Because storytelling is an art, I’ve always hired local artists to design a poster for each event. The posters of Tell Us Something are amazing in their own right, and I thought that it would be fun to sit down with some of the artists to chat about their process and see what makes them tick. What inspires them, how they work, and how they came to design the poster that they designed for Tell Us Something. So, this week on the podcast, join me as we go behind the scenes with local artist Courtney Blazon. Courtney designed the poster for the June 2019 show. The theme that night was “What Are the Chances?”
Transcript : Interview with Courtney Blazon
welcome to the tell something podcast
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i’m mark moss i know what i’m doing but
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if somebody wanted to know how do you
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become an artist i’d be like
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you just work hard since around july of
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2020
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i have been interviewing tell us
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something storyteller alumni about their
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experience sharing a story on the
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telesumming stage
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why they chose to share a story and what
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they’ve been up to
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since having shared their story i have a
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lot more of those interviews to share
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with you
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this week though i’m going to introduce
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you to one of tell something’s poster
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artists
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for me it was important for my life and
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especially
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important for my work that i had a
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studio at home where i could shut the
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door
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where like at a certain time at the end
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of the day
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i’m not looking at that piece of work
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anymore because storytelling is an art
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i’ve always hired local artists
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to design a poster for each event the
00:51
posters of tell us something
00:52
are amazing in their own right and i
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thought that it would be
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fun to sit down with some of the artists
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to chat about their process
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and see what makes them tick what
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inspires them
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how they work and how they came to
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design the poster
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that they designed for telesomething so
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this week on the podcast join me
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as we go behind the scenes with local
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artist
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courtney blazon courtney designed the
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poster for the june 2019
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show the theme was what are the chances
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i kind of knew pretty quickly what i was
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gonna do for it
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and i usually settle on an idea pretty
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quickly
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and i don’t know if that’s just because
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i’m generally like
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this is the time i have allotted for
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this you better snap to it
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courtney blaizon is an artist and
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illustrator living and working in
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missoula montana
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she graduated from parsons school of
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design where she earned her bfa in
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illustration
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she’s shown her work in missoula at the
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brink gallery
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dana gallery allez gallery and the
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missoula art museum
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outside of montana she has shown work in
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seattle portland
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new york philadelphia san francisco and
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most recently at the center for the arts
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theater gallery in jackson wyoming
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hello good morning hi how are you
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um well how are you doing good thank you
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good thanks for agreeing to talk to me
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today
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courtney’s work has been featured in new
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american paintings the western edition
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studio visit magazine and juxtapose.com
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she is a past recipient of a montana
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arts council artists
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innovation award courtney is represented
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by radius gallery in missoula montana
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big thanks to our title sponsor the good
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food store and thanks to our enduring
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sponsors
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cabinetparts.com and blackboard
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communications
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thanks to our champion sponsor trufood
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missoula and a very special thanks to
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our blue ribbon sponsor
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joyce of tile courtney blaizon’s pen and
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marker drawings reference
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fields of science history cultural
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studies myths and fairy tales
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her images take us someplace between the
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known world
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and a dreamscape a surreal marriage of
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naturalism and fantasy the results can
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be simultaneously whimsical
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and grotesque witty as well as
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disturbing
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the tension of these unions suggests our
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own struggle
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to achieve balance in a chaotic world i
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caught up with courtney blaizon last
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summer
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we chatted about the historical context
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much of her work references
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life as a professional artist and some
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of the large-scale works
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that she has done recently before
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finally talking about the poster that
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she made for tell us something
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in june of 2019 i’ve also been thinking
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about these interviews as a record
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of a specific time in our collective
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pandemic history
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they shared glimpses into the moments of
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life during quarantine
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how we were coping and how we are
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somehow continuing to go about
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our daily lives
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i just moved to a new place so that was
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really nice
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yeah lots of very i mean different than
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a normal summer
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like yeah for sure yeah um
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yeah like our maid fares aren’t
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happening
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this summer in the same way so that’s
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weird
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are you doing a online version of the
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maid fair
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i mean somewhat but we’re basically just
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posting everybody who would have been in
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the maid fairs
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page and sort of letting them offer
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discounts if they want
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but we’re not doing anything like
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virtual
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with video or yeah i
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i just i feel like that kind of bubble
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where that was like at the beginning of
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sort of quarantine
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like there was a lot of live events and
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i felt like they were really popular
