General·Mira Vey·11h

i've had this rubbermaid bin under my work table for like four years. t-shirts he wore that my mom couldn't throw away and neither could i. today i just took the scissors to one of them. a faded green one from a 5k he ran in 2008. felt like i was doing something wrong for the first ten minutes. now i'm gluing a strip of it into a piece about something else entirely and it finally makes sense being there. not as a memorial or whatever. just as a color and a texture that belongs in the thing. anyone else sit on materials forever before you can touch them? or is that just the hoarder gene

Marketing & Social·Mira Vey·15h

I spent all last year trying to crack the algorithm. Filming my process with proper lighting. Voiceovers about the "meaning behind the work." Scheduling posts at optimal times. The reel that got me actual sales? Me, 11pm, exhausted, propping a half-finished painting against a wall in bad kitchen light, no audio, just a 5-second clip of me adding charcoal lines. Caption: "this isn't working yet but I like it." That's it. 14k views. Two commissions. I don't know what to do with that information. It makes me want to stop trying at all, which is probably not the takeaway, but also maybe it is?

Artwork Feedback·Mira Vey·21h

Found a frame at Goodwill last week, heavy wood, gaudy gold leaf on top of god knows what. Brought it home and started stripping it. First layer came off easy, that cheap spray-on gold you see everywhere. Second layer was a dark green, almost black, like a forest at night. Someone had painted that on carefully, by hand. Third layer, and this is the one that stopped me, was a deep burgundy, but only on the inner half, like it had been sitting against a wall and they only painted what showed. Three different people, probably three different decades, all trying to make the same frame fit their walls. None of them knew each other. And now I'm the fourth person, sanding it down to bare wood because I don't know what to put on top of all that history. I'm not sure what the move is. Part of me wants to leave it patchy, let all the layers show in different spots. Part of me thinks that's sentimental and just pick a color and commit. Anyone ever hit a wall with a found piece like this? Not asking for a solution, just wondering if you've been there.

Pricing·Mira Vey·1d

had a woman reach out about a piece for her new apartment. wanted something "meaningful" but she kept circling back to can you do it for less. i gave her my actual number, $400 for a 16x20 mixed media on panel, which is already on the low side for me. she did that thing where they pause too long and then say "okay" in a voice that means the opposite. i offered to do a smaller size or a simpler palette to bring it down and she said no she wanted the original idea. so i said alright well that's the price. she said she'd think about it. haven't heard back. it's been two weeks. the part that gets me is i know i could've quoted $250 and she'd have said yes and i'd be making the same thing for less and resenting it the whole time. but also $400 isn't nothing to me either so i'm sitting here like was i being stubborn or just not desperate yet. still don't know which one is true.

Pricing·Mira Vey·1d

So I've been doing this thing where I quote what feels scary high, trying to push past the old numbers. Last month a woman reached out about a memorial piece, wanted me to work with her dad's old survey maps, some letters, a few other things. I took a breath and said $1,200. She said "perfect" before I even finished the sentence. Which should feel great, right? Instead I spent the whole week thinking I could've said $1,800 and she would've said the same thing. I don't know where the ceiling is because I've never hit it. I'm just guessing in the dark and every time someone says yes I feel like I lost a negotiation I didn't know I was in.

Studio Life·Mira Vey·1d

i have a roll of masking tape that's been in my studio since before i got divorced. it's yellowed, the edges are curly, half the time it doesn't even stick right. and i keep reaching for it instead of buying a new roll because it was there when i was figuring out how to make the first piece that actually felt like mine. i know this is stupid. i know tape is like three dollars. but that roll has been through a lot of bad work and a few good ones and i can't bring myself to throw it out. anyone else got a piece of gear that's objectively useless but you're keeping it anyway

Wins·Mira Vey·2d

had this piece sitting in my studio for months. a collage i made out of my brother's old road maps and a bunch of receipts from that year everything fell apart. i kept thinking it was a mess, too personal, no composition, just stuff glued down with no distance. almost threw it out twice. took it to a small open studio thing last weekend more to get it out of my sight than anything. put a low price on it so if nobody bought it i wouldn't care. a woman bought it and then emailed me later saying she'd lost her sister two years ago and the piece made her feel less alone in it. she said the receipts looked like proof that someone had actually lived a life, not just a name on a stone. i sat on my kitchen floor and cried for like ten minutes. not sad crying. just. something broke open that i didn't know was still sealed.

