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.

Submit Posts to the Carnival of Sculpts

I'll be hosting a blog carnival starting this month for sculptors. Go to BlogCarnival for more information and how to submit your blog posts. It will be posted on the last Friday of every month, for April this will be the 25th (the submission deadline is the 23rd).

The carnival is open to any blog post about a sculptors finished work, works in progress, tutorials, or other interesting posts about your sculpting. Posts needs to be about your own sculpture not other artists work.

Happy New Year

Happy 2008! Now is the time for resolutions which for most of us won't last past the end of the month. However I figure if I put my resolutions for Noadi's Art up on this blog I can't avoid them or conveniently forget, because I'm sure someone will bring them back to haunt me.

I have two categories of resolutions, one for sculpting and one for the more business side of things.

Sculpting:

1. Finish more large sculptures. I had a grand total of 3 big sculptures that I finished this year, the Satyr, Odin's Runesong, and Lionfish Mermaid. Though I did 17 medium sculpts (baby rat, turtle, lots of perma-pets, etc.), and dozens of necklaces and ornaments. The small stuff is fun and it sells more often but they aren't really challenging. I currently have a pretty big stock of small stuff that I shouldn't need to make lots in the near future except some of those gargoyle couples I just started doing.
2. Improve my anatomy. Especially hands.
3. Try wax! I've never sculpted in wax and I'd love to give it a try.
4. Improve my workspace. Right now I have a tiny corner of the living room for sculpting and part of the unheated basement for airbrushing. I'm unlikely to get more physical space so I need to optimize what I have. Right now it's really jumbled without much storage aside from stacks of little plastic boxes and a book shelf behind my desk. Also I have that great new toaster oven and nowhere to put it.
5. And definitely get a better chair. My desk is too low to stand while sculpting and too high for my chair even at it's highest setting so I need a taller chair.

Business:

1. Sell more! (of course)
2. Do more art shows and festivals. I've not had much luck selling lots at shows but the experience I've had meeting and learning from other artists makes them so worth it.
3. Promote my sculpting more locally. Aside from the one tiny gallery I'm in and the two shows I did in 2007, I haven't done as much as I think I should to get my name out in my area. I know my work is a niche market so the internet will probably remain my main way of selling.
4. Blog more! I've already been writing more often but I really need to keep it up.

Christmas Goody

So Christmas went pretty well, everyone got sculpted ornaments from me. My best friends and her husband especially like the dragon ornament I made them. My parents were sneaky this year, I had no idea they knew I was looking into a toaster oven for baking my smaller sculpts with. So they got me this very nice one, which is much better than the cheap $20 one I was looking at which was much smaller. Now I don't have to feel so guilty about the wasted electricity or possible fumes from baking my sculpts in the kitchen oven. I'll still need to use the kitchen oven for the occational really large piece but most of the time I won't need to.

If you look to the right you can see that I've added a Tip Jar. If you enjoy my blog or my artwork please consider leaving a donation or better yet purchasing something from my Gift Page to get something for your money.

What Makes it All Worth It

So my best friend took me out to eat at a Chinese restaurant yesterday after we dropped her husband off at work. While we were there our waitress complimented the Cthulhu's Gem necklace I was wearing and I told her I made it and showed her the little pocket portfolio I keep in my purse. The way she looked at the photos and tried so hard to tell me what she thought about them even though her english wasn't very good nearly made me cry. Then she brought over one of her co-workers to look at it too. Selling my sculptures is great and for my own survival I need to do it but it's reactions like hers that really get me motivated and shows me that what I'm doing makes more people happy than just myself.

Also there's something to pay attention to here. Always be prepared to show people your work as an artist. You can get a pocket sized photo album just about anywhere for a few dollars, business cards or postcards are cheap to have made, if you can wear your art in some way as jewelry, t-shirt, button, etc. do it. You may meet people that way you never would have otherwise.

