Renewed Online Shops are open!!!

 Oh my goodness, the stress of it all.

Part of our move to home-based studios has seen the need for us to think about other avenues for sales. We hope to continue to have a couple of small Pop Up type showings or exhibitions each year; but on a regular basis we thought refreshing and renewing our online presence would make most sense.

And so the work began to delete the old inventory; seriously consider what groupings of work we have; working out what work we could sensibly sell online (and put in the post!!!) and the like.

Having decided those things it was then necessary to translate that into shops, categories, photograph them, describe them, price them and get them in the right order.

And having done that, it was necessary to promote it, which also meant refreshing and renewing our newsletter. So quite a bit of tech updating.

Our newsletter takes on a new role in all of this and we have been pondering what to say; how often to say it and so on.  We are evolving shall we say.

Anyhow, the stress of it all is that we had drafted the newsletter; we had set up our shops. We had started to populate the shops. We had learned how to apply discounts for time limited periods. We had managed to work out how to apply tariffs to the US so that our pricing covered those. And so on.

We were ready.

Together we sat and hit send on the newsletter at about 10.15am on Sunday morning. Very exciting! The whole thing looked good, the links worked and we thought phew we've done it.

Four hours later I rose from my chair in a panic. Oh my goodness, I had forgotten to make the shops go 'live'!!!  I had had them in dormant mode whilst were setting them up and getting organised so that no one could inadvertently purchase something that we no longer had. It was a risk management approach. Until we discovered the real risk was that we would promote something only for folk to find they couldn't buy anything!

Fixed it, sent a quick update email, and thought job done. 

But then I went and looked at the websites and it wasn't job done; the sites were still dormant. I fell down some serious rabbit holes trying to work out what went wrong; what I had to do; how could I save the changes? Would I have to send a third or maybe fourth email newsletter explaining it didn't work? Maybe it did work? It was awful. But after 15-20 minutes of frenzy, it worked and people could find our shops, as well as be able to buy something. So many lessons.

As a thank you to our newsletter subscribers we gave them an early bird type option. We decided my new jewellery and Barry's new watercolours would be 15% off regular price for a week. And that we would let other folk know after a day or two. And here we are.

I managed to learn how to do online discounts - yay - and I'm a bit chuffed to see here that the shop sort of re-sorts itself so that the pieces that have sold end up at the bottom as out of stock. Fascinating.

So that's part of what has been going on behind the scenes as we re-imagine our art lives!

It is all a pretty big adventure, but my what a ride. 

We hope to send newsletters more regularly this year depending on where we are and what we are doing, and will always try to offer our newsletter subscribers a little bit of something. So, if you would like to sign up you can do so on the right hand side of the blog here, or on any page of my website.

My new look shop is here if you'd like to see how it's going. Not every category has been filled yet - my main focus was on my cards and on my jewellery. Gradually, it will grow. If I keep breathing in, and breathing out...

Going, going, gone...

 Well it has been quite the process. We began thinking our way through how to downsize the studio space at least 18 months ago; and in January last year really began to focus.

We knew that moving some of our precious letterpress items on was going to be very challenging. We so very much wanted them to go to the right homes; and I admit to being scared witless at times that the beautiful Lightning Jobber press could end up as scrap metal if we couldn't re-home it safely.  It was tough to think about and did keep me awake on occasions.

But slowly and steadily we refined which metal type we wanted to keep. We worked out which wood type we would continue to use and which of the type cabinets would serve us best in the future, and began the very slow and steady process of transferring the type we wanted to the trays in the cabinet we were keeping. It took months.

We had three cabinets of metal type to find new homes for; as well as a few presses; some gorgeous wood type; and the beautiful Lightning Jobber.  We also had heaps of art supplies, lots of art works and lots of fittings and furnishings. We sent out feelers for the letterpress gear and were fortunate to find it all new homes where it will be loved and looked after and used.

We went about it all slowly and systematically. On return from Scotland in July last year  we held our first art supplies sale. In November we had an artworks sale; and this weekend we had our fittings and furnishing and other bits garage sale.

In between I sorted all the paper; all the art supplies, all the art projects working papers; all the teaching materials we had ever kept. A big job, and we are both weary. But oh so satisfied. Here are some images from the past year and from the weekend.

The Lightning Jobber being moved.

Art supply sale July 2025. Look at how full that studio space is!!!

Me trying to sort all the paper into its new drawers; and working out what is for sale

My final tray of type being transferred

The artworks sale in November.

Moving type trays in a unique way! Metal type is heavy and when there are 25 trays in the cabinet, you need to spread and share the load.

