I do still exist.

When I said I needed a break from blogging, I didn't think I meant eight months. But I actually take a very long time to fully process things, and this spell of radio silence has been wonderfully fruitful, and I'm ready to come out of hiding. I should clarify that I  haven't actually been in hiding: I've been working on a lot of really fun, strange projects, and have just opted to not broadcast the fact that I've been doing them.

If you'd like to know what I have been doing with my quiet time, please watch this video footage of a talk I gave last month at the Breadline speaker series. It's called What We Make When We're Not Making: An exploration of downtime in the creative process... as explained by hairties. 

I don't like promoting myself (part of the satisfaction of being in hiding!), so here's what some other folks had to say about the talk :

Only a few Zen minutes passed before Hulls blew Vermillion’s mind with a candy-throwing, time-machine-travelling, spastic-laughter-producing presentation on her creative process. Hulls's India ink illustrations narrated her transition from nomadic maker to settled Seattleite and the resulting “terrifying expanse of total freedom.” Have no fear: Humphrey Bogart, Calvin and Hobbes, John Cleese, and the aforementioned Wile E. Coyote guide her through this path of uncertainty and “not making.” Her big discovery? Hair ties. Hundreds of hair ties. Hair ties that she methodically collects and classifies. Hair ties that she ultimately finds have no massive artistic meaning, no dramatic conclusion. Instead, Hulls realizes that they are markers, points of reflection on the endless creative journey that is LIFE. (Did I mention she threw candy?) —Andrew Turgeon, Seattle Out and About

The Breadline Performance Series happens on a magical evening every third Wednesday at Vermillion, a cozy womb of a bar tucked in between Barca and the entrance to Annex Theater on 11th Ave. In my experience, Breadline seems like it’s mostly about reading poetry, and then sometimes something weird happens. Something weird that is also amazing. The weird and amazing thing that happened in the September Breadline was Tessa Hulls and her illustrated talk on the creative process. —Jen Power, Comrade Bunny

Breadline September 2012: Tessa Hulls from Amy Billharz on Vimeo.

AND!

I have some really exciting news. 

I just received a grant through the Washington Artist Trust to work on drawing comics about Antarctica. So I'll be spending my cold winter months drawing comics about cold places. I'm very excited to delve back into that whole world, and to be able to do it with two things I didn't have previously: 

1. time

2. paper of a sensible weight

I look forward to being back in touch. 

It's been too long. 

Love,

-tessa