After 2020 art festivals were canceled amid COVID-19 dangers, “I started looking at any way that I could start earning income, so I’ve literally got about four side hustles, businesses, in the works,” Redmond artist Kym Myck said.

Though visual art is her main profession, Redmond artist Kym Myck, this week’s Central Oregon Creative Artists Relief Effort featured artist, finds that having a variety of income streams “seems to be necessary these days.”

Myck describes herself as a multi-modal artist on her website, her creative outlets including photography, graphic design, digital and analog art. But when COVID-19 struck, Myck lost out on income from festivals, “which all that dried up last year, of course,” she said.

“I had just literally signed up with one of the art shows with the Dry Canyon Arts Association, and almost immediately, it was canceled because everything was so precarious at that time, and unknown, that they just started canceling everything,” Myck said. “By early May, it was real clear that we weren’t going to be able to do anything all summer, and at that point, people were pushing for September. And now here we are a year later.”

Myck didn’t just pivot, a word that became too familiar to us all last year: She had to get creative on multiple fronts.

“I started looking at any way that I could start earning income, so I’ve literally got about four side hustles, businesses, in the works,” she said. “They’re all varied, from artwork and crafting stuff, doing everything. Mugs, T-shirts, jewelry-stamping, doing my own artwork.”

Myck is also a reiki and aromatherapy practitioner as well as a wellness coach. She makes spices. She also aims to start teaching art, having recently signed up to be a substitute art teacher with the High Desert Education Service District, she said.

“I’m literally all over the page,” she said. Still, “visual art is my main thing — at this point.”

During the past year, “A lot of the downtime was spent trying to figure out how to survive with no income. That was probably the most stressful aspect. It was kind of like, ‘Now what? And how do you get your bills paid?’ … I did not create for several months. I’m just actually starting to get back into the flow of things. In the last year, I’ve done maybe six or seven pieces, which is — that’s normally something I’d do in a week.”

CO CAREs grant money will help her purchase art supplies so she can continue to create, with an eye on the summer festival season ahead, Myck said.

“At this point, it would help as far as … getting equipment to set up for the festivals, things like that. Materials to make things for creating. Those materials are pretty spendy.”