The sale yesterday went brilliantly. We moved pretty much everything, and it was a sellout. We didn't open today to sell, as there was nothing left really; instead we made arrangements for items to be picked up and/or delivered.

Saturday afternoon, not much left at all.

Sunday morning and we removed the signage on the front door.

High humidity hair!!!

And we have emptied the studio.

Wow. We have had the best time in that studio space. It has been a shop; we have taught; had play days; sold things; held exhibitions; hosted opening events; held community meetings; and had drinks on some Friday evenings.

We have worked hard to create new spaces at home which will allow us both to continue to create and make. I will still be making and selling my jewellery; my grief cards will still be hand printed and illustrated; my women's work will continue; and there will be calligraphy and artists' books made as well.

We are re-vamping our newsletters and will send them more regularly; and our websites and shops will also get new looks. We are busy and excited to see what happens next. We will keep you posted.

Thank you to everyone who visited the DEP studio; who purchased art; who talked art; and who explored and loved the letterpress printing we did there. We look forward to continuing our artistic endeavours with you.

Our newsletter will keep you up to date with sales; deals, and teaching and we hope you might subscribe. 

There is a form on the right hand side of the blog where you can sign up. We promise we won't annoy you or your inbox too often!

This blog will continue to capture the ins and outs and ups and downs of a making life, and Instagram will be like a mini blog maybe. Facebook will be a place to hopefully share information; but it all depends on ye olde algorithms...

Remembering to update

 So often I am reminded that its never just about making the art...

Having received the good news from the State Library of Queensland last week about their purchase of I Hit a Wall, I spent time updating my CV for them and completing the paperwork that accompanies the book; as well as doing the packing and posting and invoicing...

I woke yesterday remembering that I probably should update the CV on my website...and the document that indicates which institutions my work resides in.

I added this book to both and went to the website to attach the two new documents, uploaded them and felt most chuffed with myself. But of course it doesn't end there.

I remembered I hadn't include the two works which were acquired by the Strathnaver Museum following my exhibition there in September, Hame. So I re-did the documents and re-loaded them.

Which reminded me I normally add these sorts of things to my portfolio page. 

And from that page I have links to some process stories, and so off I went looking for representative blog posts about each of the works and thinking about titles and images that might describe them well.

I also added in Travelling Home which I love, but which is in our personal collection rather than a public one. As the top of the page says, sometimes it's just about pieces I love.

And then of course I realised I should probably update the news page of the website and include these stories; and remove the other pieces of 'old' news that were there.

It never ends!

Luckily it was a rainy day and I was pretty tired, and I didn't feel like doing much else, so updating all the website stuff felt like a real accomplishment. Phew!

And just to finish with some end of year twinkles - a table setting at lunch in theVillage on Friday...

Website update - it's been a while

 Well, we have returned back to Maleny, a bit earlier than planned, but we are all safe and well.

Jet lag often leaves me hazy - and slower than usual, yet for some reason over the weekend it made sense to me to try and update my website. I think it began when I was googling somebody and then wondered what they would find if they googled me. I wandered through my website as an observer, then realised there were things to update.

I don't go in and update often enough so it's often a case of re-learning the process with a few hiccups as you go. 

I realised I needed to update my gallery page (where I show some of my favourite pieces) and also my collections/CV bit.

My jotted notes. Firstly what needed to happen; and the green bits is what I needed to do for the gallery bit.

So off I went.

This is what the Gallery page looked like before I began. If you hover over an image you get the title and a bit about it; and if you click on the image you go to another page which has two more photos and links to process stories about the work (i.e. my blog posts) so I needed to find three images, think of some words and find two blog posts for each piece.

And after, with an example of the hover thing on Fragile Gains II.

I had forgotten so much. Here I had cut and pasted text and couldn't turn the colour into black; also the pictures were twice as large as the others on the page; and the titles were underneath the photos not on above them. I finally worked out I needed to simply duplicate a previous entry, and then replace the photos, words, titles etc.

So much simpler when one duplicated and replaced!

So now, if you hover over Validating you see this:

If you click on Validating you go here...

And if you click on Process stories, you go here...

The collections part involved updating the text on my About page to include the two new institutions, and then updating a Word document, converting it to a PDF and uploading it, then making a link to the Collection details button. It took a few goes...

New collections: Mackay and Sunshine Coast.

An updated Word document, ready to convert and load and link.

The screen after I did that the first few times!

And then the screen after it worked.

And I remembered to update the hover on Turning Point as well!

It took a few hours but it is nice to be up to date. As Barry and I often say to each other - an art life is never about just making art...

Updating 3

 The third and final of my updating posts.  

This one catches something I missed along the way as I moved my website from one platform to another.  It didn't require much reflecting or introspection; but in the end it did require a lot of research.

