Once upon a time I wrote an art blog.

It started out as a place where local people could find out about shows and stuff going on at my art gallery. Over time, it became a blog about art-making and creativity and resistance and the stuff that helps artful people stay in the groove and the stuff that doesn’t. (And just in case you’re wondering, running an art gallery falls pretty definitively into the latter category. C’est la vie.)

Anyway, people wrote nice comments and shared posts with their friends, and let me know when they found something helpful or validating or worth reading for one reason or another.  So it was a good experience, all in all.

BUT ALL GOOD THINGS…

Now that I no longer write the art blog, or own the gallery, I’m taking the best of those posts and turning them into free ebooks. This way I can continue to share them with you without having to send you to the blog archive, which means I can close out that old domain once and for all, and get on with my post-gallery life. So yeah, this is a selfish act that just happens to result in a free thing for you. Win-win!

Your Creative Backpack: Packing Tips for Artful Adventure
is the first of those free ebooks.

It’s based on a series of posts I wrote about the sorts of things you might want to carry with you as you go about building a creative life, and it’s designed for writers and art-makers and song-makers and film-makers and poets and furniture-builders and anyone else who wants to make stuff and needs a little encouragement to get started or to keep going.

HERE’S WHAT YOU GET.

42 pages of love and metaphor, designed to get you out the door and on your way to an artfully adventurous life. The format is basic pdf. The price is zero. And the snappy art on the cover was created by yours truly.  What’s not to love?

HERE ARE TWO WAYS TO GET IT.

You can go to Ebookling and get the free download. Ebookling is a distributor of ebooks and a great place to browse for free or inexpensive reading. But if you’d rather not open a (free) Ebookling account to get the download, or would prefer to just read online…

…you can go right to the pdf here.

Read it, enjoy it, put it to use. And then let me know what you think. I have two more in the works, and I want them to be helpful. And validating to the artful adventurer in you. And totally worth your time.

For which I thank you very much.