay okay guys the real movie was the friends we made movie yep maybe the
208movies movie movie movie wo okay we're doing we're doing Back to the Future yeah love that movie wow wow wow wow you got on no more clapping oh the poor people on the street oh I forgot about them you must think there's like an earthquake going on wo that noise we're going we're going to we're going to go now cuz we want to enjoy Arts Fest you enjoy it too you enjoy it go to Art Fest everybody yay love Artest there's still couple hours yeah something like that an hour go enjoy artfest have a great day see everybody at stop by say hope be out there in a minute yeah we're going to be loose no they're setting us free me [Music] out we still I don't know when itop going [Music] one [Music] hi
209hi and welcome back to the Beverly Arts Fest I'm Liz de Fury I'm the community engagement manager at bevcam and if you've been watching throughout the day we've had vendors come in for interviews we've had kids from the cabet we've had monserat students we've had children's book illustrators and authors podcasting all day so we've been streaming since 10: a.m. and we're getting down to the end of the day thank you so much for sticking with us or if you're watching the recording thank you for uh thank you for watching from the future today we've got um another wonderful vendor here from The Beverly Arts Festival Heidi would you like to introduce yourself hi I'm Heidi Bissell I'm a bevu resident and I have been doing the Arts Fest for many years and it is just
210one of the best festivals around and it is today has been one of the best festivals that I've ever attended it is the weather is great whole of Beverly and surrounding communities must be here because it is p there's so many people lots of dogs which are always my favorite kinds of people um and yeah so uh you've brought a couple bits of your art here and i' I've been a big fan because I've been living in Beverly since 2020 and obviously there were a couple of years there where the Arts Fest wasn't happening but um when I got to go to my first Arts Fest your art really stood out to me um so do you want to talk a little bit about what kind of art you make so sure so I started
211out I don't know how many years ago 30 years ago and I've always been creative I've always been a maker and um I used to make for my 29 grand um nieces and nephews 20 I'm sorry 29 yes at the time there's more now but I used to make them up um see things like towels with their names and all beach themed things and then people said to me how do you should start selling that and I went okay I'll give it a try so it's it's evolved over the past so many years and now I'm um been going with mostly Seaglass and seashells and um but then again it's invol evolved um to beach resin yeah and and this is a fairly like new sort of uh Trend within um within like the Mak
212space uh how did you get into starting to do resin well I I saw it online and um the chuder boards really caught my eye so I do a lot of different chuder boards and then I just said hm I wonder if we can get this on a glass so I experimented and things didn't work out but I kept at it and and this is what came about and I am so thrilled and they're one of my best sellers and and I wholesale them a lot and the bport um Hotel carries my line as well as the candles they have them in their dining room and so you went from not being sure if you should sell your work to having some pretty major uh Supply deals what what has this journey been like for
213you as as an entrepreneur as a creative professional who you know like yeah what has that been like it's it's really been exciting it's very hum have people love your things and I'll tell you it's it just is very humbling and um so I'm retired now from The Beverly school system for about 5 years so I did it part-time for a lot for many many years but now that I'm retired I've I've gone full-time and really spread out and that's how the wholesaling and things like that so I wholesale to like North Carolina oh wow Maine New Hampshire all kinds of different places so and and then I play with my grandkids in in between so do you still make them gifts I I do I do make them and those are keepsakes those are
214those are really special that you like handmade gifts like that for them it is unique and you know you're not going to find these on Amazon or anything like that which makes it that much more heartfelt you know to the recipient so um yeah I love what I do I lived in I've lived in Beverly since I was six right at the beach I I was going to ask where does the beach inspiration the passion there come from y I grew up on Ocean Street and I was at D Street beach and Independence Park almost my whole life and Lynch Park and um so that's where it came from oh very cool so what has your day been like today like uh well like I said this fair is amazing today I I can't even
215tell you how amazing I mean the weather's cooperating it's not too hot it's not you know people aren't at the beach and and coming later everybody is here today yeah and I truly have almost sold out my whole entire that's really impressive it's yes and my my granddaughter and daughter are Manning my tent right now but um I have some fairs later in the summer so yeah I was going to ask I'm going to be really busy yes yes I'll be at um the Manchester um Essex by the Sea and then I do the Beverly High School one in the fall and um how do you prepare for shows like this uh like clearly these are all handmade so what's like the amount of time or like where do you work uh it just it
