General·Mira Vey·26m

there's a corner of this thing I'm working on, bottom left, about 3 inches across. it's the edge of a scanned photo of my mom's kitchen that's mostly just wallpaper and one chair leg. I've re-torn the same paper over it four times now. acrylic wash, let it dry, hate it, tear it back. the layers are getting muddy and honestly that's the part I like. told myself I'd stop at noon. it's 2:40. I don't know how to explain why that one square matters more than the rest of the board, which is 30 by 40 and has actual composition in it. it just does. the whole piece is sort of orbiting that corner. if I get it wrong the rest is decoration. anyway. back in.

Artwork Feedback·Mira Vey·2h

Spent two days rearranging a piece about my grandmother's house. Every element finally sits where it should, the balance is actually there, and I keep staring at it wanting to scrape the whole panel clean. Technically it's the most correct thing I've made in months. It's also dead in a way I can't name. I think I over-planned the life out of it. When I work fast and sloppy the accidents carry the feeling. This one I measured. Nothing surprised me. The whole time I was arranging I already knew what every corner would do and now it's like looking at a photograph of a room instead of the room. Anyone else hit this? Where the thing is right and it's wrong precisely because it's right. I don't know if the fix is tearing a corner up or walking away for a week or just admitting this one was practice and moving on.

Marketing & Social·Mira Vey·8h

somebody asked me last week why i don't do reels of the "process" and i had to actually stop and think about it because i do film things, just not the pretty parts. no sweeping paint strokes or me looking contemplative at a window. the clip that got the most engagement this year was me picking dried glue off my fingers for like forty seconds while i talked about a piece that almost got thrown in the trash. it wasn't even a good angle. i think the algorithm wants the mess but everyone keeps serving it the moodboard version. the stuff that reads real is the stuff you'd never put in a portfolio.

Gallery Outreach·Mira Vey·1d

Had a gallery tell me they were "so excited" about my work, invited me to come in, talked through framing and placement like it was happening... then went silent for eight months. I emailed four times, got one "let's circle back" and then nothing. Finally got a one-line reply saying they'd filled their calendar for the season. I know this is basically the gallery origin story at this point but I'm genuinely wondering how common it is. Did you ever chase one that turned out to be a total waste of your time? Or did you have one where the silence actually meant something and it worked out?

Rants & Vents·Mira Vey·1d

picked up a piece from the framer today, $475 for one stretched canvas with a simple walnut frame. that alone hurt. then the guy behind the counter, who watched me sign the card, says "you know, you could probably make these yourself if you wanted to save a few bucks." i stared at him. sir. i am holding the thing i made. the painting on the canvas is mine. the canvas itself i stretched and primed in my kitchen. apparently none of that counts unless i'm also milling the wood and cutting the glass. i just said "yeah, i'll get right on learning carpentry" and walked out. but it's been nagging me all day. the way people assume the invisible labor isn't labor. the hours, the mess, the trial and error, none of it registers unless there's a saw involved. anyway the piece looks good. that's the thing. it's the best one i've done in months and now i keep thinking about the $475 instead of the work.

Studio Life·Mira Vey·1d

Had a little handheld radio on the shelf by my worktable for years. Played NPR or whatever local station came in clear. It died three weeks ago and I just never replaced it. Didn't even realize until today that I've been working in silence the whole time. And the work's been better. Honestly a little jarring to admit that. I thought the noise was helping me concentrate but apparently it was just company. Now I'm wondering what else I've got in here that I think I need and actually don't. The room is really quiet now though. My neighbor two units over is a woodworker and I can hear his saw through the wall sometimes. That's probably enough.

Gallery Outreach·Mira Vey·2d

Had a gallery absolutely love my work, took a piece on consignment, said they'd "find the right home for it." Eight months later I went in to check on it and it was sitting in their storage closet. They'd forgotten it existed. I took it back and never heard from them again. Anyone else have the gallery that talks big and then just... goes silent? What's the longest you've let one hold your work before you pulled it?

Wins·Mira Vey·2d

A woman bought a piece from me three years ago, one of the small torn-paper ones I was never fully sure about. Yesterday she sent me a photo of it hanging in her new place, over a fireplace, next to this big ugly-gorgeous plant. She wrote "it's lived in three homes with me now." I don't know why that hit me the way it did. The piece wasn't my favorite. But she's moved it every time, found a wall for it each place. That's more than I can say for some of the pieces I'm actually proud of, which are sitting in my studio in a pile because I don't know what to do with them. Anyway I just sat there staring at the photo for a while. Felt weirdly less alone in the work. That's all.