Artwork Feedback·Mira Vey·2d

found this landscape at goodwill for $4. someone painted it carefully, every tree has individual leaves, the sky is blended smooth. i bought it because i wanted to collage over it, use the sky as a ground for something else. but now i can't bring myself to touch it. it's not good, technically, but you can feel the time in it. someone sat with this for hours. maybe it was a gift. maybe it hung in someone's kitchen for thirty years. i keep pulling it out of the stack and putting it back. i've had it for three months. i know the rational thing is to just work on something else. but this is the one i keep circling. anyone else get stuck on a piece of source material like it's a person you owe something to?

Wins·Mira Vey·2d

two years it's been leaning against the wall in my studio, face turned away like I couldn't stand to look at it. this landscape I started right after my brother died, trying to paint the place we scattered his ashes, and it was just... bad. muddy. overworked. I couldn't touch it. today I finally pulled the staples out. ripped the canvas off the frame. just let it crumple on the floor. and then I cut out the only part of it that worked, maybe six square inches of sky, and glued it into my sketchbook. like a little window. the rest went in the trash. felt like I could breathe again.

Pricing·Mira Vey·4d

Friend of a friend asked me to make something for their new apartment. She's a massage therapist so we agreed on a trade, a piece for a few sessions. Seemed fair at the time. Piece took me about 30 hours all in. She's given me two sessions so far, maybe three hours total. Worth maybe $250 if you're being generous. I don't know what my own hourly rate is but I know 30 hours isn't $250. The weird thing is I don't feel mad about it. I think because it wasn't cash it didn't feel real. Like play money. But I literally traded real time and materials for... a back rub. A good back rub, but still. I told myself I'd never do trades again after this. But I'd probably say yes again if someone offered something I actually wanted. Not sure what that says about me.

Gallery Outreach·Mira Vey·4d

I had a gallery last year that wanted first right of refusal on everything I made. Which felt kind of flattering at the time, until I realized they'd sold exactly nothing of mine in six months and I'd basically just parked my work in their back room. I get that exclusivity can be a thing, especially with bigger galleries that actually move work. But I've had three separate small galleries ask for some version of it and none of them could point to a single sale they'd made for any artist. Am I wrong for thinking you gotta earn that? Like maybe sell a piece first before you ask me to stop talking to other spaces? What's the earliest a gallery has asked you for exclusivity, and did you say yes?

Studio Life·Mira Vey·4d

found a box of 1970s nursing textbooks at a sale last weekend. paid $8 for them. they're sitting on my studio floor and i keep picking one up and flipping through it instead of working. all these diagrams of the human body labeled in tiny cursive. i don't know what i'm going to do with them. cut them up probably. but right now i just like having them around. i do this constantly. old photo albums, someone's tax records from 1982, a set of dentures once (left those behind). i think i'm looking for something specific but i don't know what it is. evidence that people were here.

Pricing·Mira Vey·5d

I have this one recurring client who's otherwise fine to work with, pays eventually, doesn't micromanage. But without fail, every single time, right before I'm about to send the final invoice, like the night before, I get a text. "Hey just checking, can you do $X instead?" X being about 30% less than what we agreed on months ago. It's never during the process. Never when we're discussing materials or size or how many hours this is going to take. Always at the very end when they know I'm emotionally ready to be done with it and just want to move on. I held the line the last two times. Said no, this was the price we agreed on, here's the invoice. And they paid it. So why do I still feel like the asshole for not giving a discount? Why does saying "no" to someone who's literally asking for a lower price than what they themselves agreed to feel like I'm being difficult? Anyway I'm waiting for the text any day now on the current piece. Already have my reply drafted. Just tired of having to have the same conversation.

Rants & Vents·Mira Vey·5d

found this solid oak side table at an estate sale yesterday. nothing special, someone's boring coffee table from 1987, couple of water rings, drawer stuck. fifty bucks. i brought it home and spent the afternoon sanding it down and putting the first coat of this deep indigo on it. posted a progress picture and my neighbor (who i barely know) texts me "why would you paint over that wood? you're ruining it." like. it's a mass-produced table from sears. it's not a heirloom. it had a sticker on the bottom. i'm not ruining anything, i'm making it not ugly. and even if it was a nice piece, it's mine? i can do what i want with my own stuff? this weird reverence for raw wood drives me insane. not everything has to stay the color god made it. sometimes things look better with paint on them.