216feels like it's something that would take up a lot of space to make these things what does your process sort of look like when you're getting ready for a show you know you're going to be selling large quantities of stuff so right now we all my resin is done in my basement because it does take up a lot of time you have a big basement I do have a big basement I can only imagine and um is it a finished basement or is it I'm on the other side so we've cleared it all you know everything is set up around and then I have all my equipment in the middle because it takes these um a a good day so I'll get these going in the morning say and then I'll go do my my
217Seaglass and um other pictures because I can't touch anything for a good 24 hours gotcha and any of my resin pieces they have to sit so you kind of have to know when to get things going and um and then I go upstairs online as well I do I have a Shopify account and um I'm on Facebook and Instagram and um but word of mouth has really um been big for me and I have a lot of repeat customers and I just when they come to visit it's just so exciting it's says I have your pieces or I have that and um I've been teaching a Seaglass class in claer really and um they called me um from the uh soer free library and asked me if I would teach so I I've taught a
218couple of classes the last one I I taught somebody said I have that and then somebody else went well I have that piece and I have that piece too and it was like oh my goodness you know it just it's kind of surreal actually really is so yeah like are there parts of it that like you couldn't imagine yourself doing or there parts of it where you're like no I I thought I could do this but I just needed I didn't know how well I didn't think that I would be able to go to someplace and bring a piece and say would you like to carry this in your store you know I mean that takes a lot of guts and you know sometimes they would say when we'll think about it other times it's
219like yes we would like to do that you know and yes there are some NOS in there too just like you know things don't always work out the way you want them to a lot of courage to do that so that's where it was like put yourself out there in that way putting myself out there yeah and uh and that was hard for me because I'm pretty quiet or I think I'm pretty quiet but then I don't know I just you just do it I just find myself and it's easier the more you do it the easier it gets so and I just love it all that's a really good that's like just kind of a really good piece of advice for like anybody who might be thinking about right I don't know making their
220passion into something bigger and when I do my Facebook lives you know it's like talking and they said just do it doesn't matter just be you you can Mumble through it or you don't have to be perfect because not everybody's not perfect it's you so thank you so much for sharing this with us thank you so much for having me do you want to tell people once again who you are so I'm I'm Heidi Bissell I live here in Beverly I um my name is designs by Heidi b/ Coastal creations and uh you can find me on Facebook Instagram Pinterest um Shopify and um and you can actually call me and come to my house and um get you can see her basement well I'm not quite sure I'm ready to show you my basement
221but I do have a little showroom that that people call me and say this Heidi I need a gift can I come over like absolutely so thank you so much thank you so much for having me we've had uh we've had art uh art Spenders coming in just all day and it's been really a treat to speak with uh speak with these creative professionals and just hearing all of the different stories about how they've gone from starting a passion into making it a reality uh has has really been a treat I hope if if you missed the morning session of uh of uh the Walt kosmowski was interviewing the artists uh earlier today then please go back to the recording and see that I think we've got another guest coming up um I I I
222believe is is quite a special guest and uh oh and she's in bright Sunshine yellow hello I'm Liz I'm Ally nice to meet you Ally and who did you bring with you today who is this I um I crochet for the thing and I made a giant potato for the craft fair he is the most adorable potate ever thank you for bringing him in to show um so you want to tell us a little bit about your company um so my I started my business about less than a year ago and this would be my second uh craft fair that I go done and how's it going so far really good I'm almost sold out really how how did you prepare for your craft show like did you did you make a lot of the
223same thing a lot of stuff I don't just like a lot of like a lot of different stuff and and you're almost sold out that's incredible um and just to be clear uh your company's name is hookline in ginger which is adorable um and how did you get into like this is this is huge first off I'm super impressed with just like the the texture and the quality and just like you guys can see this is this is like a little potate um how did you get into crocheting um at my Camp I learned from one of my like leaders there and then I really liked it so I started making these yeah yeah um did you start off with like such big yarn or like with like kind of like smaller yarn like this