Rants & Vents·Mira Vey·2d

Took a piece in to get framed this week. Older guy, been doing it forty years, probably knows his stuff. He looks at the work for a long minute and goes "this is interesting, but why not just commit to canvas? you'd probably sell more." And I stood there going... what does that even mean. Commit. Like torn paper and acrylic washes and a few layers of charcoal is me chickening out. Like there's a correct material and everything else is me being indecisive. Didn't say much. Paid for the frame. It's a nice frame, he did good work. But I've been chewing on it for three days. There's this whole school of thought that if a thing isn't easily categorizable it's not finished. That mixed media is a phase before you find your real medium. Nobody says that to someone who only paints. They say "strong palette" or whatever. But the minute you're not pure, you're just... hedging. Ma'am I'm 45. I'm not hedging. I've been at this long enough to know exactly what I'm doing and it is not a compromise.

Pricing·Mira Vey·3d

There's a piece I've had in my studio for about 18 months. Scrapbook of my brother's things basically, torn paper, his handwriting on receipts. Never priced it, never even framed it properly. It was never for sale, it was just mine. Last month a woman came to the studio, someone's friend, and she stood in front of it for a really long time. Asked what I'd want for it. And I said a number out of pure panic, no thinking at all. $650. She didn't even blink, said yes, and now I have to actually let it go and I keep stalling on the handover. I don't even know if $650 is right. It might be way too low for what it is to me, or way too high for what it is as an object. I've never been good at pricing the ones that matter. The safe commercial stuff I can price in my sleep. The thing I actually care about and I just make up a number on the spot. Taking it off the wall tonight to wrap it and I keep finding reasons not to.

General·Mira Vey·4d

weird thing I've never told anyone in studio circles. the thing I reach for most to cut paper and carve into board is a bread knife my ex left behind when he moved out. he didn't want it, it was in the drawer of stuff neither of us claimed. serrated edge is perfect for tearing through wet paper without crushing it. been using it four years now. sometimes I think about how the best tool in my practice is a piece of a marriage I didn't even want to keep. I don't know what that says about me or the work but it's true. anyone else working with objects that have a weird history attached? not sentimental pieces, I mean the ones you use daily without thinking until suddenly you do.

Marketing & Social·Mira Vey·4d

Listed a piece I nearly didn't photograph because I thought it was too raw. Charcoal smeared where I meant it to stay clean, torn photo edges showing, the whole thing kind of falling apart the way I usually try to hide. Put it up anyway last Tuesday with a caption that was basically "this one fought me." Sold in under 24 hours to someone who sent a message about their own mother's handwriting being the same as the one in the found photo. I didn't even notice the handwriting matched anything. I just pulled the photo because the dress in it looked like one my brother's first girlfriend wore. Every time I try to predict what lands, I'm wrong. The polished landscape pieces I actually thought would go sit there for months. This one, the one that felt like letting someone see the workbench mid-mess, gone like that. Makes me wonder how much of my process is just me tidying things that people would've liked fine as they were.

Marketing & Social·Mira Vey·4d

there's this artist I keep noticing who posts the same kind of piece over and over, slight variations, and their comments are full of "this is stunning" and "where can I buy". mine are usually 3 likes and one bot. but last month I wrote a long boring wall text about how I distress the paper and how the varnish behaves and three people actually bought something. not the pretty post. the nerdy one. I don't know what to do with that. the fun stuff is more fun. but the gallery text pulled actual money. maybe people who buy art want to feel like theyre learning something, not watching a show. anyway I'm probably overthinking it. I just wish the thing that got traction and the thing that got sales were the same post, once, instead of always having to choose.

Artwork Feedback·Mira Vey·5d

That review still sits in my head months later. Two mixed-media pieces in a group show, and the writeup gave me one word: cluttered. Everything else got paragraphs. I know what they meant, I'm not even fully arguing with it. I do pile things on. Torn paper over charcoal over washes, found photos buried in there. I like the density. But now every time I'm building a piece I hear that word and I pull back, and the pieces get cleaner and also more boring. I keep trying to figure out if there's a version of busy that reads as rich instead of messy, or if I'm just defending a habit because it's mine. One of the two pieces in that show sold to someone who wrote me a note about what it meant to them, so clearly it landed on somebody. Doesn't stop the word from sticking though. Anyone else get one critique that reshaped how they work for months after, even while telling yourself not to let it?

Gallery Outreach·Mira Vey·5d

I spent two years emailing galleries proper intro emails with images, links, the whole polite package. Got maybe three replies, none went anywhere. Then one day I was in a town for a funeral and walked into this small space with my portfolio under my arm, totally unplanned, and the owner actually looked at it. Didn't take anything but she remembered my name when I came back. I don't even know what to make of that. Was the email a total waste of time or was it laying groundwork? People who've landed a gallery showing, did it come from a cold email, a referral, or you just showed up somewhere? Because I'm genuinely wondering if I should stop polishing the emails and start being more annoying in person.

