What a strange year 2024 has been. It's been a year of unexpected events, both in my personal life and in the world in general. It's been a year of many changes. Making art has gotten me through.
I've written about the art that I made this year:
https://tiffanygholar.blogspot.com/2024/08/beautiful-experiments.html
https://tiffanygholar.blogspot.com/2024/12/my-latest-commissioned-painting.html
https://tiffanygholar.blogspot.com/2024/12/cosmos-out-of-chaos.html
Much to my pleasant surprise, my most profitable art shows happened this year. I had a pop-up art show in the lobby of my former office building. (Our company moved to a new building this year.)
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| An ad promoting my event on one of the elevators in the building |
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| A mini collage with a model of the building where I worked |
I only had one open studio this year, but it was my most lucrative ever. It was my December Open Studio, my first and last one of the year.
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| This year's free gift for my visitors was pretty masks. |
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| I finally got a Christmas tree for the Kaleidoscope House! |
I also had the opportunity to participate in a holiday vendor fair at Call & Response Books, an independent Black-woman-owned bookstore, and it also went extremely well. It felt so good to sell so much art this year.
I didn't blog about it, but I also tried my hand (no pun intended) at making my own nail polish from old eyeshadow. The process is similar to making acrylic paints and glazes, and I was pleased with the results.
I was inspired to try this when I came across a set of empty nail polish bottles on the American Science and Surplus website. You never know what kind of random odds and ends they will have. There are tutorials and special clear nail polishes available online if you want to make some for yourself.
I also had a chance to get out and see some great shows this year. In January and February, I saw the Black Creativity 2024 show and Moore's Marvelous Minis at The Museum of Science and Industry, and Faith Ringgold's retrospective at The Museum of Contemporary Art, which I blogged about here a few months later.
More of the art and trade shows I attended:
The 2024 Gold Coast Art Fair in Grant Park
The 2024 Millennium Art Festival
Another show I posted about on social media, but not on my blog, was a solo show by my good friend Minnie Watkins. It was her first after having a stroke.
Our local news did a nice feature on her.
I did another interior design project for a small apartment building and am pleased with how it turned out.
The DNC was held in Chicago this year in August. I ended up going to another local political conference in September where masks were required.
I bought a good book there.
Among the many changes in the world this year, social media really stood out for me:
https://tiffanygholar.blogspot.com/2024/07/hanging-by-thread.html
https://tiffanygholar.blogspot.com/2024/02/my-discontent-with-content.html
I joined Bluesky at the beginning of this month because I don't want to rely on a single microblogging platform. But as of this moment, I have to admit that I'm not enjoying my social media experience as much as I used to. Twitter is a shadow of its former self, a lot of Threads users can't read (and its algorithm tends to show my posts to people who want to fight me), and most of my replies on Bluesky are from people desperately trying to crowdfund to survive attacks from weapons my tax dollars are paying for. All depressing in different ways.
Something else that greatly disturbed me this year was the pandemic that so many still ignore:
https://tiffanygholar.blogspot.com/2024/03/my-4-year-pandemic-anniversary.html
And the election:
https://tiffanygholar.blogspot.com/2024/12/a-tragedy-told-in-screenshots.html
One of the saddest things that happened this year was the passing of a young woman who was like a niece to me. Her name was Aria. I was 22 when she was born, and she was only 22 when she died. It's so unbelievably devastating when someone that young passes away. I feel blessed to have known her as a little girl and will always treasure my memories of her. I made a book of the pictures I took of Aria as a gift for her family.
At the end of the last few pandemic years, 2020 through 2023, I at least felt some small sliver of hope for the state of the world this time of year. But right now, I feel a sense of trepidation. Because of what's on the political horizon, I am facing 2025 with dread. As a remedy, I've tried to give myself a few things to look forward to. One of those things is publishing another art book, which will span the time period of 2022 through 2024, so you know it's going to be quite eventful! My art is an escape, but my art books also document the world I'm trying to escape from. Since I've already created my cover design, I'll let you see it.
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