Selkie Emerging Update #2

Another update on my Selkie Emerging sculpt. I'm been texturing the fur on the seal half, which isn't very difficult but is tedious and takes time. I've only got one of the flippers and the underside of the piece of seal skin being pulled away left to texture.

My immediate next step is to get the arms finished and give the poor girl some nipples. Then I need to start working out the weights I'll be adding to the base so it won't be so tippy (that's what the clamp is for, it's keeping her upright). Finally I'll do the hair and base. It's actually driving me crazy, I want to work on the hair now because I hate seeing her bald but some of the hair will be touching her arms so those have to be finished first.

2007 Retrospective

So now that 2007 is nearly over it's time to start reflecting on what I've accomplished. Most likely I wouldn't have thought of sharing this if not for Troy McDevitt from the Clubhouse forums who posted a thread asking everyone to cram their 2007 portfolio into one 600x400 pixel image.

Now there's still a little while to go in 2007 so I have a few small projects that I may get finished before the end of the year but nothing significant. While I was compiling this I was able to reminisce over the creation of each piece, what I learned, and the progress I've made. With everything I sculpt there's always something in the end I know could be better but even so I'm really happy with the rate at which I'm improving. As long as I keep learning and improving that's what I think is the most important thing.

Going left to right from the top: Satyr (January), Octopuppy (January), Perma-Pets (ongoing series, started February), Squid (August), Odin's Runesong (September), Lionfish Mermaid (November), Baby Rat (May), Hatching Turtle (July), Frog Ornament (November), Cthulhu's Gems (ongoing series, started June), Cephalopod Pendants (November), Gargoyles (ongoing series, started May).

Selkie Emerging Update

So I've finally gotten back to work on my Selkie Emerging sculpt. With the Lionfish Mermaid commission and getting jewelry and ornaments ready for christmas shoppers I just haven't had the time to work on her.

The real tricky bit has been the base. I plan on sculpting over the bare framework I have now with rocks and water splashes so I needed room enough to do that later on but still have the base stable enough now to not tip over. I'm not sure what wood that section of dowel is made of but it's got a bit of weight to it.

Sculptural Progression from 1996 through 2007

This is a slide show video I put together of my sculptures, I've only been sculpting seriously for about 3 years so most of the videos are from the last few years though I do have a few that are older including a ceramic bird whistle I made way back in the 7th grade. It's a lot of fun for me to look back over the progress I've made in my sculpting ability, it really helps keep me motivated.

Geisha Fairy Video

I hope everyone likes the new layout of the blog. I think this one is much prettier and cleaner than the old scribe template I was using.

This is a little slideshow video I put together of photos I took of the Geisha Fairy sculpture I did last year. She was a commissioned sculpture that I did for Tenshi and was lots of fun.

Great Sculpting Site

Jeff Lamarche is a pretty cool guy, he posts on some of the same forums that I do and he has a really cool new blog. Go check out iSculpt he's been doing an incredible job compiling lots of useful information and links on sculpting.

In the same vein I've put together another resource lens on Squidoo, this time a big list of links for Figure Artists, anatomy, pose photos, facial reference, and other stuff. Resources for Figure Artists

Ron Mueck

I've recently become slightly obsessed with Ron Mueck's just amazing lifelike sculpture. To make me an even bigger fan of his I found out on the wikipedia page about him that he used to work with Jim Henson and was one of the performers of Ludo in Labyrinth! I love that movie so much, I can practically recite every line.

If you aren't familiar with his work here are a few links:
Ron Mueck on Wikipedia

Images of his work

Video about his sculpting process
(150mb so slow connections be warned, however it's totally worth it)

One thing that has irritated me reading article about him is the big deal made about his lack of formal art training. As if working in the special effects field didn't give him loads of training? Since I also have virtually no art training it really annoys me the emphasis that is put on attending art school by many people. Now I'm sure art school is a great experience and students learn a lot (and if I could I'd love to take a few classes). However I feel like art is a field where there are so many possible paths you can take to become an artist that one of those paths shouldn't be given all the emphasis as the "right" way to do it.