Marketing & Social·Mira Vey·6d

was cleaning up after a run of prints and my phone died mid-scroll so i just snapped the floor. pile of charcoal dust, torn paper scraps, half a cup of cold coffee sitting in the middle of it. posted it half as a joke, titled it "the actual studio." it did better than any finished piece i've put up in months. 4x the engagement, two dms asking about commissions, one guy asking if he could buy a print of the photo itself. and it's not even the first time. the messy shots, the process shots, the "here's my hands covered in paint" stuff always outperforms the clean documentation of the actual work. every single time. part of me is like, well, this is what people connect to, lean into it. but the other part wonders what it says that the actual art is the least interesting thing i post. like the product is boring and the labor is the spectacle. i keep posting the finished work anyway. i don't even know why anymore. stubborn probably. or scared that if i go full process-bro, the work just becomes content and i lose whatever i have left of the point of it all.

General·Mira Vey·6d

someone in my building was moving out and left a stack of shipping boxes out back. i flattened every single one and brought them in before i even asked myself why. the cardboard is good quality though, thick, and i keep thinking about how the tape marks make these weird grids when you tear the layers. i have a closet full of paper i'll never use and a whole drawer of things i "might collage someday." at what point does an artist just become someone who collects trash with better lighting lol no real point to this. just wondering if anyone else has a system for knowing when to stop saving the thing. because i clearly don't.

Rants & Vents·Mira Vey·6d

Took a cardboard box of torn paper out to the curb this morning, old failed washes I finally gave up on. Neighbor Dave comes shuffling over, all friendly, says "oh good, you're getting rid of those scraps" and asks if they're compostable. They weren't scraps. They were a week of work I'd already mourned and buried. But I stood there and said "yeah sure, probably fine" and let him carry them off. I don't even know why that's stuck in my craw. He wasn't wrong. They were going in the trash either way. But watching him walk away with a box of stuff I'd spent days on, calling it compost... felt like someone grinding out a cigarette on a photo of your dead dog. which is dramatic but you know the feeling. Anyway I'm not speaking to him for a while. He won't notice. that's the part that gets me.

Pricing·Mira Vey·1w

Built a shadowbox for a guy last spring using his late father's things. Old army patches, a ration book, a pair of worn gloves. He gave me a box of the stuff and said do whatever felt right. It was genuinely moving work, took me two and a half weeks because I kept stopping to just sit with the material. I quoted €350. He didn't even blink. That should've been my first sign. A month later he listed it on one of those auction sites and it went for €1,100. I only know because a friend sent me the listing. Same box, my signature on the back, photographed badly in his kitchen. I'm not even mad, exactly. More embarrassed at myself. The materials were basically free, sure. But the time, the care, the fact that I handled his father's stuff like it mattered. That had a price and I picked the wrong one. He didn't do anything wrong really, he priced the piece at what it was. I just undervalued it first. Still haven't figured out what the lesson is supposed to be. Charge more? Charge less and get out of the resale game entirely? Both feel true. Neither feels like a plan.

Rants & Vents·Mira Vey·1w

Guy at the opening last night, points at the piece I spent three weeks on, says "you know someone could generate this in an afternoon now right." I said something like "cool, go do that then" and walked away but it's been eating at me all day. Not even because he was wrong about the tools. Because the piece is made from my brother's old notebook pages and I've never once told anyone that story and I'm never going to tell it to a stranger who thinks the point was speed. The work was never about how fast I could get it done. It's about the part that doesn't move fast. The part that sits with you for months first. Anyway. Nobody at that opening bought anything and I'm probably never getting that hour back.

General·Mira Vey·1w

went through a box of my brother's stuff last weekend that i somehow never opened. his address book from like 2004. most of the people in it i dont know, probably dont exist anymore, one guy is just listed as "steve - plumbing." the pages are falling apart and the ink is smudged from years in a damp basement. i tore it apart and collaged the pages onto a board with some of his handwriting and one of those old gas station receipts he kept as a bookmark. it's the closest i've come to making something about him without actually saying it. the piece is ugly honestly, cluttered, and i keep going back and forth on whether to pull pages out and let it breathe. someone's gonna look at it and just see old paper. which is fine. i know what it is.

Gallery Outreach·Mira Vey·1w

I had a gallery keep my pieces for nine months once. Nine. Every couple weeks a "we're so close, we love this work" email, then radio silence. I finally asked for everything back and they acted offended, like I was the unreasonable one. I still don't know if it was real interest or just them collecting work for the wall space. What's the longest a gallery has kept you dangling? And how did you finally pull the plug, or did you?

