Hi, I'm Cailey.
I enjoy working with a variety of media, and I dabble in painting, drawing, mixed-media collage, printmaking, and textile arts. As for writing, I mostly write poetry, but of course I plan to write the next great American novel someday.
I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, which I believe is a darling city, and one which I fall deeper in love with all the time.
I've believed in the power of art as long as I can remember, but I started seriously developing my skills in high school. I finally started this blog right after I graduated high school, and what an adventure life has been since then!
In 2017 I earned my Bachelor of Arts in English. There were no art classes at my small university, but ask anyone there and they'll tell you I basically created my own double major with fine art. As a student I had the privilege of doing several talks on art as a form of worship, a subject I get very excited about. I also briefly co-lead an art club on campus, and integrated art into quite a few projects and assignments.
My art has appeared in several art exhibitions in the Cincinnati area, and a showcase with RAW:Columbus in March, 2015. I've also won a few local awards, the first of which was first place in my age bracket for a coloring contest at a restaurant when I was 5 years old. Unfortunately, I grew out of the t-shirt prize!
My art has appeared in several art exhibitions in the Cincinnati area, and a showcase with RAW:Columbus in March, 2015. I've also won a few local awards, the first of which was first place in my age bracket for a coloring contest at a restaurant when I was 5 years old. Unfortunately, I grew out of the t-shirt prize!
Switching tracks to writing, my main forms of expression are poetry, Instagram captions, and this site. I've had several poems published in print and online. In Fall 2018 I self-published my first poetry chapbook, Stars & Seas, exploring my own anxiety, depression, and faith.
In 2020 I self-published what I like to call a poetry novel, or a collection of many different poems telling a narrative. This book, A Girl, A Peach, The Blackbirds, and the Beasts is available on Amazon and tells the story of a girl who blacks out after a car wreck and wakes in a mysterious dream land, where she is chased by wolves and all manner of strange beasts, until she finds herself facing the ultimate monster. This book was especially fun to create! And of course, I'm always writing more poems, so stay tuned for my next collection.
My 9-5 is at the Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. I work as a collections coordinator in their regional library support center, which is contracted by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS).
As an avid reader, I enjoy providing braille and audio books to our patrons across the eastern US. I also had the privilege of assisting Clovernook in several projects to help make the arts more accessible for blind and visually impaired individuals through braille materials, tactile graphics, audio descriptions, and other site accessibility services. I work with fantastic people who are passionate about making the world a better place through literature and the arts!
In my free time, you can usually find me making myself at home in a bustling coffee shop with my husband. We'll be the odd couple: I'll be shamelessly snapping Instagramming pictures of my latte and my crochet project, and he'll be shuffling Yu-Gi-Oh cards or watching UFC fights on Youtube. We have pretty different interests but we both love coffee and doing our hobbies side-by-side!
My goal is to combine my skills in creative expression with my formal education in communication to build a campaign for hope. I believe the arts are a powerful way to express the deepest of emotions, break through the stigma of mental illness, bring hope to broken people and places, and touch the lives of the sighted, blind, hearing, and deaf alike. If you agree, then you and I will probably find a lot to talk about. So take a look around my blog and then get in touch with me! I'd really love to hear your story.
-Cailey
-Cailey
