Howdy Patrons!
Thank you all for the birthday wishes! I turned 42 on Friday – had a great time, it co-incided with my sister Kachina and all her kids driving down to visit Florida from Kansas, so I was very happy to get to spend time with everybody after not having seen them since 2019. We’re a very close family and the past couple years have been rough with the distances, illness, and of course later the pandemic & travel restrictions. Best gift I could have was to hug everybody again.
I think I sort of treat birthdays the way a lot of folks approach New Year’s. That’s often when I re-evaluate things in my life and make plans for the future. I received a message from Patreon letting me know I had reached my most recent “Official Goal” – those little benchmark amounts on my main page – thank you ALL, we literally could not have done this without each and every one of you here. We’d set that one up (the 10k) right after our house/gallery at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival had been burglarized/vandalized and required a lot of work. Then (ouch) a few months after we fixed everything up it was again burglarized/vandalized and structurally damaged (c’mon, what’s wrong with this world sometimes, sheesh) we had to start over again.
The good news is that our building is all now fixed up & ready in plenty of time for the re-opening this autumn! It’s been a huge effort getting everything back into shape, my father, uncle Nelson, Chris & Amber, and other family have all put a lot of work into it and we are all set!
Now it’s time to set some new (more positive, lol) goals – not just fixing things that are broken, but for expanding and creating (much more fun).
Thanks to you all and fans/friends/collectors worldwide, things have kept getting increasingly busy around here (which is a GOOD thing!). We’ve had a couple of Strangeling team meetings over the past few weeks to figure out ways we can strategize to make things more effective, less stressful, more streamlined for Patrons/fans/collectors/business associates/studio management, and how best we can incorporate it into Patreon to at least cover some of the new operating expenses.
So – here are the next official Patreon business goals (this might be boring, lol, very businessy, feel free to skip this and scroll down to the end if you want to hear about the new painting, I just like providing as much transparency as I can since many of you are integral to our livelihood and some of ya might just be curious).
$14K Goal: Going to California!
This is a Very Exciting Goal and will lead to many good things, I feel. In late 2018 we started looking at the possibility of setting up at secondary studio location in the Los Angeles area. We were waylaid when I was ill for about a year, looking more than a bit dire, thankfully recovered, and then with the pandemic/quarantine right after that we had to keep postponing it all and kept it on the back burner. Now that things are starting to be “back to normal” – the gears are once again moving in the right direction! I have lined up a studio space in Long Beach, California, and we will be fitting it out with sort of a duplicate setup to what we have in Florida (easels, art desks, sleeping loft, etc.). Don’t worry, Florida folks – I’m keeping my main studio here in Florida, California is a secondary space since we now need a West Coast permanent physical location for storage, production & work.
A few of the bullet points specifically what this income stream will be going directly to:
*Studio & building costs/utility payments
*Printers & framing tools/setup
*Art materials & production costs for physical art studio
*Duplicate Twitch broadcasting setup (cameras, monitor, dedicated hard drive, mics, audio & associated peripherals)
And here are the perceived benefits (for everybody involved, both on the Strangeling side and the consumer/viewership side):
*Having a permanent home near my primary gallery where I hold my solo shows (the Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles) will be immensely helpful. In the past it has been very difficult transporting and insuring massive amounts of artwork, boxes, frames, etc. between Florida and California and this will be much easier and more safe.
*I will be able to do a lot more West Coast area signing events, conventions, etc – not just in California but also up in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, the West in general really. I’ve been invited as a guest to many of the large conventions (Comic Con in San Diego, Salt Lake City, Emerald City in Seattle, etc.) out there but it’s always been too difficult to do things on a large scale because of the great distances involved (for those not from the USA, it is over 5,000 miles round trip (8,000 km) to go from the Orlando area to the Los Angeles area, a big hurdle to get around with trucks & trailers of delicate artwork.
*Disney! I’ll be able to do a lot more events & projects with Disney on the California side as well as Florida. In the past, if Disneyland for example invited me to come do a two-hour autograph signing at DCA or something, I literally would be responsible for buying my own airfare from Florida, hotel, rental car, etc. – all for an unpaid two hour event 😉 If it’s just a drive down the street, we can make this happen a lot easier, lol.
*Twitch! One of the first things we’ll be setting up is a secondary broadcast station for Twitch in California. This way, even when I’m working at the CA studio we’ll be able to keep up with the Twitch broadcasts and are planning to implement some IRL Twitch events and more bonus material, video content, livestreams, etc. With the new OBS Ninja software we’ll even be able to have Matt in Florida while I’m in California (or vice versa) and still do our usual broadcasts, which would be great for you & us both =)
*Matty! While not Jasmine-art-related, Matt also is needing a pied a terre in Los Angeles. Some of you who know him personally know that he has started performing standup in his comedy career and a lot of the opportunities for standup and comedy writing are in Los Angeles so that’s an added bonus.