224size and about how long does it take you to make a creature about like an hourish for one of this size or like a little thing or it depends on like what I'm making and if I took my ADHD meds I didn't I also have ADHD hey yeah um uh I'm really impressed that you have the patience to to crochet in this does it really like does it help you focus or yeah um do you do other things while you're things while I'm crocheting like what like watching TV or just like calling on my friends so it's just like a something for your hands to do while you're doing other things yeah that's really awesome as as a fellow ADHD yeah I know the feeling well where you're trying to focus and then to have
225that that thing you can be doing um what sort of things have you really enjoyed making um I made like seals like Shubert the seal yeah were you were were you inspired by Schubert or do you just just like seals I was inspired by shoeer oh cool yeah um what sort of things do you think have been the most pop your most popular definitely sht definitely shert yeah are there uh patterns that you're really hoping to try out um making like turtles oh and is that I feel like that would be a complicated design how how are you envisioning that like putting that together I would just find a pattern and just try to follow it as closely as I can okay and um do you do you feel that like you have to practice
226something a lot or um it is it has it been like tell me a little bit about like how you've been learning how to get do better at this um I learn well I was at my camp for four weeks so I had like a lot of like kind of one-on-one time with my like leader so I got like the basics pretty like fast so then when I got um home we like a kit to make like circles so I could make stuff like this instead of just like squares you make it out of circles yeah like it starts in a circle and then just goes you know round oh okay how do you keep track of like when you need to start uh bringing it down or bringing it back in there's like little
227Stitch markers the like hold like this is like the first Stitch of whatever round oh cool okay um have are you thinking about expanding the kinds of stuff that you do or how many festivals you do like are fun with the festivals yeah how did you like that's got to be a scary thing to like just start to put your work out there and see if people will like it yeah well we started like on like social media and people started liking it so we did like a winter craft fair to start than this one so you did winter first yeah how long did it take you to make everything you needed for this Festival uh I started after the winter festival which was like in December so about like 6 months of making it
228so when do you think your next Festival is going to be uh the I'm probably going to like try to get into the high school like Beverly High School one and that one's in November November Okay so your hands are going to be really busy between now and then yeah that's that's really cool just like your your diligence for that um what inspired you to to try and you know turn this into a business I know you said that people were liking it on social media well my friends like when I was make I was making stuff at school cuz I just um was bored a lot of the times my friend suggested I should start selling them and so I did and now I'm here what was your reaction when they first suggested that
229you should sell them I thought they were just joking yeah yeah but then the a lot of other people keep like suggesting I should sell them so then I started selling them where did you start first I mean uh you said that you went to a um a winter Fair uh was that your first time ever uh selling them yeah and how many how many like things did you bring did were you working for 6 months before you did that one like probably a little bit less like four but it was also a smaller one like a lot smaller than this and uh you felt that uh people just bought up all your stuff they really liked it they did how do you feel like having another it sounds like this is another successful show
230for you yeah it is how does that feel really good does it make you want to do it again yeah um you think you're going to be able to make more things for next time or looking at about the same probably a little bit more do the big things uh are they more popular or the little ones um well I had like very little small chickens that I was making into earrings and keyin which you made earrings yeah that's really small yeah oh wow which will really popular if be like how do you stuff really little ones uh use like a very like small amount of like the stuffing I forget what it's called and you just put a very small amount of in it okay what inspired you to make earrings out of crocheted
231little chickens my friend um she always wears like crazy earrings and she used said asked if I could make her earrings so I found like like a small pattern and I G gave it to her and or I made it and gave it to her and she suggested I should start selling them I do oh so it all started with a gift yeah that's really sweet yeah do you like to make things as gifts a lot yeah okay cool uh well thank you so much is there anything else you'd like to share with us no all right uh why don't you introduce yourself one more time so people know who you are and where to find you I'm Ally and I um own the business of hookline and ginger and where can people find your