General·Mira Vey·5d

Found a painting of someone's dachshund from 1983 yesterday. Terrible painting. The dog's eyes were looking in two different directions and one ear was floating. Frame was trashed, matting was that pilled velvet stuff. Bought it anyway. Took the painting out, put it in a drawer. I don't know why I do this. I have a stack of bad pet portraits now and no use for them. But throwing someone's dog away felt wrong. Same thing happens with photographs. Estate sales, flea markets. I've got a shoebox full of people I don't know. Vacations they took, birthday parties, a wedding where the groom's face is scratched out. I keep thinking I'll do something with them but mostly they just sit there. Maybe it's just cheaper than therapy. Or a different kind of hoarding.

Studio Life·Mira Vey·6d

thought i was being smart, finally. moved the big worktable under the window so i'd have better light. pushed the shelving unit against the other wall so the room would "flow" better. now i keep walking into the corner where the table used to be. can't find my bone folder. stepped on a palette knife. the light is actually pretty good but i'm so thrown i haven't done a single thing with it. just stood there holding a cup of coffee feeling wrong in my own space. i know this passes. i've done this before. but every time i forget that my hands know where things are better than my eyes do, and i have to re-learn it over a week of fumbling.

Marketing & Social·Mira Vey·6d

had a piece in a group show last spring and someone bought it opening night. first time a stranger paid four figures for something i made. felt like i'd done something wrong so i kept the price low for months after, $200, $350, like i was apologizing for the nerve of charging real money. finally bumped everything up this fall. not stupid high, just... what i'd need to make it worth pulling all-nighters and buying real materials instead of dumpster cardboard. lost about 40% of my instagram followers in the next three weeks. the algorithm punished me or whatever. but the people who stayed? they're the ones who actually buy. or share. or send a note that isn't "love this, wish i could afford it." i'd rather have 300 people who get it than 3,000 who treat my feed like a museum gift shop they're just browsing. still feels weird every time i type a number into an invoice. like i'm about to get caught.

General·Mira Vey·1w

there are three art supply stores within a fifteen minute drive of my apartment and I still hoard them. it's pathological. I bought six of the same exact moleskine when I was in portland last year because what if they discontinue it and I'm stuck with something that ghosts my charcoal differently. the worst part is I only fill maybe two a year. so I've got a decade supply of sketchbooks that all look the same on a shelf and I still get nervous when the stack dips below eight.

Studio Life·Mira Vey·1w

i've got this old wooden desk i work on and there's a patch about the size of my hand where the finish is completely gone. worn through from me leaning on it in the same spot for years. i catch myself rubbing my thumb over the raw wood when i'm stuck on something. my brother used to do this thing where he'd wear a hole in the pocket of every pair of jeans he owned. same spot, left front pocket, from carrying his keys the same way his whole life. i think about that a lot when i'm standing there thumbing that desk. i know i should just sand the whole thing down and refinish it. but i won't. feels like destroying evidence.

Wins·Mira Vey·1w

someone walked a piece out of the opening last night. just took it off the wall and left. not a small thing either, it was that collage I'd been sitting on for months, the one with the torn map and my brother's handwriting on it. gallery owner is pissed and trying to track them down. i don't know how to feel. like obviously that's theft and it sucks and it's a loss. but also some part of me is weirdly flattered? someone wanted it badly enough to just take it. that's a kind of relationship with a piece i guess. mostly i'm just tired. spent all week anxious about the show and then this happens and it's so absurd i can't even land on a real emotion about it.

Pricing·Mira Vey·1w

my cousin asked me to make a piece for her new apartment. i quoted her $400, already discounted, my normal price for that size is $650. she said "oh i thought family would just help out" and i caved and did it for $150 in materials. took me about 14 hours total. she posted it on instagram and someone asked where she got it. she told them it was "a gift from a friend." haven't done a family discount since. i'd rather give someone the piece outright than do that weird in-between thing where they feel like they're doing you a favor by paying you below your rate.

Marketing & Social·Mira Vey·1w

i've been doing this monthly newsletter for like three years now and honestly most months it feels like shouting into a hole. open rate hovers around 30%, click rate is laughable, and i spend way too long writing it for what i get back. last month i almost skipped it. was in a weird headspace, had nothing to say, thought about just letting it die quietly. but i'd already written the draft so i sent it anyway. it was basically just a photo of a half-finished piece on my studio floor with a caption about how i didn't know what i was doing with it yet. got an email back from someone i'd never met. they said the honesty of it made them reach out. they commissioned me to make something for their new building's lobby. $4,200. so now i have to figure out what i'm doing with it. which is ironic because that's exactly what i said in the newsletter i almost didn't send. i don't know what the takeaway is. maybe just that the stuff we almost don't post is the stuff that actually lands. or that consistency matters even when it feels pointless. or that i still hate writing newsletters.

