I keep a class roster of twelve students and three of them found me through a post I barely remember writing

I teach two botanical illustration classes a year, capped at twelve students, and I have never once advertised them. Word of mouth has carried that for over a decade and I assumed it always would. Then this past term three students told me they found the class through an Instagram post I made about pigment lightfastness testing. I had completely forgotten writing it. It was a photo of my test swatches in harsh sun, nothing more.

That unsettled me more than it pleased me, honestly. I have spent years treating my social media as a ledger, a record of finished work, and the one post that actually brought people in was a half-finished experiment I nearly did not share. There is a lesson in there somewhere about showing process over polish and I keep resisting it because it feels like capitulating to trends I do not fully respect.

I am still not sure what to do with that information. The finished pieces get the likes, but the mess gets the students.

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Niall Doherty·1d

Ah sure, that's gas entirely. The post you don't remember is the one that does the work. Same thing happens me with the prints, I'll spend a week carving something, proof it, obsess over the bleed on it, and nothing. Then some afternoon I stick up a photo of the ink drying on the line and some fella in Chicago emails me asking to buy three.

There's a lesson in it somewhere about not overthinking the whole thing, but I never learn it. I'm still out in the shed with the lightbox treating Instagram like a tax return. The work you make when you're not trying to sell anything, that's the work that sells. God knows why. Some magic in the not-caring, I suppose.

Anyway, twelve students, three of them from a lightfastness post. That's not bad. And you'll never forget writing that one again now, will you. 🙂

Camille Laurent·1d

The ink drying on the line. Of course it's the ink drying. People don't want to be sold to, they want to be let in through the open door.

I had the same thing happen with a video I made of scraping a dirty palette clean, just the sound and the blade and the old paint coming off in curls. I thought it was nothing, a bit of housekeeping. It has more saves than anything I've ever actually finished and posted. You try to control which work matters and the public simply disagrees with you every time.

But you're right that you never learn it. I still frame my finished paintings like a tax return too. Some habits are older than sense.

Margaret HsuOP·1d

The palette scraping video is exactly the sort of thing I mean. All that labour and intention poured into the finished piece, and what people actually want is the process, the mess, the evidence of hands at work. I understand why, even if it still catches me off guard.

And you are right that I never learn it. Every term I put the finished work up as though it were an invoice, and every term it is the offhand post, the one I nearly did not bother making, that brings someone through the door. I ought to have accepted it by now. I suspect I keep framing it like a tax return precisely because that version of things feels manageable. The other version, where I cannot control which work matters, is a good deal less comfortable to sit with.

Margaret HsuOP·1d

The ink drying on the line. You've put your finger on something I have been circling for years and never quite named.

I keep a folder of studies that never made it to the ledger. The magnolia leaf with the torn margin, the half-finished iris. They sit in a drawer and I tell myself they are practice, which they are, but they are also the honest work. No specimen could ever be perfect, and those pieces admit it.

I wonder sometimes if that is what people are actually responding to. The finished plates are correct, but they are also guarded. The leaf that got damaged in the storm is the one that tells the truth about how hard it is to hold any living thing still long enough to paint it.

You said the quilt you nearly didn't finish. I know exactly the weight of that sentence.

Gloria Mae Jackson·1d

That right there is the thing about putting your work out in the world, honey. You never know which piece is gonna take root in somebody. I've been sewing nigh on fifty years and the quilt folks always come up to me about is one I nearly didn't finish, the one I thought was too plain or too clumsy. And I'd forgotten it even mattered.

Them finding you through the lightfastness test, that don't surprise me none. That kind of post, it's you doing the actual work, not posing for it. People can feel that. They can tell when somebody's just showing off what they made versus when somebody's showing how they think about their making. That test swatch spoke to them cause it was honest. You weren't trying to sell nothing, you were trying to get it right.

Maybe don't be too unsettled. The Lord works in ways we don't track, and so do folks finding the thing they need. That post was you being real, and real travels farther than polished every time.

Margaret HsuOP·1d

You make a fair point, and I know it's a kind one. The part about the quilt you nearly didn't finish resonates. I have a study of a damaged magnolia leaf from a few years back that I nearly threw out, and it is the one piece students ask about most. There's something in work that was nearly discarded that people can see, though I could not tell you exactly what it is.

And you are right that the lightfastness post was the work itself, not a pose. I think that is precisely what unsettled me. I had filed it under housekeeping, under the unglamorous necessary labor of the craft, and it turned out to be the most honest thing I had put out there in years. Perhaps I should take the hint and post more of the unglamorous parts. Even if it does feel a bit like showing my laundry, as they say.