What happens when we hit this goal on Patreon?
*I’ll be documenting a lot of the setup and photographing/videoing the transformation of the space into my studio, and of course sharing that here on Patreon!
*Once we get the livestream broadcast setup in CA we’ll be doing regular broadcasts on Twitch from both FL and CA, including pieces destined for my solo show in CHG that otherwise I couldn’t really do live!
*For the Pin Collector Tiers (any $25+) I am currently designing a new Patreon Exclusive Pin specifically to celebrate our new California location – it’ll be based on the new painting shown here (the Lady Godiva character on the bear, a visual interpretation of the State Flag of California) and when we hit the goal we’ll be putting the special California pin in your monthly Pin Collector Package as a Patreon Exclusive pin!
*We’ll then move onto the next goal, which HOPEFULLY will involve hiring at least one more fulltime employee! We’ll need a bit more $$ for that, so we need to wait until we hit the new current goal, but that will also bring a lot more new exciting options for us all. I know I keep saying it, but thank you so much for being with me on this long complicated journey. Even to anybody not able at this time to subscribe or buy anything, I want to thank you for your encouragement, kind words, “likes” and shares.
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Okay! On to the painting =)
You “Top Secret” Patrons have seen an earlier version of this one, but this is what she looks like as of now (been working on that kick-ass sky!).
Here’s one of the bigger paintings I’ve been working on – early stages, just transferred down my sketch onto the board – this one is on a 24″x18″ panel and will be one of the originals I’m debuting as part of my “Enigma” solo show opening January 8, 2022 at the Corey Helford Gallery in downtown Los Angeles.
A while back I’d intended a few sketches to eventually turn into a Lady Godiva sort of piece, but I’ve since combined it in my head with the concept of creating a visual interpretation illustrating the state flag of California! Again too – this will be the basis for the special Patreon Exclusive Pin that we’ll be rewarding the Pin Collectors with once we hit the “Going to California” goal.
On your upper left you’ll see a very faint five pointed star sketched in – it will be a sort of neon glowing red once I’m finished painting, and of course the nymph riding the bear stands in for the grizzly bear on the flag:
There will be a swath of windswept beach grass leading to a slightly ominous sky over a darkish sea, should be lovely once completed.
I held out for a while before finding a frame I think will really suit this painting, it’s a reproduction of an antique French mirror, and when I saw the fleur-de-lis decorative elements would match the detail on the bear’s golden crown in the painting, I knew it would be a good match. Here’s the frame (exterior measurement 39″x33″)-
I’m going to start tagging the previews for paintings destined for my solo show as “ENIGMA PREVIEWS” here at Patreon to make it easier to sort through once I have multiple pieces in the works between both studios =)
I don’t know yet what the pricing will be for the original acrylic painting, but I will keep you updated and it will be for sale via the Corey Helford Gallery. Be sure to email – [email protected] – and request to be contacted with the “Jasmine Becket-Griffith Collectors Preview for her January 2022 solo show” and CHG will put you on their email list to receive the private online preview a week or two prior to the show opening so that y’all can reserve any originals prior to the show opening to the public. I’ll be there in person of course for the opening event January 8, we’ll have a very special show exclusive pin (to be announced later), it’ll be a hell of a party and I’ll of course have a gallery full of my artwork, all are welcome.
At any point, we are happy to reserve the Masterpiece Editions for Patrons. We make & sell those ourselves, and they’ll become available for shipping after the show opens in January. Whenever you see a painting I’m working on (this one or any others destined for CHG or my website etc.) – email [email protected] and let him know you’d like to reserve a Masterpiece Edition. This one for example will be a 24×18″ (as that’s the size/proportion of the original) priced at $595 ($535.50 if you have the PATREON10 discount), an edition of only five made, each will be hand embellished by me in acrylic details, signed, dated, numbered out of 5, gallery wrapped and ready-to-hang). I don’t have a title for this one yet so if you just call it Jasmine’s “CALIFORNIA BEAR LADY GODIVA” painting, lol, Matty will know what ya mean.
Back to painting! I’ll probably be working on this beauty this Tuesday for Twitch! It’ll be a two-hour broadcast starting at 3PM ET/NOON PACIFIC / 20:00UK time – any browser – https://www.twitch.tv/jasminebecketgriffith – all are welcome to come watch free, chat, ask questions, hang out. You can also find me at JasmineBecketGriffith on the free Twitch app for your phone/device See ya then!
x
Jasmine
