Monday, July 14, 2008

Norway Sidewalk Art Show Recap

Now that I've had a couple days to recover from the art show it's time for a recap.

I got to the show about 8am, signed in and dropped off Odin's Runesong for judging then headed over to my spot to set up. I have to say that I hate my canopy, it takes forever to set up and it's not as sturdy as I'd like. I got two folding tables for my booth and it became very clear that I need another one next time, I just didn't have quite enough room for everything. Since I do jewelry as well as sculpture my spot was with several other jewelry artists. I had a great time talking to them and swapping ideas.

The show started at 9am and that's about when people started coming by. I have no idea how many people came through during the day but it was quite a crowd. Early in the morning I heard someone at the next jewelry booth talking about eCrater so I popped over to check it out and found out it was another eCrater seller that I know from the forums.

I brought along some little bookmarks I'd made with a rubber stamp I'd made from carving an eraser and gave those away to little kids (if you're curious the stamp is of an octopus). That was a big hit. I know a lot of kids like my sculpture (especially the animals) but how many parents are going to get their 5-year-old a $65 Perma-Pet, so the bookmarks I thought were a way to make them a little less disappointed and it worked. Another big hit was the little brochures I printed out aboout my work. I lot of people snagged those so hopefully some will then visit the website and buy something.

I didn't really sell much, just a couple of my small ornaments. Several people were very interested in my sculpture, including one person who said if he wished he had $750 in cash to buy An tEach Uisce (I made sure he left with a business card and brochure, who knows maybe he'll call to buy it).

About 1pm show volunteers went around handing out the announcements for the awards. I just about had a heart attack when I saw that I had won the Honorable Mention award for Odin! Obviously that was the highlight of my day.

About 2pm I had to go up to the gallery for picture taking. I had my picture taken with Odin for myself. For the local paper I had my picture taken with the other winners, US Senator Susan Collins, and some of the show organizers. Afterwards I brought Odin back to my booth and got a round of applause from the booths around me.

The rest of the day went pretty well, and I wrapped things up around 4pm. I'm still recovering a bit, it was a long exhausting day and I got a terrible sunburn even using plenty of sunscreen.

Here's a slide show of the photos I got.

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