Art Show Fun

So the Shy, Novice, and Closeted Art Show is over for 2007. I'm still recovering a bit, it was a really long day. So here's how it went:

Thursday July 5th - I had a mad scramble to get things together. My canopy had a slight stability problem (because it's cheap) but with my dad's help I fixed that problem. All the poles can now be bolted together, they aren't going anywhere now. And since the stakes that came with it sucked I raided my brother's weight set for 4 10 lb weights to keep it in place (he's in Japan, he won't miss them).

Apparently my dad wasn't thinking ahead a couple weeks ago when he took all our old newspapers to be recycled because I had a hard time finding enough materials to pack around my sculptures to keep them safe. I finally did though so after some problems with boxes (Odin's Runesong is over 2 feet tall and the largest box I had was exactly 2 feet tall) I had everything together and ready to go.

Friday July 6th - Obviously prior to the show it needed to be set up. Since it was being held in Janet's house which is also under renovation it took a lot of preparation. So a lot of the participants all converged on Janet's house Friday afternoon to get it all ready. It was scrubbed clean, furniture was rearranged, displays were set up and up went my canopy. I tried to get to bed early so I'd be nice and rested but it didn't work, I didn't get to sleep until at least 2am and woke up at 6am.

Saturday July 7th - I was up a little more bright and early than intended. Janet wanted flowers for the show and my mom's garden definitely needed cutting back ina few places so I helped both of them out.

Once I got to the show the first order of business was to get all the flowers everyone brought arranged in vases and any other container handy (we had lots of flowers) and then scattering them around the house, barn and outside. One thing always guaranteed is even if your signs say not opening until 9am people still show up early.

Over the day we probably had around 250 people come through and almost a dozen dogs. This didn't make Janet's dog Sadie very happy. She was okay for most of the day but all the strange dogs coming through her territory finally pushed her a bit too far and she got in a scuffle with a cocker spaniel. Scared the hell out of everyone and tore the little spaniel's ear a bit. If you've ever had a dog cut their ear open you know how much it bleeds. So I ended up playing vet to get the dog's ear cleaned up and reassured the owners and their 5 year old daughter that their dog was going to be fine. Once it stopped bleeding you could barely even see the cut. Janet of course felt awful and offered to pay any vet bills they have though unless it gets infected I doubt they'll need a vet at all.

My display area was in a small room between the barn and the living room that I shared with another artist. We spent a lot of the day chatting about our art and talking with the people coming through and other artists. Overall it was a lot of fun. I got lots of great feedback on my work. I'd have liked more sales since I only sold a couple necklaces but I wasn't surprised since last year was a lot the same. I don't do this show for the money, I do it for the experience and to get the type of feedback that I got. In August when I do Moore Art in the Park that's the one that I'm aimign for sales at because it is a big outdoor art festival that should have 10-20 times as many people coming through.

The cutest thing was the kids, they just seem irresistable drawn to the Perma-Pets. Something about creatures in jars that they seem to like. And I had one solitary person who got the reference for Cthulhu's Gems, it was near the end of the day so I was thrilled to see someone who finally got it.

The plan was to close up at 3pm but it didn't exactly work out that way, we still had people coming through up until 4pm and even a few stragglers showed up after 4 when we were taking everything down.

So here is some of the feedback that I got, let me know what you think too:
- More jewelry designs. I was already planning on doing this, I just haven't come up with any ideas yet.
- Prints. Several people mentioned that they'd like cards or other prints of photographs of my sculptures.
- Gargoyle figures. The woman who bought a Cthulhu's gem loved my gargoyle necklaces but they weren't something she'd wear. She said she'd love to buy a little gargoyle in that style that she could sit on her desk. I really like the idea. I'd already come up with a couple ideas of things that the gargoyles could be doing with their gems since I have a little more freedom with figures than pendants. I like the ideas of one gnawing on his gem and one cuddling it like a teddy bear as he sleeps.

All in all a good experience that gave me lots of ideas for next time. If you want to see more pictures check out my photo set on Fickr.

Shy, Novice, & Closeted Art Show

I spent yesterday helping with some of the setup for the Shy, Novice, and Closeted Art Show. I'm getting really excited about things. However my hand is still cramped from filling out so many postcard invitations to artists that I lost count.

If anyone in downtown Bethel doesn't know by now about the show it's not my fault. I hit just about every business that was open in town hanging posters in the rain. Big big thanks to all those businesses for letting me hang posters, not a single one turned me down so it's great to see that sort of support for an art show. It's Saturday July 7th so if you're in Bethel that day hit the big Art Show on the Commons and the Shy Novice and Closeted Art Show, it's going to be a fun day and I'll be at the show pretty much all day if you want to say hi.