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and like really necessary and i feel
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like now
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now that it’s summer especially and
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we’ve kind of gotten used to the
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the whole thing like i don’t know that
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we’d be able to capture an
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audience in the middle of summer inside
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you know like i feel like that was the
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way that we are all connecting
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at the beginning of this and i don’t
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know if now people feel like they can
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just be together outside
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distance that it’s just like
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oh yeah it’s interesting it just doesn’t
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seem like
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it didn’t it ended up not seeming worth
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our time
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and a lot of our major artists didn’t
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want to
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extend their time towards trying to do
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something special so
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summer in montana is pretty short
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take advantage of it yeah especially now
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because
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who knows what the winter is going to
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look like right yeah
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exactly yeah we just want to be outside
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and
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doing stuff as much as possible right
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yeah i know some of the art fairs around
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the state have still
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happened and that’s another thing we
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struggled with
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but we just felt pretty worried about
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like if if an outbreak had been traced
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to our event we would have felt
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really irresponsible right and and we
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wouldn’t
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uh we’re not even in a phase where we
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would have been able to allow that big
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of a crowd anyway
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with missoula county so yeah so we just
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decided to be
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preemptively just cancel it and then
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hope that we can recoup with
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some of the other events that we have
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i’m lucky that i don’t have all my eggs
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in that basket though
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so i’ve got other ways that i can still
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make money and stuff
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have you been talking to a lot of
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artists and writers and
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creatives i talk to
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only one other tell us something poster
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artist in the way that we’re talking
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you’ve heard this idea on the tell us
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something podcast before that
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replicating
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the in-person live performance vibe that
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a traditional tell us something brings
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is very difficult yeah i just feel like
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certain things like in our
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experience like in our in our creative
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experiences
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can translate to online and can be
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just as successful if not more in some
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ways
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and then other things we’re just i think
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we’re finding just can’t
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you can’t duplicate it right yeah
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yeah you just have to kind of roll with
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the
07:37
[Music]
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because it’s an unstable profession to
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begin with like
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yeah it’s gonna be unstable in any
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way and i think like creative people who
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are self-employed
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already feel that instability or already
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kind of know
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how to chart those waters if they’ve
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been doing it long enough
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so it it becomes i mean at least for me
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became pretty easy to adapt
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to because i was pretty used to
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feeling some moments of floundering
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financially or or you know so yeah
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for me at least it was kind of like
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yeah no i wouldn’t say easy i if i said
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easy i
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don’t think that’s the word but it it
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was a an experience i was kind of
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equipped for because i i’ve had periods
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of good
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stuff happening in periods where i’m
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like i’m never going to get a job again
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you know kind of feeling you have
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just built your career around saying yes
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basically
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yeah and i don’t it’s interesting
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because over the past
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two years i’ve been in the process of
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saying no to more things and
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cutting more things out of my life as
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i’ve it’s become more clear to me what i
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really want and then also i’ve been
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getting enough work
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where i’m able to say no to things like
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it was really just last
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year or two years ago that i quit doing
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summer markets
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um i basically except for the summer
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maid fairs have given up vending
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all together and i only do the summer
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made the majors in missoula basically
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just
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because that’s how i started really
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getting known i feel like if people came
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to my booth
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at market and so i still want to keep my
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toes in that a bit
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i’ve given up doing private kid lessons
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because it just wasn’t something i
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wanted to do
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i feel like i’ve been in the process of
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shedding a lot of those things that i
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said yesterday
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at the beginning of my career in favor
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of things that
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really made me fulfilled and
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so it’s been interesting to have been
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saying no to things that then would have
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been pretty hard to do
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anyway um it was like um
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an interesting interesting timing to
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have been
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paring those things down um
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yeah but you’re right i absolutely and
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like i know a lot of
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artists who wouldn’t go that route of
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like just say yes but for me it just
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was the right way to go about things so
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i i had a really large
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pool and then it made
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when one part wasn’t working i could
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always rely on another part to
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pay my bills and so it’s always been
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like
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i’ve never felt too insecure because
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i’ve always had something that