Orion Fern Schiada

Hi, my name is Orion Fern Schiada. I'm a Dentonite (local to Denton, TX) and have been an artist working in the DFW area since graduating art college in 2022 with a BFA in Media Arts and Animation. I've vended in Denton since the end of 2022 and proudly love to help build the arts community in-town by uplifting my fellow artists and vendors through education and resource-sharing. I teach how to make your own zines, self-publish, and make watercolor art at the Denton Maker Center every month. I work at Thistle Creative Reuse proudly sorting donations from the community to bring arts and craft supplies to creative hands at a secondhand cost. I also volunteer weekly with the Denton Water Project and help the homeless in the Denton community. I love my jobs and my vocation and places where I can lend a hand. But I'm in need of help, now, too. Unfortunately, I have been struggling to fight back against what I consider a mountain of debt in my life plaguing me. What I owe includes $300 towards 2025 charges from my art therapist I cannot return to until I pay this off, $350 towards my Capitol One credit card debt, $150 owed to Progressive Car Insurance now at debt collectors, $50 due to a gastro doctor from 2025, $150 owed to CashApp credit debt, and ultimately I'm still staring down May 2026 utilities that I am struggling to get covered of $165. I just cannot get out from this debt. I only make $1100 per month from my day job that takes 30 hours out of each week (I requested this), and therefore struggle to set aside funds when I keep taking pay day advances just to afford food between my pay days. My major and minor bills including groceries all together are about 500 on top of rent being 450 and utilities averaging 150-200 monthly. So I just barely scrape by on this income. It's been a huge struggle for me as I'm still clearing my commissions queue and cannot accept any new commission work as I owe at least 5 pieces of art to different clients who are patient and the most amazing people. If I can just get some relief and enough time to make it through my queue without needing to take more work, I could get caught up and finally have breathing space. I miss doing personal art. I want to be debt-free so I can return to making art for myself. Right now, I only make art for commissions or work or products. It's not fun. I miss making art for pure joyous reasons. I hope to be able to get back to that point someday. Please consider helping my fundraiser today so we can reach true freedom and get to start over from 0. It's all we could hope for this 2026. It would be a miracle come true if we could reach debt-free status this year. Thank you for reading our story today. We work very hard and hope to keep working even harder to earn our stay on this planet. We appreciate any support of small working class artists like us.