Maria-Thérèse Sommar runs the blog and business afiori. She is a photographer and creative spirit from Harnosand, Sweden and lives a pretty magical life. I would like to show the documentation that Maria-Thérèse shared with us in August of 2009 and the end with a follow-up interview we recently did. Here goes!
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The first few hours I tend to do practical stuff but sometimes I start to create things right away. Today I cut a lot of paper and started to make new mixed paper books. Then a coffee break, then finished the books. I eat lunch late, or dinner early depending how you look at it. Anything vegetarian / vegan, for instance pasta with tomato / olive sauce and halloumi.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXpb7rMCCW57U5DQwJ3hO8GxKLvz0PSJGSpXBI9mS6ekEN26_AKuyoDsEsx5osVjqC7qPmH4cWP2DXEbgfRgfhwR2_Ey8x1d7et87Nbq4yeoP1a5vYMtu2OVsMrhcZ-xZOYwWYXYrnbSg/s320/03.jpg)
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Now for a follow-up in 2013. Maria-Thérèse answered a few questions about how her days have changed or stayed the same since she last did this post.
Hi! How fun to be at A Beautiful Party again!
When you last interviewed me back in 2009, I had only run my business for a few months and was very busy creating art and selling it via my online shops and then through exibitions. I published my first poetry book and exhibited my art a lot. Since then, I have worked much more as a hired photographer, writer and translator. I've shot a lot of weddings, parties and events and regularly write articles and take photos for a business website. I also do translation work for a literary agency now and then and I've taught a couple of photography courses. I'm still entirely self-employed.
So, my business has become a much wider representation of what I can do. I get to meet a lot of people now and the work is very varied. It's great that more people know about me and I like working as a hired photographer / writer, but sometimes I have too little time or focus to work on my own art. While it's wonderful when I'm busy working, it is sometimes necessary to have less to do so that I find my own ideas again and can prepare for the future, since my own work has to be the core of my business. Recently I've been working on a few series of photographs just for me and I also went to Rome for a week and wrote new poetry. I'm not making a lot of notebooks to sell at the moment, but I always keep a travel journal so I made one for myself before I left and I love working with actual paper. Oh, and I've changed my last name, from Andersson to Sommar [summer] which was my grandmother's maiden name.
Still eating chocolate ice cream, listening to a lot of the same music but also finding new inspiration such as Emilie Autumn's music and poetry which I just stumbled upon a couple of weeks ago and find brilliant.
I live in the same place but my studio is now part of my livingroom and I turned my former studio into a bedroom to get better sleeping habits (didn't work). I finally have a huge computer screen and better equipment which makes work easier. Falling asleep and waking up even later, I'm afraid, making that cup of morning coffee equally important. Other than that, I think my routine is very similar, except I meet more people now, have become more outgoing in general and tend to sit in a café for a while in the afternoon before I really start to work.
2 comments:
Thank you so much for having me again! I definitely think we'd feel as if we've known each other for ages if we met irl, or when we meet! :)
What a great post! I love hearing how things have changed since 2009. A future project for you re interviewing everyone, maybe?
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