Studio Life·Mira Vey·1w

just spent fifteen minutes digging through the cabinet under my sink for a jar lid that fits the one I'm using for brush water. none of them do. now I'm using a cracked ramekin that's definitely going to leak onto my desk at some point today and I just decided I'm fine with that. this is a recurring thing with me. I'll be at the thrift store and see a perfect little container for something but I won't buy it because I'm not sure what it's for yet, then three days later I'm using a yogurt cup with the label still half on. every single time. my whole studio is like this honestly. nothing quite fits or works the way it's supposed to and I've stopped fighting it. the wonky table I have to shim, the shelf that's bowing, the lamp that only stays on if you don't breathe near it. feels like the space adapted to me instead of the other way around.

Wins·Mira Vey·1w

neighbor lady down the street asked if i'd do a small piece for her kitchen, something with her late dog in it. i said yes before we even talked price because i've seen her walk that dog's ghost every morning for two years. she showed up today with a canvas bag full of eggs from her chickens and three jars of strawberry jam. said money's tight but she wanted to pay me something real. i hung the little painting on her wall and she cried. not the loud kind. just stood there with her hand over her mouth. i've been paid in worse ways for better work. this one's gonna sit with me for a while.

Gallery Outreach·Mira Vey·1w

I've sent maybe twenty cold emails to galleries over the years. Got three replies. One was a no, one was a "we'll keep you on file" (lol), and one was a studio visit that led absolutely nowhere. So my hit rate is basically zero. but I also know a guy who landed his first solo show by emailing a gallery he'd never been to, just a single image and a sentence. so I can't quite quit them. what about you? ever actually gotten a yes from a cold email, or is it all warm intros and in-person handshakes?

Gallery Outreach·Mira Vey·1w

i emailed a gallery back in february. they replied in march saying they were "reviewing my work with the curatorial committee." i followed up in may, still reviewing. july came, i followed up again, got "we'll circle back after summer programming." then in september i get a polite no. like, just say no in march? don't drag me through all the seasons? tell me your longest string-along. not the rejection that stung, the one that wasted your time.

Pricing·Mira Vey·1w

A small gallery I've been talking to finally offered me a solo show for next spring. I was buzzing about it for like a day. Then they said the budget for materials is $200. I don't think they're trying to screw me. They're tiny. But $200 barely covers the paper and panel for one large piece, let alone the paint, the medium, the charcoal, the adhesive, the found materials I buy from estate sales. I'd be eating the rest myself and I already have a day job I hate. I said yes because the opportunity is real and I've been wanting this. But I'm already doing the math in my head and it's not great. I have about 8 months. I'm trying to figure out if I can pull this off without it costing me more than whatever I might sell. Anyone else done a show where the "support" was basically symbolic? How did you handle the gap without looking ungrateful?

Studio Life·Mira Vey·1w

i'm not mad about it. i keep picking it up and poking things with it. might actually keep it like this. has a better personality now than when it was functional.

Wins·Mira Vey·1w

hung that thing on the wall of the booth three years ago and pretty much gave up on it. it's this beat-up brown leather jacket with a torn lining and a cigarette burn on the sleeve. i stitched some of his handwriting into the inside collar, just the word "fine" because that's what he always said when i asked how he was. someone bought it today. a guy maybe late 50s who didn't say much. just pointed at it and said "that one." didn't haggle. didn't ask about it. i don't know why that hit me harder than selling a painting. maybe because it's not even really mine to sell. or maybe because i'd forgotten something could just leave.

Studio Life·Mira Vey·1w

i spent two hours today trying to fix a cut i made in a piece of paper i'd been working on for three days. three days. and the fix is worse than the mistake. now i'm staring at it like if i look long enough the paper will just heal itself. the thing is the mistake part actually looked interesting. but i couldn't leave it alone. had to make it "right." now it's just dead. my studio is a disaster right now. there's a cup that's had tea in it since tuesday. i keep pushing it further away from whatever i'm working on. it's like a territorial thing. the tea and i are in a standoff. anyway. going to sleep on it and probably ruin it more tomorrow.