Trying to Figure Out the Whole Marketing Thing

I'm an artist, business just isn't something that comes naturally to me. So trying to figure out what I should produce to actually make a profit is difficult. Another problem is how much should I have in inventory? Hopefully I'll be able to figure this out before the show and festival that I'm doing.

What I've got so far.

Original one of a kind sculptures. These sculpts like my Wood Nymph, Satyr, and An tEach Uisce.

One of a kind sculpture series These are one of a kind sculptures that fit into a set theme. So far this only consists of my Perma-Pets.

One of a kind jewelry series. These are my Gargoyles and Cthulhu's Gems necklaces.

What I'd like to add.

First of all of course I'd like to increase the numbers of everything I have so far.

One of a kind sculpture series I'd like to come up with at least one more one of a kind series. So far I've got no ideas for this, I'm trying really hard to come up with something.

Cast sculptures. I have some resin and ordered some hydrocal and mold latex. I'd like to start with some small cast plaster pieces. One of the ideas I had was to expand on the idea of my Mermaid Bust and do a full figure. A baby Cthulhu has also been floating around in my head.

Larger scale sculpture. Odin's Runesong right now is my largest sculpture to date. I'd love to do some even larger work, in the 3-4 foot high range. Due to the limitations of the size of my oven any really big work would have to be either sculpted in sections in polymer clay, mixed media, or cast. I have a few ideas for this right now one is the Wild Hunt and also the Man in the Moon as a large moon globe that opens to show clockwork and a little guy operating it.

Future online sales.

Right now I'm focused on local sales, the festivals and gallery. I really hope to get into selling on ebay in the near future, I've set up my account and I'm looking at other sculpture auctions to see how I want to present mine. I think that ebay will probably be something that will remain in the works for a few months, the Moore Art Festival is August 11 so it will probably be after that. I just think trying to learn both things at the same time is just too much on my plate.

Going to give this blogging thing another try.

I haven't been a very good blogger in the past, I have a tendency to forget to update. I have a busy summer coming up though so I decided it's time to give this another try because I have stuff I want to share that's coming up that I really don't have a good place for on my main website.

So far this is my summer schedule:

July 7 - The Shy, Novice, and Closeted Art Show at 18 High Street in Bethel, ME. I participated in this last year as well and it was a lot of fun.
July 21 - Mollyockett Day in Bethel, ME. Annual festival, I'll be there all day and it's tentative at the moment but the Elements Gallery may have a booth on the common.
August 11 - Moore Art, Show and Festival in the Park. Historic Moore Park in South Paris, ME. This is the first year for the festival which I think is appropriate for my first full fledged art festival.
All summer - Helping out with the Elements Gallery which also happens to sell my work.
All summer - Further promoting my sculpture with the goal of more gallery representation.
All summer - I'm going to attempt the leap into selling my sculpture on Ebay.
All summer - More sculptures and I'm going to attempt to create molds and cast again hopefully with better results than previously.

Update on the Art Show

First a little explanation about why it's taken me so long to update. My mom grew up in fostercare and she had the most wonderful foster-mother. Me and my brother were very close to her and as far as we're concerned she was far more out grandmother than my mother's biological mother. She was 85 years old and for her age quite healthy until the first week of July, she had a series of heart attacks and strokes over two weeks until she passed away due to bleeding in her brain that the doctors are pretty sure was caused by an undiagnosed tumor. Obviously that knocked me for an emotional loop. On top of that my mom had already arranged several years ago to become my mentally disabled foster-uncle's guardian when my grandmother could no longer care for him so he's been in the process of moving in the past couple weeks which has really taken up a lot of time and energy.

Okay back to the Art Show. It went pretty well considering it was a very small show competing with a much larger better advertised one. I sold two small sculptures and generated quite a bit of interest in my art including an invitation to display in a new local gallery.

Here is the photo I took of my display:


I think the best part of it all was networking with the other artists and getting to talk to people who've been doing this a lot longer than I have. I really learned a lot from the show which makes it more than worth it. As for that invitation for the gallery I'm proud to say I currently have several pieces in the Elements Gallery in Bethel, ME which I can't describe how excited I am about that.

Rolling along

Hooray, an update in less than a week. Lots of stuff going on so here's an update.

Working on the art show preparation, I bought some matboard to get all my drawings displayed nicely. I had planned on buying precut mats but the local store doesn't sell them but they do sell their matboard remnants (all museum matboard too) in bags for $10, and there were a lot of remnants in the bag I bought, 75 to be exact and I swear the bag weighed about 20lbs so it was a very good deal. They're mainly the windows that were cut out of the mats when the store does framing. They are a bunch of sizes, and none are really huge but since my work is all on the smaller side it's perfect for me. Now I just need a mat cutter this weekend, I'm planning to get a cheap little Xacto board cutter which can do 45º bevels but from what I've heard it does take extra patience, I'm not going to be doing enough matting to justify buying a good mat cutter right now. If I ever start producing drawings faster or start selling them quickly then I'll invest in one.

