To expand on sharing my mixed family Korean-American experience, I’ve started my next children’s book series for Seoul Finds Her Talent with A Weekend with Halmony.

When I decided to start painting professionally, I scoured the internet for information on how to get my work out there and grow my business. I found tons of suggestions, but they didn’t explain the process.

As writer/Navy Spouse Lynessa Layne shares, life can certainly lead us into unexpected directions, but those strange paths often take us exactly where we need to be.

My art practice continues to change and grow as I get older and develop new insights. With being a professional Dancer and teaching in the Hampton Roads area in Virginia, I am constantly around others who value the performing arts so it makes it easy to stay inspired and create. I am also finding how to integrate my art through other media as well. I am a photographer and have found my niche with dance and production photography.

There is always more to learn and explore, especially when life sends us down unexpected journeys. Milspouse/writer/teacher/caregiver Lee Anne Galloway-Mitchell shares how PCSing, parenthood, Covid, and all sorts of life events can sometimes put a project on hold, but can also bring about new creative adventures.

“How’s that going for you”, you ask? It’s not. Now we’re in Monterey, CA. Three moves in three years. And here I thought all of this moving around was over. I also mistakenly thought that retirement meant that I could get back to, a more full-time focus on my career. Oh boy universe… or Murphy, or whoever you are… the joke is 100% on me.

Sometimes location and life situation determines the medium along with the inspiration. Artist/mil-spouse Devon Wigle teaches us that when your usual resources and/or conveniences aren't available, you can still make art, just in a different way.

On this anniversary check-in with MilspoFAN I feel I have fit years of living into the last 12 months. For the last year, my second diagnosis of breast cancer has felt like it was hijacking my artistic endeavors (I don’t recommend it). I had things I wanted to do! However, looking back, the last year has launched my artistic presence like never before.

Artist/Yogi/mil-spouse Katie Meuse encourages us to make and find joy through art. Keep our eyes and minds open to the who, what and where because, through those mediums, we can discover our passions.

While we all know how PCSing and not getting to choose where we live can put a damper on our careers, having an art that depends on local support requires a whole extra level of determination and hard work. Singer / Space Force spouse Alyssa Ruffin shares how she's managed to keep the music playing.

It’s good to be invited back to write a guest post. I’ve experienced much change in my life since I was the featured artist on the Milspo FAN Blog in March of 2021. At the time of the feature, I was sewing like crazy and creating so much for my own enjoyment and for my Etsy Shop. My craft room was full of fabric, thread, and sewing project possibilities. I had also dived back into watercolor painting, and it felt good to be so focused. I loved spending time in my craft room and having time to myself. My husband and I started planning trips, plus projects we both wanted to complete that upcoming summer. Little did I know how much would change in 2022 and my creative projects would come to a temporary halt.

Oh goodness, no one can truly prepare you for Military life! We’ve been stationed on both coasts, seen things we would’ve normally never gotten a chance to see and shared these experiences with our daughters. The Navy has sent us to Portsmouth, Va, 29 Palms, Ca (this was a greenside stint.), to San Antonio, Tx and now Maryland. To say it’s been a wild ride would be an understatement. In my experience as a military wife, we all know, mental strength is necessary, schedules are constantly changing; everything is the same and yet different, like an odd episode of the Twilight Zone. 

So much has happened since last year, and I’m very proud of how far I’ve come. One of the pieces pictured in last year’s interview won “Best in Show” at the ODU 2022 Student Juried Exhibition; the award granted me a solo show at the Chrysler Museum Glass Studio in Norfolk, VA. I was also awarded a Windgate University Fellowship at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN. The Fellowship provided room, board, and tuition for a summer workshop. I chose to take a mechanical sculpture class. It seems the more technology advances, the more magical simple machines become.

Perspective is essential in navigating life as a mil-spouse, and illustrator/watercolorist/naturalist Grace Hart discovers beauty in the least likely places.

Although the pandemic sent my writing into a dry spell, I’ve been productive in other ways. I continue to volunteer with MilspoFAN, which has been wonderful because I love feeling connected to other mil-spouse artists. I also continue to serve as a poetry editor with Inklette Magazine. Not generating new poems gave me ample time to revise and organize previously written poems. I compiled three manuscripts: Forces was published by Middle West Press in the fall of 2021, and the other two manuscripts are looking for homes.

Each time we move, my practice takes a backseat and my work shifts in various ways. This move was especially jarring to my practice. I have had to go through the mourning process of losing my Hawaiian inspiration and I am still working to figure out what my work will look like here. Location changes and motherhood cause my creative practice and business growth to be less linear than I would like.

Maker/creative/mil-spouse Emily Ullo Steigler carries many skills in her tool belt, but her most important one is not being afraid to venture into a new creative endeavor.  

2022 has been one of the busiest years of my life, as I have learned many new things and worked with publishers on four upcoming books. As a short recap of who I am: I’m Mirka Hokkanen, a Finnish-American author, illustrator, printmaker and an educator. We’ve been a military family for about 17 years. I started out working as a fine art printmaker from graduate school in 2006, but have transitioned into illustrating for children in the last few years as my main focus.

I started doing Digital Art because I was bored. We were stationed in Fort Wainwright, and it was our first winter. As some people may know, it gets extremely cold in Alaska during the winter months, and there isn’t always a lot you can do outside when it’s -60 degrees. I had no idea what to do with myself, so I picked up my tablet and just started browsing through my app recommendations. I found a few free art apps and decided, having nothing better to do, to give them a try.