232stuff other than at the Fair Instagram that's okay thank you so much for joining us today I really appreciate it thank you that was Ally she's uh her little potato is wonderful I'm going to have to stop by the booth before the end of the show um I think up next we've got Ed La plant and uh I'm very excited to here about what he's got going on we've been talking to vendors all day and we're continuing to juu right up until four o'clock welcome hi I'm Liz hello Liz thank you foret you and am I am I saying your last name correctly La plant yeah la plant La plant would be the traditional the plants that I assume you make your products out of well we utilize a lot of uh essential oils and
233natural um yeah natural plants natur natural um products you know Mother Mother Nature is our original medicine cabinet so that's true uh do you want to um say exactly what your company is and what you guys make yeah so our company is called one Earth body care and uh we make natural sustainable uh body care products so for example things that are going to that we feel are going to move the needle or have the potential to move in the needle in terms of um you know what's available uh from a sustainability standpoint are really going Beyond sustainability to think about you know sustainability really means to do no more harm right but we all know that we're in this in this uh tricky place and time and we need to we feel like you
234know we need to be looking beyond that and looking at at how can we take steps to be regenerative and do more than just Do no harm but um you know begin the repair process and so um you know so we're so we're we're trying to make uh products that are going to perform really well as well as anything else that you can get on the market but do it without the the harmful negative consequences of um you know for example Transportation costs and plastic packaging and things like that you really look right down into like the supply chain and everything not just what what what what uh ingredients are we using yeah um so I I have an idea of what maybe inspired you to do this but can you tell me a little
235bit about like the the story behind how you decided that this is what you wanted to make and and how you wanted to go about doing it what inspired all of that where does this passion come from yeah okay so um in full disclosure you know my I my wife and partner is an environmental scientist and Annie alter and there's a there's a lot of detail on our website about sort of the those uh stories that that sparked her initial interest um but uh you know when we got together um and we organized one Earth body care in 2017 um you know she was she's always been a maker and always been the kind of person that wakes up in the middle of the night worried that we're not doing enough to help the environment
236to help protect the planet to help folks you know uh realize that there are other options you know so for example our shampoo bars right most shampoos that we've been buying all of our lives are 80% water and the 20% that's not water um often times has harmful chemicals has parabens and silicon that build up on our hair things that benefit the manufacturer but we don't want in our bodies we don't want polluting our planet and you know scaling up in ways that are destroying the rainforest so when we decided to make shampoo bars um we we realized we could you know we could make a concentrated bar that would last as long as 24 ounces save tons of Transportation costs save tons of plastic and and and give people an option that would would
237perform really well for them they don't have to pay more for it they don't have to compromise and they can you know they can uh and get uh you know invest in in the products that they're using and the things that we're doing in our daily routine in a way that's going to be more regenerative and more sustainable that's wonderful um is the Beverly Arts Fest I I assume one of many festivals that you do throughout the year uh what is your primary way of like getting your product out there good question yeah so um we are we do a lot of shows like the Beverly Arts Festival we do like so examp for example uh Annie is in the doing the quiche uh Balloon Fest the 3-day Fest right now this weekend so we
238have two kits and we go in different directions on many you know weekends during the season but we are also talk about efficiency yeah that's great but we're also you know trying to grow our business on our website onear bodycare dcom all of our products are available um for purchase online and we can ship to you wherever wherever you're at um we have some nice uh you know economically minded um programs like our recurring um subscription program where you can choose your frequency and save 10% on your purchase order by making it a recurring uh purchase and so so anyway three channels our primary channel is shows we're growing our website and then we're also looking for um for retailers Retail Partners who would carry our store so we don't have have we we don't