I have 2 sculptures I'm showing which haven't been completely painted yet that I'm working on. My mermaid bust recieved some damage during my unsuccessful attempt to mold her so I had to repair her and she's awaiting some touchup painting. Probably a good thing I wasn't planning to sell her anyway since now I can't with the damage even patched well.

Add to the list trying to figure out how to price the pieces I do plan to have for sale, printing up information on my art, trying to write an artist statement and I'm just a little stressed. It's probably just me doing it to myself since it's supposed to be a more casual layed back show but I'm too much of a perfectionist for that I guess.

In non-art show related stuff, my mom wanted photos of her garden (she's addicted to gardening) so I spent a couple hours with my digital camera Tuesday taking photos, here are my 3 favorites scaled down so they'd fit here.

Big update about what I've been up to.

I know I'm the world's worst blog writer when it comes to updating often enough. I keep saying I'll change but so far it hasn't happened.

So lots of things have been going on for me in the past few months. The big one from a personal standpoint is that my mom was diagnosed with cancer, she's finished her treatment now and she's feeling better every day, the outlook for her is excellent according to her doctors. So that has been a big stress for me recently and is part of my lack of updates to both my blog and my website which is why I never added work from February until this month.

On a more professional and happy note, there has been a lot going on for me and my art. First of all I took life drawing class and the results you can view here, it was a great experience if you are an artist and have never taken life drawing I really recommend it.

Second, I've gotten a summer job at a local studio. I'll be cutting mats, framing, and keeping track of print sales. It's only part time but the experience I'll get seeing how professional artists run a business will be very valuable for me I think.

Finally third and biggest in my mind, I'm going to be doing my very first art show on July 1st. I'm really excited about the chance to sell some of my work, I'll have both drawings and sculpture there. If you are in the Bethel, Maine area that day please stop by the "Shy, Novice, and Closeted Art Show", it's the same day as an art show for more established artists as well so you'll have plenty to see.

Mold Making First Attempt - part I

So I've started my first foray into molding and casting. It's been interesting so far. No major disasters but a couple minor ones.

Here's the victim.



First here's a cardboard prop to keep the bust I'm molding in the right position. This led to minor disaster number one, I managed to both cut myself with my knife and burn my fingers with the hot glue gun. The prop worked well though.



The next couple steps I forgot to take pictures of, I built a layer of Klean Klay (sulfur free modeling clay) over one half of the bust and then layered plaster of paris on top. Once dry I flipped it over and did the same on the other side, this gave me a nice plaster mother mold that will be filled with the mold rubber. Here's where minor disaster number two and three come along. On one side of my mother mold layer of plaster for some reason didn't quite adhere to the first layer and flaked off so I wasted quite a bit of plaster and time. Then I managed to spill plaster all over my floor which I'm still working on cleanign up. A minor annoyance was finding out after I used vaseline as a release agent for the plaster that I could have used liquid soap instrad which would have been far far easier to clean off.

After all the plaster was dried I had to open up the mother mold, that went well even with the vaseline making a mess all over my hands. I removed the klean klay from one half of the mother mold, and on the other side you can see the clay bed that will be a barrier to the rubber when I pour it. I had to position the clay bed so that when I open the rubber mold that it won't catch uder her ears which was the only majot undercut on this bust.



Next step will be to pour the first half of the rubber mold, that I will probably do tonight so it can cure overnight.

Impatience

I've come to the conclusion that being able to track a package being sent to you online makes waiting for it even worse.

I ordered some sculpting and casting supplies and they should be arriving soon. I'm planning to document my first casting attempt here, I'm hoping it goes well rather than embarassing.

I've continued brainstorming sculpture ideas, a little more seriously than last time.
- The Dord Fian, mythical celtic horn that calls the fianna (army of heros led by Finn Mac Cumhail)
- Boudicca - I love history and Boudicca was a very heroic and tragic woman who defied the roman empire. She supposedly had hair down past her knees, sculpting hair liek that would be a wonderful challenge.

What a sculptor does when she's bored.

So I was on IRC(#pixelation on irc.sorcery.net) last night a bit bored so I did some brainstorming for sculpture ideas. The guys on the channel found them funny so I thought I'd share here.

1) Squirrel holding a ring "my precious".
2) Kitten in the holy grail.
3) Bonsai kitten assembled kind of like those ships in bottles.
4) Hatching baby gryphon based on baby cockatiels (they are ugly beyond words).
5) Christmas Platypus. Okay, this was an idea I had a while back but I still like it.

I have no idea if I'll ever sculpt any of these but it was fun coming up with them.