Website update as personal revelation
Umbrella swap!
Hello!
A short and sweet evening note from me to you.
As an artist and small business owner, I have had some form of a website for probably 20 years now. It’s never easy to decide how you want to express yourself as website. It’s actually pretty hard, and sometimes disorienting. My preferences for .com expression has taken different shapes over the years.
For my printed goods line and small business, Worthwhile, I opted for the flashiest, most cutting edge Shopify site designed by e-commerce website professionals to express brand values, aesthetic and best serve online shoppers.
But I realized, as a person who creates multiple types of offerings, that it is also nice to have a website on the basis of my name. Something simpler, like a little rolodex of my offerings.
kristendroz.com has been a domain I have had for a while, and I have been using it as my “fine art” website for several years.
However, I have been finding myself in a place where someone asks me “so, what do you do?” and I realized I don’t really have an info-hub that might easily demonstrate the variety of my “do-s”.
So, I have been working on a really simple re-formulating of my website navigation so that when someone goes to my website they can see my art, my small business, my substack, about my practice, and more. This is very easy for me to set up on Squarespace.
This comes years after deconstructing my self-identification away from my brand. (I, Kristen, am not Worthwhile Paper, Worthwhile Paper is a project under the Kristen umbrella. This may sound obvious, but 27 year old Kristen did not know that at one point, and for a period of time defined her whole creative self as something that needed to make sense under the umbrella of the brand, therefore limiting her internal expansion for a period).
Basically, I swapped umbrellas in my mind and it all made more sense!
I wonder what the level-up is here. Dissolving the illusion of the umbrella entirely? Universe as umbrella? Umbrella-me and umbrella-universe as an inseparable whole, along with umbrella-you and umbrella-everyone else?
Hopefully that is not too confusing.
What is definitely not confusing is me in your inbox here gleefully sharing that I updated my website, and it also opens the door for me to give more projects a neat home!
Welcome to my little umbrella. If you’re interested in checking it out, here it is!
Ooh I can relate to this so much! Websites are often how I envision the building blocks of any brand (personal or business) and I’ve been lost in the existential crisis of my personal website all year!
May I just say, your photos are GORGEOUS! Love this new home of yours :)