art fairs and my gallery

post #140
      Despite more than two and a half years of posts, I have not yet explained all that much about what I do or where I work or even what individual artistic path I have chosen to create for myself.  There has just been so much other stuff I have been eager to share.  Today, however, I will begin a try at establishing a sense of the places and spaces that make my work life happen.  
      A good place to start would be yesterday, a day spent in a fair with other artists, trying to sell my stuff to whomever comes by.  I had been invited to take a 10 x 10 place on a carpet in the hallway of the Morehead Conference Center.  There would be 6 or 7 of us in a row outside of the main room where 50 folk artists from ten states would be displaying and selling during the Kentucky Folk Art Center's A Day in the Country.  This made for a building busy all day with art and artists! (We all agree to stay there from 8:45 to 4.)
     I was able to share the space with my creative friend Jennifer Reis who does embellished fabric art as well as metal jewelry.  She also crochets jewelry.  It's way more fun to be sharing the setting up, which includes final design decisions for the space, as well as to be helping each other out during the day.  It also helps that her work and mine are easy to tell apart....
       Here is a photo of our "booth" all ready to go at 9 a.m. yesterday morning:

   

     It is of course hard to tell what will sell on any such day.  I had at least 75 different note cards on display.  But, for some random reason, my two best sellers of the day were writing spider and country crossing.  I only had five copies of each on hand.  Both were purchased because the customer had a longterm specific project in mind.  I do enjoy learning what speaks to people who come by to buy....

     I have come to admire the artists ENORMOUSLY who can set up weekend after weekend, and/or who can work around hot sun or rain.  I don't even have a tent because my note cards would not do well in most kinds of weather, plus I am not patient enough to do it by myself all day long.  I trust it is obvious that there is a lot of work involved in getting art work ready for an event, in setting up the day before an event starts, and in taking it all down at the end -- in an organized enough manner to fit it back in the vehicle and, later, in the space it came from to begin with!  For me, yesterday was cushy -- a rug!  No need for a tent!  The restroom and water fountain just across the hall!  Air-conditioning!  WiFi!  Live guitar and then banjo, with singing, at the end of the hallway!   But even so I didn't earn enough money to make up for the total time spent.  It's great publicity, however, which is important.  And I don't want to be working by myself every single minute, which is why the FUN part is so great as is the interaction with people who like my photography. 
       It is all part of that work any art path takes, one which we each have to determine for ourselves. 

      I've already written more than I expected to, so I will save the other gallery photos and thoughts for next week's blog.  Here are just two photos, both of the outside of Sideway Gallery, and there are more!  in just 7 days!

Wisteria appears!

a writing poem

post #47

        I'm still at home, getting back into the nature dramas here, remembering that August was the month when we were transfixed by a spider who had built a web outside our window, a web that had zigzags in the middle.  It is also the month when this spider secured two sacs nearby but above the web, and, just like Charlotte in E.B.White's book Charlotte's Web, then the web builder died!  That was when I figured out that I had taken a photo of this kind of spider several years earlier, near our pond, and that one of its names is a writing spider. 

       

      Here is the photo in black and white:

      

     Here is the photo in its original color:

      So now the poem:
  

     

                 zigzag faith

For weeks we watch outside

the window, our spider writing,

wrapping prey, hanging

round sacs of eggs

east corner first, then one

high in the west, a mama

ever purposeful

even when at rest,

argiope aurantia.                                                [R guy oh pea/ or ranch a]

By her size we know

she is a she,

by her work she shares

her silken faith,

since we’ve no vegetation

to protect her, only glass

behind, the woven web

her shield and show.

 

She’s not yet gone frail,

not yet gone, leaving

us to watch both sacs

until the spring, a time

to hope, to know

her thousands plan

to float on air, as Wilbur

taught me years ago

when what I needed was

to know his love for Charlotte

and hers for him, shown

by words, in truths she told.

 

Now I’m taken by this steady

work, she who weaves on

and on while I stop,

go, debate, consider. 

Yet she but wafted in,

like me, her long stay

a sign of settling where

a writer needs to be.

   note:  The reason for showing both versions of the photo is to see which one shows the web design better.  I am drawn to the shapes of webs.  And I am so much a color person that I don't usually even try black and white.  I came to photography in the last 15 years and so never went through the dark room phase.  It was slides, then digital.  Also, webs are hard to get as sharp as they look since they are always in motion, responsive to every breath of air no matter how still the day.  Even the body of the photographer in the vicinity produces a quivering. 

   This is a good occasion to thank my monthly writers group for our years together and for the sharing of encouragement, help and words!