Greetings.

A few exciting things coming up:

• I pitched a residency project to The Lookout Arts Quarry which was accepted. I’m getting my guts ready to create the work for a show called “PLASTIC ANGST,” date to be announced soon (likely end of May or early June). Stay posted!
• I was accepted for the 2026 Whatcom Artists Studio Tour and the first popup tour is happening weekend of May 16–17. If you’re around Bellingham that weekend it will be a good chance to come visit me and other artists around the area.

More in the hopper which I will inform you of soon.

Now some art.

Since the show I mentioned in my last update has happened I can share the art now …

It was very special to do the art that got used for the cover of this limited-release tape for the bands DUOS and Sceneric, produced by Kelly at Something Else Studio. All of us people orbiting Make.Shift, which I know I have mentioned many times as a great little community arts nonprofit here in town.

Make.Shift has been a healing place for me to be on the other side of dealing with some bad faith “collaborators,” and I’m glad to be taking part in more community art again after all everything I’ve been through.

We set the painting up in the concert space for people to experience during the show, which added a fun visual element which isn’t typical of this kind of environment.

It is a good challenge for me, learning how to engage with fellow artists in ways that makes all of our work more interesting and rich to experience.

I keep running into a norm that keeps yielding many frustrations, however. Can you guess what it is?

You may have guessed.

EVERYONE IS ON INSTAGRAM.

And they like to promote each other across Instagram.

If you don’t have Instagram, you’re operating on a somewhat different wavelength than a lot of the artist community I keep rubbing shoulders with. People kind of don’t really know what to do with you.

Are you even real if you’re not on Instagram?

I understand if I am going to develop the kind of strategy that makes being off Instagram work for me, I have to stay off Instagram and figure it out.

So far I have not been stopped from making more art in more places, so I suppose I am on the right track.

—Adrien