239have a retail uh store of our own we have a commercial yeah we have a commercial interested um I'm really interested in what sort of challenges you faced in being able to make these products and considering the whole supply chain that that ends up with these products what sort of challenges did you face in developing all of that and I I'm I'm really impressed with your uh your ab ility to to succeed in that sense so um would you like to speak a little to that um so the question is what sort of challenges have we had in sourcing our products you know sustainably how did you overcome those yeah um well uh we've done a lot of research um we have partnered with um other groups to help in the past um uh we
240uh we utilize um well we've been working for the last year or so with a um with a a marketing consultant who has really helped us um you know to put us in contact with some a wider range of suppliers um but really it's been you know the the magic is has been in the fact that you know my partner an is a a sort of of a meticulous researcher and a meticulous you know scientific formulator and she's able to she's able to dig in and just really absorb and find a lot of information quickly and and um you know help find good sources for for ingredients I know that takes a lot of work that's a lot of hours reading the science and the W and the white pages and you know to to
241the white papers to know you know what are the what are the some of the better practices that can be utilized for um you know for formulating and sourcing very cool how has the show been for you so far oh it's been lovely yeah they've had a great response um we found a lot of folks who um have uh you know they were aware of us and they they learned on our website that we were going to be here and they came you know they came and part to see us and and we've met a lot of new folks too so oh good um so you feel like word of mouth has been a really strong uh push for uh returning customers and yeah word of mouth and then you know social media as well
242you know a lot of folks you know read the the directives and the the communications coming out from groups like yours as well as you know searching you know we get a lot of uh traffic that comes to our website just from our direct search and and they you know they wind up on our website and then they'll come and look at our event Tab and find out where we're going to be okay and uh what's one of your favorite products that you make well let's see um we have you know I saved the tough questions for the end yeah tough ones um you know I talked about the shampoo and the conditioner bars they are uh they are really popular and I think you know Rel to the traditional liquid products they really are
243um you know exponentially more beneficial both to our bodies and our extended bodies you know our mother earth yeah and the and the kindness that they that they uh are able to produce um you know right now seasonally our our um our natural bug repellent is really popular we have a natural called bite me not that um provides longlasting 3 plus hour protection from mosquitoes and black flies and you know but with doing it without uh using a de or any kind of a harmful chemical packaged in a glass bottle so it's reusable and or you know recyclable thank you so much this has been really informative thank you so much for joining us to do you want to uh once again tell everyone who you you are and and your company just to remind
244them well thank you again for providing this opportunity Liz it's been a pleasure to visit with you I'm edela plant with one Earth body care come see us on Facebook or Instagram or at our website onear bodyc care.com thank you so much have a great rest of your show okay you too uh so we've heard from we've heard from uh young women who are just starting their very first ever entrepreneurial adventures with crochet and we've seen Seaglass and uh allnatural body care and we're going to have our final guest for the day we're wrapping up the Arts Fest I want to welcome in uh Daphne vantine and um look at you are all summer thanks you are just the epitome of summer thank you thank you I know we had kind of a a rough
245jump between winter and spring so like this is just like exactly the vibe that we need to end the day thank you I was not paid to be here by the way but no all of my compliments come free good good good um why don't you introduce yourself tell people who you are and what you do yes where should I look Left Right Center sure thing why don't you look right there to talk audience perfect perfect um my name is Daphne vantine um owner of Daphne Ray creative and I am a painter um I use gouache paint to create original paintings I also dabble with some colored pencil and marker too so kind of a mixed media approach I'm here today selling Originals prints greeting cards that's pretty much it um but yeah I've been
246lifelong artist and I have been selling my work for about two years and so far today has been my best Market I've ever done in two years so really high on life I'm so happy to hear that I know like um being in the original art uh sphere of of like doing shows can be really tough because people don't often times don't know who you are um or or you know like uh it's just like a brand new introduction almost every time yeah how long have you been doing markets like this about two years yeah so like 2022 um I have had like other um artistic side hustles in the past so I have dabbled a bit but I've been doing this seriously for 2 years um and I quit my corporate job in August
