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vance

vance

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My name's Vance, and I like to make stuff.

A page of collaged text and images. There's a Polaroid candid photo of a white person with a beard and a curly ponytail, cutting a piece of paper, and the text "sup I'm Vance!!!" is written on the bottom of the Polaroid. The background is a painting of people standing in an art museum, but the picture is cut into slices spread out over the page. At the center of the collage is a photo of an open notebook showing handwriting and diagrams. There are random marker doodles scattered over the images, including a teapot and some animals. The following text is overlaid in cut-outs from a typewriter: "want to share: embroidery, sewing, coding, mental health practices, knowledge management, writing documentation. want to learn: anarchist theory, electronics, machine learning, building collectives, freelancing, making comics, open source contribution, household repairs. @caesiumtea (everywhere). caesiumtea@gmail.com

What kind of stuff? Well, anything I can get my hands on, really. Drawing, writing (fictional and editorial), sewing, embroidery, crochet, 3D printing, coding (web and Python), and electronics are just a few of the crafts I've been into lately! Meanwhile, you can find poster designs and planner printables on my Etsy. I like to call myself an aspiring jack of all trades--and I cheerfully embrace the "master of none" part, too.

That's because being neurodivergent and disabled has a big impact on my approach to making art. Depression and fatigue mean that I just plain don't have much energy for creating. I like to roll with the waves of my ADHD instead of fighting against it, which means that I start a lot more things than I finish, and that no single craft or medium or method can hold my interest for very long (but I never drop it for good either! it's all about cycles). I'm still testing the waters to see whether it could be possible for me to be productive enough to make a living from making stuff. But for now, I'm happy to just work with what I've got and follow my inspiration when I'm lucky enough to get the chance.

The purpose of this blog is to chronicle all the ups and downs of the many different projects I attempt and creative skills I pick up. Many of the posts will be focused on my process--more of a traditional blog post narrating what I'm working on and how it's going, showing some WIP snapshots, maybe discussing lessons I'm learning along the way. Other posts will be to show off the occasional, elusive actual finished work! There might eventually be a few tutorial-style posts as well.

The majority of the content here will be free for everyone to view, but there will also be a few posts restricted to paying subscribers. This is something I'm trying out along the lines of the "seeing if it's possible to make money from creating" that I mentioned. The subscriber posts will mostly be free downloads of products that I sell elsewhere, or higher resolution versions of drawings. I'd be incredibly grateful for any amount of support that folks are able to give! And that includes just joining as a free member and leaving comments, too!

Creating is a weird, messy, joyful journey, and I'd be delighted to have some company along the way.

If you've decided to follow along, please do leave a comment and say hello! Tell me who you are, or what kind of things you make (links encouraged!). Let me know what brought you to this blog or what kinds of posts you're interested in seeing!

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