I am One of a Kind Show consumed. I’ve read the whole website with the Artisan’s profiles updated. I look at all the Instagram photo’s the artisans have started to post #ooaks14 and #ooakdiaries, even though I couldn’t give a rats ass about Instagram. I read all the posts in the One of a Kind Artisans’ forum. Read all the details about the upcoming launch of the One of a Kind Online Shop. I make lists, then more lists – what we need to make, things I need to arrange (place to stay, electrical hookups, booth sitter etc etc.), new ideas for the booth, things I will buy if we do really well, bills to pay if we do ok, how to make do if we don’t do well.
Madness.
The Spring show has a Wedding themed area this year, and in support of it and Valentine’s day, the Show sent out a request for wedding pictures from artisans who worked on their artform together. I didn’t send one as our wedding pictures weren’t quite….um…conducive to people buying lovely things for their big day. But it got me thinking about working together as Rogue Goat.
Working together creatively is one of the most valuable things in my life. If you are driven to create, passionate about it, it can almost become the “other woman/man” in a relationship. It’s there, it consumes you, you have your best and worst times with it, you don’t care if it snores. When your partner is part of that creative affair, the love triangle disappears. You understand the need to create for hours and ignore one and other. You aren’t perturbed that something else is coming first, you support that. You are as mesmerized by that “other” as your partner.Like being in a band, but also playing house, for real.
Sure, some people aren’t threatened by it, but then…you kind of miss them not knowing that feeling, that pure, creative plane, not being able to really relate to it.
It works best though, or at least I think it works for Josh and I, because our skills are distinct. I can’t cut wood, he can’t paint. I can’t define his process and dictate his creative part, nor can he I. We discuss the end result in loose terms, and leave each other be in constructing as we individually see fit.
We tease each other that we can’t break up or we’d have to get “real” jobs. And it’s true. What we make is an outcome of us being us. Making what we do, makes us more us.
That up there is a piece of rice that says “Allison & Josh Forever”. It is both barfy and terribly awesome. I am one of the least sentimental people I know, being only romantic in the sense of mourning the decrease in deaths by lightning and having had childhood desires to have sword scars and tuberculosis. Not in the notes and flowers ways. Josh says he would buy me off the internet still. Happy Valentine’s Day! xxoo
rogue goat 