2025: A Retrospective

A discarded New Year's decoration I saw on the ground in January 2025

For me, 2025 has been a year of dread and longing. This year has been been as bad as I thought it would be. Possibly worse. This has been a year that began with a loved one in the hospital and ended with that same relative hospitalized once again.

My aunt Joyce Gholar at my studio in 2012

It has been a year of many losses. This year I have lost: my cousin Sheila, my Aunt Joyce, my Aunt Helen, and my cousin Darrell, mot to mention the people I've lost to depression and dementia this year. That's a different kind of grief, one for the living.

My losses have also been in the virtual/digital arena, most notably Society6, which closed both of the stores I had on there for years because they weren't popular enough. (Maybe my stores would have been less obscure if Society6 had promoted them even once!)

And on top of everything else, our dire sociopolitical straits. 

The response on social media this time around, in the absence of the cohesive Twittersphere I once was part of, has been abysmal. On one hand, there have been Black (bot?) accounts telling us to rest, and on the other, (bot?) accounts from outside the US berating us not doing enough. Meanwhile in Chicago...

We have been in a constant courtroom battle for our civil rights. Knowing that it didn't have to be this way causes me unbearable pain. My soul is tired.

The highlights of my year have mainly come from art and design, my own work, or that of others. This year I had two pop-up shows in an office complex and a two month long solo show. 

I also published my sixth art book, Make Something Real. I celebrated my 15 year anniversary in my studio building. I had an open studio on Valentine's Day. My three favorite museum exhibits were Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica and Elizabeth Catlett: “A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies” at The Art Institute of Chicago and Africa Fashion at the Field Museum. The intense summer heat wave made me feel less inclined to go to a lot of outdoor art fairs, but I attended EXPO at Navy Pier in the spring. I went to four trade shows: The Inspired Home Show, NeoCon, Design Chicago, and Chicago Build. I went to the theater and saw two films that I really enjoyed: Sinners and The Phoenician Scheme. I also had a chance to see The Spook Who Sat by the Door for the first time at Robert Townsend's film festival fundraiser at Columbia. (And I did all of these things while still wearing a mask.)

Besides my untitled mini paintings and collages, this year I made Dark Oxygen and Magenta Crush. 

Another work in progress I didn't blog about yet

I didn't make a lot of new artwork this year, but my works in progress are progressing. 

I was a featured artist at EcoShip Chicago (a place more people should know about) and had some mini artwork in a show at the Oak Park Art League.

I did my best to give myself some things to look forward to, but the financial rewards I hoped for just haven't materialized. The frustrating paradox of 2025 is that it's easier than ever to accept debit and credit card payments, but the affordability crisis has rendered many potential customers too broke to buy fun things like art. 

Sorry I'm not ending this post on a positive note, but 2025 has taken a lot out of me. Living in this dystopia is exhausting.

Shirt by Samantha Rei (alterations by me)