On my previous website, somewhere on the About page, I had listed which of my books were in which collection across the world.  

For some reason this information appeared absolutely nowhere else on my computer or on any of my inter web places.  Sadly, when we moved, I hadn't paid attention and this information was lost.

I still had the collections listed, on my new website, but I had little (if any) recall of which of my books were in which collection. Not great and a real trap for young players when migrating information and updating websites.

Fortunately for me, a lot of my books at the State Library of Queensland are searchable. If I type my name into the catalogue search, they have done the grand job of listing them all properly - lucky me.  

More good fortune shone upon me as many of the books that have made their way to the U.S. were sold through 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland, Oregon and the marvellous owner at the time Laura Russell was a  meticulous record keeper and always advised me which books had sold and to whom.

I also knew that Beyond Books and Burning had gone to the National Library of Iraq, and even now as I type I am thinking one of my Subversive Stitch books is in some collection in the UK and I am not sure which one; so clearly the job is not yet done!

So one day I set about painstakingly tracking each book down, recording where it was, what year it was made etc. Except for my (very!) recent  remembering about the UK and A Subversive Stitch, I felt confident that I had got them all.

Having done such a big job I thought I would organise them several ways. First up, if people want to visit an Institution - they can see which books it holds. I only screen shotted the first page of each of the records.

If somebody professed interest in seeing a particular book; I would be able to point them in the right direction, or give them options, by having the books organised this way.

And then finally, more for my own purposes, I listed the books by year of production so I could find them more easily in photographic records, or on the blog.

And so now, I truly have an excellent record of whereabouts in the world my books are!

Having said that, I am yet to put the information on the website, but that's not far away.

A nice discovery was serendipitously made along the way. At first I put my name into the search engine on the State Library of Queensland's website (rather than the catalogue search) and got a ping.

I expected more pings!  However when I looked closely I realised that the mention was in their Annual Report.

Intrigued, I went looking into the Annual Report and found this lovely wee mention:

So there I was, being rewarded, with discovering a mention, for my bad behaviour of not cataloguing my books. I feel very very fortunate that I was able to track them all down.

This series of Updating posts has formed part of my art life and art work that is not about the making or creating of art.  The work involved in all three (imagery, words and collections) form part of what I think of as Art Extenders - (teaching, writing and promoting). Things that take my art and skills out into the world, beyond the walls of the studio.  

These posts all fit into the promoting part of the extender section.

 I am now thinking a post about the Extenders might be worth doing sometime too...

Updating 2

 I wrote earlier about the process of building new websites for DEP and myself, and the updating of our imagery.

Part of that whole process meant we felt we needed to update the words we write about ourselves.  So we had a go at new artists statements and descriptors.

Two things coalesced as I began to consider what I say.  Firstly,  my old tag line - calligraphic and book artist - no longer felt as true to me as it once did.  I described myself as a calligraphic artist, because I didn't feel I could own the title of calligrapher.  True calligraphers are very specially skilled. 

Of course the subtle differentiation meant something to me; but not necessarily to others. And I also began to realise that book artist often made folk think that I was a book illustrator when nothing could be further from the truth or my skill set!

I coined the phrase back in 2004 so its probably not a bad thing anyway, to stop for a moment and think if my art journey has led me somewhere different.

The second thing was when I attended the Poetics of Place workshop with Ruth Hadlow in Hobart in late 2019 (ahhh the before times) and I began to consider NOT describing myself as a thing or a name or a category or a role but rather to consider what I DO. This was the most interesting part.

When I began to look around me and think about what I do - I was stitching words; I was letterpress printing posters and booklets; I was not actually doing much calligraphy but I was definitely still hooked on books.

I used to say things like:

"Books have always been important to me, and I love words and telling stories. No matter what I make, text is nearly always present – in beautiful calligraphic words, in letterpress type, or in burnt book pages". 

And I realised that this still held true. That words and text are at the heart of what I do. No matter WHAT I do, words and text are there...

Along the way I realised I preferred the word maker as well.  Again, the word artist leads folk to imagine all sorts of things and so very often they ask do I paint, do I sketch or whatever.  The word maker immediately brings me to the hands. The doing with stuff. The holding, the tearing, the stitching, the writing, the cutting, the setting, and all those things I do with my hands.

And so I now describe myself as "a maker with words".

Part of me simply loves how this enables me to not be categorised and somehow gives me scope to try all manner of things - to make in many ways and still be true.  These words feel true to me, and about me.

My most recent and detailed descriptor of myself can be found on my website. My artist statement can be found here on my website as well. 

As I finish my artist statement, these words also hold real truth for me "making helps me make sense of the world".

All images by Megan Gill Photography.