That Was Then, This is Now
Hard to believe it's been over a month since posting here, but it's been jam-packed with art-related activities. The Art Fair was this past weekend, and in the end I produced eight new paintings, the last of which I finished at 8 p.m. the night before the fair opened. We did the best we could to minimize the fair's impact on our time and energy, particularly by reducing the size of our own booth and offering only our own new art instead of others' and our larger things. Instead of our previous pegboard walls I created lightweight mesh ones out of hardware cloth and poplar 1 x 2's. Each wall panel was 3' wide, which turned out to be a blessing, because the transmission went out on our SUV three days before the fair, and we were forced to haul everything in the trunk of the car. The old 4' wide pegboard panels would not have been possible to transport.
The rest of the fair still demanded a lot of attention, the publicity, the updating of the artists, the security and parking and facility maintenance, just everything. Both our food vendors pulled out the night before the event, one from a death in the family, the other because he had just opened his restaurant and was short-handed, and could only provide an ice-cream cart at best. I persuaded him to at least provide hot dogs and he complied, rustling up whatever help he could find and bringing over grills and hot dogs and buns, so it wasn't a total fiasco.
I sold two out of my eight paintings, so that wasn't bad, especially considering only half the people were there that we had go through last year. The heat and humidity was at dangerous levels both days. Even the long-established art fair the next town over had far less traffic and sales. So sales-wise I did well, and the comments were incredibly encouraging. I'm touching a nerve with quite a few people, even if they cannot afford to buy any art. Steve was impressed at the reception my work got, but not surprised.
It looks as if a gallery in Indianapolis is considering selling my work, based on a visit last night from a fellow who had seen my work at the fair. It will be interesting to see what comes of this, and what the terms are. Of course I am excited that others like my work enough to carry it in their gallery, not to mention flattered as hell. He even went through my archives and looked at my old work, just to get a sense of where I'm coming from and how my work evolved. Looks like I will soon need to get back to the easel, as at least two more paintings are spoken for and I'm running low on new "stock." It seems so strange that I might actually be on the road to making a go of it.
The rest of the fair still demanded a lot of attention, the publicity, the updating of the artists, the security and parking and facility maintenance, just everything. Both our food vendors pulled out the night before the event, one from a death in the family, the other because he had just opened his restaurant and was short-handed, and could only provide an ice-cream cart at best. I persuaded him to at least provide hot dogs and he complied, rustling up whatever help he could find and bringing over grills and hot dogs and buns, so it wasn't a total fiasco.
I sold two out of my eight paintings, so that wasn't bad, especially considering only half the people were there that we had go through last year. The heat and humidity was at dangerous levels both days. Even the long-established art fair the next town over had far less traffic and sales. So sales-wise I did well, and the comments were incredibly encouraging. I'm touching a nerve with quite a few people, even if they cannot afford to buy any art. Steve was impressed at the reception my work got, but not surprised.
It looks as if a gallery in Indianapolis is considering selling my work, based on a visit last night from a fellow who had seen my work at the fair. It will be interesting to see what comes of this, and what the terms are. Of course I am excited that others like my work enough to carry it in their gallery, not to mention flattered as hell. He even went through my archives and looked at my old work, just to get a sense of where I'm coming from and how my work evolved. Looks like I will soon need to get back to the easel, as at least two more paintings are spoken for and I'm running low on new "stock." It seems so strange that I might actually be on the road to making a go of it.
posted by meg at 4:12 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home