247to pursue this professionally congratulations to you thank you that's scary I've done that that's scary I was like the joke maybe I'm just in denial but I mean it wasn't actually scary at all for me cuz I think cuz I just like so well it takes it does and that's incredible congratulations that's incred in thank you thank you um so what are some of your biggest Inspirations for the works that you do especially some of the things that people will be seeing here today yes so my subject matter is pretty like wide reaching I haven't found or like narrowed into like one specific thing which I think is okay because I think it's fine to have some variety in your work but um I try I mean I say like from the most like mundane
248or like magnificent things that I come across in life whether that's like being at a market or being at a you know farmers market or being in a beautiful location so you will see some landscapes in my work also some like very kind of like spot drawings I don't even know what to call them but just more like studies in a way um my bestselling print is actually a colored pencil illustration of a carton of strawberries so that was just from a farmers market in Maine that I went to and snapped a photo of it um on the landscape side of things I um have a Switzerland collection from a recent trip of mine so like kind of all over the math but all vibrant do you um do you work mostly from photos or
249do you do like life drawing like you're you're in the place you're in a market and you're just like yep here we go um not like not anything like serious like I do like you know at when it's maybe a slower day at a market you know sketching something but um most of it's from photos because I have a very distinct like like setup that I need you know I needed like the right level that process look like so I just work out of my house currently um so you know I'll take my photos out in the world whether on my travels or just on everyday life and I have an album in my phone of just all things that have inspired me and I call that my like reference photo album and then whenever
250I'm kind of feeling in the mood I'll sit down in my home studio um which is also my fiance's closet basically and um we work with what we got you know yeah we do we do um but I then just paint or illustrate things so yeah that's pretty much the process uh what is your like what is your week look like in terms of like the amount of hours that you spend throughout the week creating for for markets like this yeah well it's been a little harder this summer just because I have packed such a schedule I have like maybe 15 or 17 markets this summer so oh wow since I'm doing this full-time now I have so much more time to really like schedule out summer and fall so don't have as much time
251to create right now but I do try to get in a few hours a week um during the winter though that's like all I'm doing is just is yeah I was wondering like so you spend most of the winter planning and then the summer is when uh you're spending most of the time uh selling yeah I mean this is really the first time that I'm doing it like first like season that I'm really dedicating to it since I was working last summer and so this winter it was more about like education I took some online courses to kind of brushing up my skills and expand those skills and then yeah now it's just like execution just living for like one week in advance just trying to get through like the next weekend um a lot
252of preparation went into today so I'm really happy about that um but yeah I think come come fall things will settle and I'll have the opportunity to paint and start to take the stuff I was inspired by this summer and put it into my work what inspired you to take the jump to doing this full-time oh um corporate burnout and um I was in in sales so and honestly I was really like good at my job but um I was just hm that's a good question I think it was just like kind of the unbearables of like my situation that I was in and I could see how not following my dream and not doing what I really wanted to do was affecting my mental health so it was really you know kind of accepting
253that it wasn't the right path anymore how long have you wanted to be a painter um well I've always wanted to be an artist my entire life um I never the correct answer but yeah I mean I I didn't like take it seriously I didn't think that it was actually um even possible um and now that I've like had such great feedback and I've met so many amazing people even even you all who are giving me this opportunity it's like okay there definitely there is a path if you just like keep putting in the time so yeah what gave you the indication that this could be a viable path for you actually um I'll give a shout out to my friend Paige who actually has a podcast and she's an artist um Paige lindsy design
254her podcast is called Pages pod and it actually like changed my life entirely um listening to a lot of female artists went on the podcast talking about their stories and how they had had left similar career paths or they had left nursing or being a teacher just really across the gamut um and left to pursue art and so I was hearing all these stories of people who sounded so much like me and had such a similar experience and I'm like wait all these people are saying exactly the things I've been telling myself so if they can do it I can probably do it to yeah I had a very similar experience I was in marketing and quit my job in 2018 to be a full-time freelance illustrator and did that for five years amazing um
