I’ve been asked more than once why I decided to start the crazy business of becoming a tour guide in a country across the world from where I live. As in “Could you have thought up something more complicated to do?”

The answer to which is “Of course!” And I’ve tried a few of them too (acupuncture school, anyone?) But there’s one thing I know for sure as I’ve refined the journey of my life: it makes me happy to be using my most favorite skills and superpowers to help people enjoy something.

So I’m going to pull some threads together here:

Art + Project Management 

My love of art has always been with me. I knew when I was six years old that I wanted to be an artist, but for a bunch of reasons (self-invented, parent-enforced, economy-driven) I didn’t go hard after art until I’d had a few other careers. And along the way of those careers, I ended up honing really good organizational skills, mostly as a project manager with three bosses, but also as a single mom who balanced work with full-time art school, a teenager, and a serious quilting habit.

Art + Project Management + Paris

My globe trotting started early. By the time I was 20 I had emigrated from GB to the USA, to GB, and back to the USA. Whew.

In the late 1990s my dad and his wife, like a lot of British people, moved to the French countryside to retire. I started visiting them yearly, always flying through Paris before catching a train to Limoges, the closest big city to their home. A few trips to Paris cemented my love of the city, and my continuing art education doubled down in its many museums. Somehow, despite being British and not speaking much French, Paris became my happy place, and I return to it constantly to reset my soul.

Fast forward to 2011. I was barely a year out of grad school (with an MFA in Fiber Art) in the midst of a recession that had no place for art professors. As I was beginning to bootstrap my quilt pattern design biz, I kept track of things on the whiteboard over my desk. I recently came across this image from that time – probably one I took when I was going to wipe the board clean to refresh the lists.

There it was: the first glimmer.

As my biz got on its feet and the recession eased up, my passport began to whisper to me. And of course, the first place I thought of going was Paris.

Art + Project Management + Paris + Encouragement

In 2015, I lucked into an urban sketching tour in Paris, the first time I’d ever signed up to have someone else plan my itinerary. Before joining the tour I added a few days to meet up with friends from home who were also in Paris at that time, and I took them to my favorite places, telling them the art history stories that I knew, connecting the dots that help people better understand and enjoy art. When the left, they told me they would happily hire me to be a tour guide in other European cities.

Art + Project Management + Paris + Encouragement + Inspiration

When I joined the urban sketching tour I had a blast. Having a specific lens through which to look at Paris was a new experience, and because I was already familiar with the city, I was able to enjoy taking lots of time to sit and sketch without the pressure of cramming in all the important sights (having already done that in many prior visits). When I came home, I began to think about what kind of a tour I might build if I were going to do the same thing.

And while I was thinking those thoughts, I went on a couple more tours, one to Sicily (photography), one to Bali (print-making and cloth). And on each, I was taking notes… thinking about what I loved about those experiences, and what I would do differently.

Art + Project Management + Paris + Encouragement + Inspiration + Research + Textiles

In 2019 I went back to Paris with a mission: to figure out my own tour. At this point I was almost a decade into my quilt pattern design business, and while I love to teach quilting, I shuddered at the thought of asking my fellow travelers to pack what you need to make a quilt. All the tours I had taken did not have a large or heavy “equipment” component. They were simple: respectively, a sketchbook journal and watercolors; a camera and laptop; and a small printmaking kit. So I thought I would combine the idea of a journal (I loved my sketchbook experience) with embroidery. It was still in my beloved stitch/textile world, but able to be small, lightweight, and most of all portable.

Launched… Not Launched… LAUNCHED!

So my trip to Paris became about finding a way to navigate it with an emphasis on the textile side of the history. And WOW – there is so much there. I hired guides and helpers and found a good hotel, built my inaugural trip for 2020 and sold it out – only to have it thwarted by the pandemic. But I came back in 2022 and sold out two tours in a matter of weeks.

So here I am, a dozen years after scribbling some dreams on a whiteboard: I’m now a tour guide who teaches about art in Paris and other European cities!

One other thing… check out another note on that whiteboard:

Sometimes it takes a while 🙂

 

Come on an Embroidered Journey with me!