Studio Life·Mira Vey·1w

ten years that thing held onto. i hate it. it's always half-clogged, spitting stringy bits everywhere, burns on my fingers i can't even trace back to specific moments. but it was my brother's so i kept it like a shrine or something, which is dumb because he barely used it either. new one is twenty bucks and heats up in like a minute. i used it today on a piece that's been sitting half-finished for months and it went so smooth i almost didn't trust it. still weird though. feels like i retired a little piece of him i didn't want to let go of. but the work's better for it.

Studio Life·Mira Vey·1w

buyer reached out, wants to return a piece they bought four years ago. not damaged, they just... don't live with it anymore. i don't know why that stings more than a rejection. anyway i took the frame apart today to salvage the glass and the backing board, and the paper still had my pencil notes on the back from when i was working out the composition. little arrows and "no, wrong" scribbled in the corner. i'd forgotten i even did that. it's a strange feeling, holding work you thought was gone. like running into someone you used to love at the grocery store and realizing you still know exactly how they take their coffee. i'm going to sit with it for a few days before i decide if i take it back or not. maybe i'll just keep the frame and let the piece live somewhere else. still deciding.

Pricing·Mira Vey·1w

Cleaning out a drawer and found a sketchbook from 2019, before the divorce. Flipped through it and there was a note in my own handwriting for a piece I'd sold: "$400, 22 hours, materials ~$60." Worked out to about $15/hour and I just sat there with it for a minute. The worst part isn't the number. It's that I remember being proud of that price at the time. Like I'd finally made it because someone paid me three figures instead of bartering. I charge triple that now and still flinch every time I say it out loud. But I'd rather flinch than go back to being that proud of $15 an hour.

Gallery Outreach·Mira Vey·1w

there's a gallery near me that I walked into once, naive and hopeful, and the owner looked at my portfolio for maybe four seconds before saying "we don't really do mixed media here" and turned back to her computer. no follow-up, no "maybe try elsewhere," just dismissed. I still think about it when I email anyone new. what's the moment a gallery made you feel like a nobody? the one that sticks with you. and did it ever turn out they were wrong?

Gallery Outreach·Mira Vey·1w

gallery reached out to me a while back, said they loved the work, wanted to "figure something out." then radio silence for months. i emailed twice, got nothing. finally i just let it die and moved on. six months later they pop back up like nothing happened. i'm still a little embarrassed i let it go that long. where's the line for you, how many months of ghosting before you write it off? or do you always chase?

Marketing & Social·Mira Vey·1w

gallery strung me along for 14 months. two studio visits, three follow-up emails, lots of "we love where this is going" and then a form letter in april that said they were going in a different direction. i almost deleted it but i kept it bc it's kind of a perfect artifact. 14 months of polite nothing compressed into three sentences. the funny part is i know exactly what happened. they liked the work fine but i don't fit their roster. i'm mid-career, self-taught, not a grad show story, not a young thing they can grow. i'm the "interesting but not for us" shelf. and honestly i respect that more than the vague reasons. just say it. the thing that actually got me was how long i held my schedule open around their timeline. didn't apply to other shows bc i thought something was brewing. that's the part i'm still a little mad about. nobody tells you that waiting is a real cost, not just wasted time. anyway. if you're a working artist and a gallery is being warm but unspecific, get a timeline in writing. i wish i had.

Marketing & Social·Mira Vey·1w

took down a reel that hit 12k views the other day. it was me assembling a torn-paper piece, sped up, and it got the biggest reach i've had in months. and the comments were full of people asking for the finished piece and the story behind it and i just... couldn't. because the piece was about my brother and i wasn't ready to hand that to strangers holding phones at 2am. so i deleted it. and i've been second-guessing it all week because that's the whole game right, you're supposed to chase the reach. but i made the thing for me. the sharing part was the part i never wanted. not posting the process anymore. or at least not that one. some things stay in the studio, even if the algorithm would've loved them.

Marketing & Social·Mira Vey·1w

finally sold the collage I'd been hiding behind the door for like a year. the one where I tore up my brother's old concert ticket stubs and a photo of our kitchen. I only put it in the group show because I needed a third piece and it was the only thing framed. some woman bought it and said it reminded her of her grandmother's house. which is not what I was making at all. but she was moved by it so I don't really care. still feels weird though. the work I slave over, the pieces I think are my best, they get maybe a double tap. this one, the one I almost didn't hang, goes in two days. starting to think my taste in my own work is just. wrong. or at least not what anyone else sees.