•FiddleLee•
I have grown up surrounded by the arts: music, dance, jewelry, knit, and crochet. My parents, enthusiastic artists themselves, were always very supportive of any artistic pursuit that I chose to undertake. I should actually give them more credit than that for without their influence I would most likely not be in the position I am in now. (I wonder what that would be like…..)
Since January 1997 my family has been performing as a professional string band. We call ourselves The Homegrown String Band. (Visit our Web site at www.homegrownstringband.com) Since that time we have evolved from folk music to old-time to bluegrass and eventually to forming a sound unique to us that is generally hard to classify. Some continue to call it old-time or bluegrass, others say American roots music, Americana, or trad. You’ll have to listen yourself and make up your own mind on that score.
Over the years we have recorded 4 CDs (the latest being “Ragged but Right” which was released in July 2007) and traveled around the United States from Maine to Missouri. In order to keep the band active and pursue music to our heart’s content, my parents homeschooled both my sister and I throughout our entire education. We grew up with our own rhythm.
Last May (2007) I graduated from SUNY Empire after deciding to continue my homechooled education through college, thus allowing me to also continue performing with the family. After I graduated I anticipated having too much free time on my hands and set off to rectify that before I went insane. I chose to go back to my jewelry making and see if I could get set up as an online business of sorts. This led to purchasing a domain name (http://www.fiddlelee.com) and signing up for Etsy (www.FiddleLee.com).
•The Blog•
In signing up for Etsy I became aware of many great indie artists. The quality of work done by some of these small designers awed me, and still does. I began to browse through the forums and hang out in a few of the Etsy chat rooms and get to know a little about some of these people. Continually inspired by the work I saw I decided that I would make this next holiday season a completely handmade one. This meant lots of time searching through Etsy and people’s shops. During this time I noticed that many were in the same position as me, they had lovely work and were very helpful people, but were attracting only minimal attention to their shops.
It is certainly hard to get noticed on the internet and most small indie artists are not marketing wizards and don’t have the funds available to hire one of these magicians. Once again inspired by my fellow artists I decided to create a little space to showcase some of these people. Thus this blog was born.
Hopefully over time this little space will get some attention and the artists featured here will continue in their artistic pursuits happily into the future.
Support Handmade!
www.etsy.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment