An update and…a plea (first, the plea)

If you read my last post, most of the first part of this one will be familiar. But in case I have some new readers I will summarize just for their benefit😂.

I’m going to assume that most of my readers don’t know that for the past 7 years I have been treasurer of an artists group that concentrates most of its energy on bringing the world of visual art to under-served areas of a 5-county chunk of Michigan and Indiana commonly referred to as “Michiana”. Our group, Cass Area Artists, became an official 501(c)3 federally recognized non-profit entity last December after an exhaustive effort on my part to file the required paperwork. The “required paperwork” with any government department is pretty much ipso-facto a huge hassle to get perfect. Yours truly was relieved when we were approved, but she was also mentally fatigued!

Before we had official non-profit status we asked locally-owned businesses to help us out financially, and they did so generously. When the pandemic hit we couldn’t bring ourselves to ask small businesses which were struggling to survive to toss money our way too. So for more than two years we marshaled our funds and spent carefully on our projects. In the meantime, our chief fundraiser (who was also our founding director) retired and moved far away. This left us to decide what to do about our shrinking treasury.

So-o-o-o…the decision was made to launch an online fundraiser, which nobody in the group had ever done before. We would have liked to put it on our Cass Area Artists Facebook page, but it turned out that for us, at least, dealing with Facebook was even harder than dealing with the government. We decided to crowd-fund, and I, as the now long-suffering treasurer, pushed myself even further by taking on the creation of the online fundraiser. I virtually attended an hour-long webinar on how to do it, which was the easy part. I then spent literally a working week actually making it happen. I was a wreck, lost sleep over it, worked it, tweaked it, tested it, educated my team on how to spread the word about it, and finally went live with it. And wonder of wonders, people are responding. As of this post, one week into our campaign, we are a tad more than 1/4 of the way to our goal of $2000.

This where my faithful readers come in. I would like you to consider contributing any amount, large, small, in between, whatever. You can go directly to our campaign by clicking here: https://donorbox.org/help-us-keep-bringing-awesome-art-experiences-to-under-served-areas-of-michiana

Or you can go to Cass Area Artists website https://www.cassareaartists.org and click on the donate button in the top right corner of the home page.

Or if you prefer to use your cell phone, you can scan this handy QR code which will take you to Donorbox.org

No matter which way you access the donor site, you will be able to see a full description of who Cass Area Artists is and the services we provide. If you think we do good work, then let your heart decide if you would like to lend a helping hand to that work.

NOW–ON TO THE UPDATE (if you’re still with me by this point)

So about 10 days ago I showed you the beginnings of Sky Pads 35, which I claimed was maybe 1/3 done. Amid the fundraising distraction I was able to put the second layer on it, and here’s a side-by-side comparison:

background with one pass

background with second pass

Yeah, I know, they look almost exactly the same. Never mind that to get to the second one cost me a few hours of work. There’s more contrast and detail in the second one (which for some reason the photographer let extra lighting sneak in on the left side, but oh well). The next step will be to add even more definition and depth by applying a transparent coat of the orange’s complimentary color, blue. My intuition says this will work out very nicely. We shall see. As for the step after that, all bets are off as I have no freakin’ idea what will come next!