Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Following a Dream

As you may know, my "day job" is as a magazine editor, for CapeWomenOnline magazine. We publish online five times a year, with seven distinct sections of articles and information. Currently, I'm in the midst of gathering articles for the upcoming Fall 2011 Issue which will be available online in September.

One of our regular "features" is our Living the Dream articles. For each issue we feature a woman who has made the leap to follow her dreams and do what she loves. We've showcased artists and college coaches, writers and shopkeepers. All of them women who made the leap to do something they love, instead of merely "working."

In the current issue, we feature Nancy Nicol, a Wellfleet artist who has been living the dream for a while now, and wrote her own article to explain her perspectives on life - read it here.

For the Fall issue, we're scheduled to go interview Katherine Fenwick, an artist down in Provincetown who recently made the leap to open her own gallery space and spend all her time making and selling art. The publisher and I went to her opening night party in June, and during the course of the evening she graciously agreed to let us use one of her paintings as our lead image for the summer issue.

That's the artist in the blue shirt, chatting with some of her guests. Katherine has a great story, having grown up in Kentucky, and moving to Cape Cod by way of New York City. A temporary "just for the summer" job left her in Provincetown for the last decade or so, but she found herself sucked into the swirl of working to make ends meet and not creating art. She told me that for the last nine years she's spent all her time tending bar and almost none creating art.

This winter she took the leap and rented gallery space. This summer she is living her dream and working that space.


Her new desk looks nothing like a bar. There's also a working space on the other side of the gallery, set up for her to paint all day as she mans her gallery/studio. I'm looking forward to another trip to P-town to see how her summer is going, and hear about the challenges and pleasures of living the dream.

How about you? Are you someone who is living your dream? Or working your way toward it? If you could choose any job in the world, what would it be?

2 comments:

  1. I would say I'm still working towards my dream of being a published author, but my feet are definitely wet. Does that make sense?
    :)

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  2. Her paintings look great, from what I can see. I hope she has much success. My dream would be to write and make a living doing that.

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