255so yeah I I would like from my experience your story is actually pretty common within the Arts um but as I said like a lot of people don't know the courage to take that jump um and it I'm really I'm really glad that it's like working out so well you you're putting in the hard work to make it work out for you yeah um definitely because it definitely like takes that consistent effort in order to to make to be successful with it yeah yeah you got to put in the time like everything I've noticed like everything that I've done so far like you know when I first got into this I thought like I'm only going to make it if I go go viral on social media I'm just going to have to get lucky
256and like most recently I found out that's like not true at all like the stuff that we actually do and the things that we as humans put in like we get out way more than we get out from make those opportunities so can't rely on really anyone but ourselves and I've like definitely been realizing that this summer and I'm proud of that um so what has been one of your like best memories from the past year on this journey ooh um probably like the first couple weeks after I quit my job it was just like this really weird feeling of like what's next which did kind of come with a little bit of impostor syndrome and a little bit of fear but it's an occupational hazard yeah right get it out of the way but
257I do remember just like going out to I since I had so much time on my hands I was like I need to just like get out and do things that I have haven't been able to do because I've just been locked up all day on Zoom calls I used to enjoy the summer so I just would take myself on like little field trips I would call it and I would take myself out to Farms or like go to pick flowers or something and I got so much inspiration from that and that's what's partially got me painting the straw or dry the strawberries and now that's my best seller so it's like just being able to take the time to go out and do little fun things just for yourself um and in those first
258few weeks that's all I could think of doing so and I have seen your Botho um and I do feel like the joy comes out in the work and and that's like definitely so you say that you've got like a lot of varied things that you draw and do and paint um but it feels like that is one of the through lines which is like things that bring you Joy and then that translates ex through it yeah exactly and one of my friends also shout out to Laurel Greenfield she has taught me she's a painter herself and she's really talked about like you have to really tell your story through your art and that's why like I everything I create like has a story behind it it's not just like a pretty picture I took
259it's something that I really enjoyed and like is seared into my memory so yeah uh do you have any advice for people who are thinking about uh you know following their passion but maybe are scared to take that leap yes my advice is that like everything is temporary um even if you only do that side hustle or you take that leap for a temporary amount of time it's just that it's just a short amount of time you know there there may be a time in my life when I don't want to do what I'm doing now and that's like totally fine um I think about like my parents and you know people who are much older than me they've lived so many years and I'm I'm sure they might look back and when they're 30
260and be like oh yeah there was those six months that I was not doing well and whatever it's it's over but when you're living it it can feel so long and and scary so yeah everything's temporary and it'll you'll get through it this two Shall Pass exactly exactly MH um that's really inspiring that's really inspiring so where other than at markets can people find your work MH so you can find my work at Daphne rayc creative.com that's d a p h NE R AE that's my middle name and then the word creative um my Instagram handle is that as well and I think that's pretty much it wonderful thank you so much for being here really appreciate you coming out I know it's tough to leave your booth behind for a few minutes but um
261uh whatever you've got left at the booth sell it y we're going to do that if you guys are at the store are if you guys are listening to us out on the street right now um go to Daphne's uh booth and buy the rest of her stuff yes it's going quick um uh yeah thank you so much we really appre thank you everyone uh that is going to wrap up Bev Cam's all day podcast and coverage of the Beverly artsfest thank you so much for staying with us if you've been watching this entire uh stream um you get like some sort of VIP badge or something like going from 10 to 4 um but if not we're going to have all of these recordings on our YouTube page go to bevcam on YouTube you
262can also watch us on Channel 8 in HD channel 1073 um and uh yeah thank you everyone for all of your support in making this downtown space a reality we are here at 261 cabat Street Bev Cam's New downtown location our satellite location we're still at the high school don't worry don't worry we're still there and have a great rest of your day [Music] thank you [Music] m [Music]