Hello and welcome back! It’s been a long time since I posted anything! It’s been so long that someone on Twitter asked me if I was okay, if everything was fine, they haven’t seen anything from me in a while. Yeah, I’ve just been really, really busy. Right now, I’m cat-sitting. That’s the reason why this isn’t my usual background, and I have a cat sitting on my lap.
So I just wanted to give you an update on what’s been up with me, because I’ve been so busy. I started interpreting a lot more for one company here in Seattle a lot more frequently. So that’s been taking up a lot of my time. I’ve been trying to figure out my schedule, how to run my life with that. But I’m not complaining, because that means I actually have some income now, not little odd jobs here and there. Actually earning some money. That’s nice. Because of that, I will be focusing more on full-time freelance interpreting. For deaf and DeafBlind interpreting. So, I’m open. If you have any jobs, please, contact me if you want me to interpret for you, or know of someone may need a deaf interpreter. Obviously, you have all of my contact information down below if you want that. I just wanted to put that out, IF something comes up, that’d be great.
I was recently in Rochester, NY for two reasons. First, the ARTiculating Deaf Experiences Conference, and second, visiting my friends. I took the opportunity and extended my stay before and after the conference, so I could see some people I know in Rochester. That was really enjoyable, it was a good week. I thought about vlogging that whole conference, but… I didn’t. I was busy talking, and just watching all day. This was a TED Talk style conference, so it was all day with different topics. Deaf art in history, deaf art now, what that looks like, etc. This conference was at RIT, Rochester Institute of Technology. Most–all of the talks are in Panara Theater. Across from Panara, they have Dyer Arts Center, which has three exhibitions.
First is Color to the Cube, it’s the main display space. All of the art is from Deaf artists of color. That was cool. It’s very diverse. They had one indigenous area, with their drum, blanket, and so on. A Mexican artist. Some paint, some mixed media, some ink, some photography. Very varied. Many of the pieces were for sale, so that’s cool.
Second, 6×6, or Six by Six. They’ll ask the community, plus–for this one–students in Jr. NAD, to make small 6″ by 6″ canvas pieces. Paint them something related to their deaf experience, or whatever related to the deaf community. They have CODAs, interpreters, allies, and so on, donating. All of these pieces are for sale. All the money raised from that goes to Dyer Arts Center. That’s really cool.
Third, Please Touch. I want to talk a little bit more about this, because this is strongly related to what I do. All of the art in that space, the smaller space upstairs, all of it is by DeafBlind artists. So that’s really interesting because that whole space is for touch. That’s interesting! I was looking around, both looking and touching. I think it’s really interesting because I’ve talked with DeafBlind people, some who are artists, some who aren’t, but I’ve chatted with them. And several of them said that DeafBlind art–really, tactile art… Is still developing, because often, the art is thought to be tactile, but really, it’s not. it’s still strongly based on visuals. I thought that was really interesting, and I did enjoy that exhibit. I hope to see/touch more art from DeafBlind artists in the future, wherever that may be.
If you remember, my last video was the announcement of Queer Lit Readathon for December. Yeah… That was a while ago. Today is when I was supposed to release my TBR, what I plan to read for that week. I have a list, I haven’t made a video. I will make that right after this. So… Hopefully, I’ll post that later today. If not, tomorrow.
Since the cat’s sitting on my lap, that leads into the next thing I wanted to mention. I’ve been taking care of him, so I’ve been staying in Seattle for the past two weeks. It’s been really nice, actually being in the city and not so far away, where I live, an hour north. It’s been nice, in the city, so I can do a lot more things. Not feeling like I have to plan to do a lot of things in one day. I can spontaneously decide I want to do this thing, because it’s not far from here. It’s really, really nice. And, obviously, since I mentioned that I’m doing a lot more work lately… I’ve been seriously considering moving closer to Seattle now. We’ll see when that happens, probably not for a while, but… Who knows? We’ll see how things go.
One exciting thing that I’ve done is start up Deaf Queer Social in Seattle. We had our first event recently, on November 3rd. That went really well! A good number of people showed up. I want to add this just because. I’m hosting this with the goal of having events at places that either have a very small amount or are alcohol free. Sober spaces, basically. The first event was at a coffeehouse open until 11pm. For upcoming events, I hope to host in places that aren’t bars, or where alcohol’s not the main focus. People can feel comfortable there, without alcohol. Because sober spaces are needed. Really needed. And often, bars and whatever have the age limit of 21+. We have a lot of queer people under 21, so I want to make sure this can welcome people under 21. Coffee places are open to any age, families can come. That kind of thing. So I’m really excited to see where this goes.
Kind of related to setting up Deaf Queer Social, PSAD – Puget Sound Association of the Deaf – an organization that I’ve been working for as a webmaster and managing social media. They recently had their elections, and I’m now one of the board members. We were just elected, and won’t officially start until January 2020, but… I’m excited, I look forward to doing more with PSAD. That will be another big thing added to my plate. I’m hoping I’m not piling on my plate too much.
You may have noticed I haven’t posted much here, on YouTube, because obviously, I’ve been busy like I mentioned. I’ve also not been posting that much on Instagram, Twitter, social media in general, really. If you were wondering about no Instagram posts for a long while… I did post just today, so that’s something. But in other news, I set up a new Instagram account recently, for just art: @rogandoesart. I will link it below if you want to go and follow for more art stuff. I did Inktober and that was actually successful! I finished on time. *cheering* So I decided to set up that account, because I want to try and be serious about doing more art, more often. I’m hoping that having that account will encourage me to do that. And I’m not limiting it to a specific kind of art. Right now, it’s all ink drawings, but I do want to make it broad – painting, photography, whatever. That’s why I chose @rogandoesart. It’s just broad, art. Whatever art is. So if you want to see that, follow.
I think that sums up everything I wanted to make sure you know about. Let me know if you have any questions, and… Hopefully, I will have several videos for you soon.
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