I just realized I got so excited about starting all the things for the Arctic Circle Residency, I hadn’t posted to my regular site about it yet, whoops!

I was accepted to a very competitive residency for April of 2027 where I will be spending 2 weeks on a sailing ship on the Arctic sea with 30 scientists and artist as we experiment and creator our way around the polar ice cap. It is a dream come true, one I’ve had since I can remember, and it’s also a very expensive dream, though it costs lest than doing this as a tourist, thankfully.

My goal with this residency is to produce a book of photography, watercolor, and words from the trip, highlighting the feral beauty of the harsh landscape. I also plan to embrace the full nosiness of my true nature and interview everyone whether scientist, artist, crew, or guide. I want to know everything about what it’s like to spend so much time in such an isolated place, I want to know what the scientists are investigating, and I want to dive into the way each creative experiences the world. This will provide story kernels for a long time, and I can’t wait.

If you want to follow along my residency journey, I’ve actually started a separate blog to keep things easy for folks to follow at www.creatingelsewhere.com. I’m hoping to turn this into a space not only to talk about creating while traveling, but also to document how I approached applying for residencies and grants so folks get an open door look at that process.

I’m also fundraising like crazy as it costs about $12,000 for this residency including travel and gear at a minimum, so there’s a GoFundMe and I’m looking for corporate sponsors who would like to provide gear or fiscal support in return for acknowledgement and publicity. I’m also booking teaching gigs like crazy, working events both as a tarot teller at Hallowe’en-aissance on Halloween (yay spooky season!) and in my capacity as the new Poet Laureate for ShoreLake Arts doing Instant Poetry (just add ideas!) for their Winter Market on November 21st.

It’s times like this I bemoan the loss of old-school patrons of the arts. I’d happily spend hours doing portraiture of rich d*cks if it got me the money to work on my writing and go on research trips like this regularly. I’ve spent hours combing the internet for foundations and grants and have a handful I can apply for, but there isn’t a ton out there for independent artists that isn’t geographically bound, but at least I’ve found a few to go after. Just means if I ever get rich, I know what I want to do: revive (healthy) patronage. Just like I’m on a mission to revive the 1920’s concept of the salon where fun people get together to talk about cool topics.

Anyway, if you’ve been wondering where I disappeared to, the answer is: working on WorldCon programming for LAcon for this past summer and then diving into fundraising for this trip. Next year is shaping up to be awesome.