Here is part two of my Blogging and Art profiles. This interview is with the ever-creative Shimelle. She has a
blog and a
web site with all of her online classes. I have not taken one, but I've heard they are delightful.
AM: When did you start blogging?
S: I started my current blog in july 2003. Before that i had a strange little blog wherein i didn't talk at all about myself -- i just responded to random media concepts. i think that was the fall out of leaving university and feeling like i wasn't having enough intellectual conversations in my life. and though not a blog, i published my first website in 1995. i was seventeen, it featured a million blinking rainbows that i drew with a really rubbish mouse and was called {quite originally} shimelle's world.
AM: What was your motivation?
S: i was looking for a place to talk. i was in a career shift, a social shift, a place where i needed to make a lot of decisions and didn't feel i had the personal space to think aloud. so i typed instead.
AM: Who is your audience/readership?
S: it started with a core group of online friends that i have known since about 94-95. then there are basically two groups of people that became part of the loop after that: people i know (or have known) in real life (including a few old school friends and probably my mother) and artsy types who i've come in contact with via collage, art journaling or scrapbooking.
AM: Do you read other blogs? Which ones?
S: yep. i read all the blogs on my livejournal 'friends' list - which is a bunch, including friends and artists. and i read the ones linked on my blog. and some others. basically i have a big folder and once every day or so, i click 'display in tabs' and i check in on everyone.
AM: Has blogging changed your creative process at all? Are you inspired by other bloggers?
S: good art posted anywhere can be inspiring, so of course i have been inspired by blogs. sometimes in art & design, sometimes just how someone says something and it clicks in my head. blogging hasn't changed m y creative process -- it's just given me more inner monologue. i write ten blog posts a day in my head - i just never type them out. i need one of those t-shirts that says 'i'm blogging this'.
AM: Do you feel it’s expanded your audience? Made you more accessible?
S: if accessible means 'seen as human. with flaws.', then yes.
AM: Is there a down side to blogging?
S: the downside to blogging is the same as the downside to all written media: we read things how *we* would say them. so i hear *your* words in *my* voice. that means sometimes our messages become muddled. i have great disappointment with myself when i am unclear and this happens from time to time.
AM: Do you find inspiration online?
S: inspiration is everywhere. it just depends on my mood. but yes, i have a folder full of bookmarks that make me snap out of a funk and get me itching to make stuff.
AM: Blogs can be very intimate; do you enjoy showing a different side of yourself?
S: i don't intentionally mean to show a different side. what you see is what you get. from my point of view, anyway. but then again, i have never been known for keeping of many secrets.
AM: Do you find the computer has distracted you from your art?
S: yes. sometimes i resent that, sometimes i don't. my biggest change was when i moved into this apartment and had no printer. i had been a 50/50 girl with writing by hand and printing things out. i haven't used a computer to do anything but print photographs in two and a half years now and that really defined my style. at first i thought it would just affect my scrapbook style, but it carried over into everything i created before i had noticed. so that's how i try to avoid the distraction. i never want to have a computer that lived permanently in my studio. i need to draw lines and kick it out of the room!
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