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The Artist
I am a growing independent artist and queer creator using my arts, culture, and psychology degrees to create fun and engaging designs. While my BA in art history and curation gave me a basis for my understanding of design, I am otherwise entirely self-taught. As with any artist, I am constantly learning more and evolving my knowledge, capabilities, and personal style.I typically prefer taking a more symbolic and minimalistic approach, trying to tell a story through the images I create. Most of my art is inspired by my interests, especially the media I enjoy and have found impactful.Ultimately, I want to bring more beauty into the world and help people connect with themselves and others through my art. I also hope to inspire others to create and support other small business owners, especially those just starting like myself.Thank you for taking the time to visit my site and learn more about my business! I hope you enjoy what you see, and please consider following me on social media to see what I come up with next and possibly even influence my future designs!
Asterism
as·ter·ism
noun1. A prominent pattern or group of stars, typically having a popular name but smaller than a constellation.^2. A group of three asterisks (⁂) drawing attention to the following text.^
As a fun little tie-in, you will see me alluding to the typographical asterism in the three stacked stars next to the name in my logo. However, the name was mainly chosen for the first definition. One reason is that the Big Dipper is a well-known asterism that holds special meaning for me. The other and main reason refers to Asterism being a more over-arching collection of projects than one project, brand, or business itself. Asterism is my collection of stars.You may come to find that some content I create under Asterism will begin to shine brighter, breaking off to become a full project. Each project I cultivate becomes a star in my asterism of work. This setup made the most sense because of my interdisciplinary collection of interests, skills, knowledge, and passions. It serves to make it easier for others to follow and stay up to date. Whether you find interest in all of the various stars in my asterism or want to watch one or two, I am happy to have you here and glad you have wandered into my little corner of the galaxy. Welcome home.
Lucky Starr Designs
Lucky Starr Designs is my first venture into e-commerce and publicising my art. It was very much a simple project at the beginning. It was essentially just my Redbubble shop, a Facebook store page, and a (still) hardly used Instagram. Eventually, as I continued lovingly uploading new art whenever an exciting idea struck me, it became a passion project, serving more as a means to learn to love my art and celebrate my creativity no matter what level I was at. It still hardly makes me anything, maybe $20 in a month, but just seeing the occasional order makes me smile, and I love seeing which design people chose and what they decided to get it on. Ultimately, the confidence, skills, and self-love I gained from pursuing this project make it worth the fact that it has gained little traction or financial gain.Most importantly, Lucky Starr Designs (named after the main character of my favourite book series, Lucky Starr, Space Ranger by Isaac Asimov) was the foundation from which Asterism arose. As I continued to learn and grow, so did my desires and ambitions, and I realised that I could do so much more than what Redbubble could offer. It was then that I began to develop my idea for my e-commerce site, using Printful where I have more options in terms of design, rather than being limited to only printing one flat image which can only be placed in a specific area. The ideas and inspiration for what I could create with these now opportunities came flooding forth, and it was from there that I began to plan bigger and better things.However, Lucky Starr Designs will forever be my first true work, the one that made everything else possible, and I hardly think I will be able to ever let it go. As of now, my plan is to keep it as it is, eventually pulling some designs down that I intend to use for more complex merchandise that is better suited for them. The Lucky Starr Designs shop on Redbubble will remain up and even be occasionally updated with new products, mostly those that don't quite fit into another project, or are just silly and fun for the sake of it.
Neuro Notes
Unfortunately, many of us who are neurodivergent have had experiences with ableism, meaning that people try to make our brains work in ways that they physically cannot by holding us to the standards of neurotypicals and denying us the necessary accommodations for us to function and thrive. It is common for many of us to find that we process information better when doodling or colouring rather than traditional note-taking. It is also just as common for others to discourage or even actively punish this habit, forcing us to adhere to forms of note-taking that do not work for us and hinder our learning.Frustrated with the ableist attitude that too many neurodivergent people have had to deal with from their instructors or other authority figures, I came up with the idea one night while struggling to fall asleep to create a notebook that was meant to be drawn in, where the doodling and the colouring are built-in. Taking the common habit of doodling in the margins, I created note pages with colouring book pages in the margins. From there, I began working on a planner geared toward neurodivergent folk and those who prefer or need a more gentle planner focusing on positive self-care and micro-tasking.While these are both small works right now, simply being small printable PDFs with several copies of each page with the option to print or even download as many as they wish to have more pages, this is a project that will continue to be added to and, much like Asterism itself and the work that spawned it, will continue to grow, change, and evolve as time goes on. You can find the original Neuro Notes and the Neuro Notes Planner and any other upcoming works in the series on my Ko-Fi shop. To encourage accessibility Neuro Notes works and any other content I make concerning mental health and wellness will ALWAYS be free to download. While there is the option to pay an amount of your choice, it is never expected unless you both can and want to. If you would like to download it and support me but don't have the money currently, please feel free to download the content and just come back when you have the funds to donate (or join one of my membership tiers, which start as low as $1 and are designed to be as even as is fair).
