August Love Letter: closing old chapters and beginning new ones

Happy August! There is a lot happening this month, so buckle up!

I’m excited to share that the Full Dome film I told you about a few months ago has been officially accepted to the Macon Film Festival. I am currently finishing up the final edit as we speak to send off to the festival. We cannot wait to see it. The crazy thing about making a Full Dome film is that we do not actually know what it looks like in a planetarium. I have several visualizers that I have been working on in TouchDesigner, but it is impossible for us to even know what the final piece will be like until we actually go see it at the festival. It is kind of terrifying but also so exciting. To celebrate, one of the prints this month is a still from our film. It is cropped and slightly distorted compared to what is shown in the dome, but it turned out to be one of my favorite prints I have ever had in the mail club.

August is also a big month for me as far as celebrations go. On August 8, I am celebrating 10 years without alcohol. It is kind of crazy that it has been almost a decade, but 2016 also does not seem that long ago. My life has gone in many different directions since then, but one thing is for sure: it keeps growing and evolving, especially for my interests and creativity. I credit that a lot to drinking not being part of my life. To celebrate, I made a sticker sheet as a dedication to the one thing I have been obsessed with over the past 10 years, sparkling water. My favorite brand changes almost every year, but right now Rambler is my go-to. I’m even starting to move away from any flavoring and just keeping it strictly plain sparkling. Maybe that is a sign of maturity (or just being really thirsty all the time from the Texas heat).

The last print you may recognize if you were part of the first-ever month of the mail club last November. This is one of my favorite paintings that was inspired by a trip I took to Salt Lake City in July 2022. I visited the Sundance Resort and was really inspired by all the creativity and programming they have there for artists and filmmakers. I think about that trip a lot because it unlocked something within me and I produced some of my favorite work a month later. I think it also planted a desire to move West. I want to include it in this month’s mailing as an ode to everything that has happened in the past 4 years since that trip.

This month also marks a big shift for the mail club. I have decided to make this the last mailing for the mail club. I have really enjoyed the past 10 months of producing the club and can’t believe so many people have joined. It really is incredible and I appreciate all of you so much. This started out as a project to make my work more accessible and to connect with people around the world and I feel like I accomplished that. But I have found myself moving in a different direction creatively and making work that is accessible but in a different format. I appreciate you so much for supporting this project, it has been one of the most fun things to create, and can’t say thank you enough.

That's all for now. Thank you for reading, collecting, encouraging, and creating this little community with me. It has been a joy to share these small pieces with you. Keep making things!!

love & light

-anna