Okay. Summer is winding down, and things are slowing down for us with it. Granted, it's been a rather tumultuous one for us this year, with extremes of good and bad in a very short time.
Time to start writing about some of it.
This summer has been one of significance for Eldest. She can now call herself a Professional Artist. Yes, she has actually sold some of her work, and we are most thrilled for her.
It was a series of fine threads that led to this significant change in her artistic status. One of the local home school groups we are members of held a "learning celebration," where she displayed some of her art. She got a positive response overall, and one of the other home schooling teens suggested that she should show her stuff in an upcoming art festival. We'd never heard of it before (well, I probably had, but it wasn't something that stuck in my memory), so when we got home, we looked it up. Eldest was, indeed, quite interested, but we were pretty much at the deadline for booking a location. She contacted the appropriate people and before we knew it, she had a spot - a most excellent use of some birthday money she'd been hanging onto. It wasn't the best of spots; all of those had been snapped up long ago, but it wasn't the worst, either. In fact, as we talked to the organizers and got the location map, we realized that it was a really excellent spot, all things considered.
Eldest had plans worked out for some new paintings she wanted to do for the festival, but then the bad part of the summer happened, and everything got put on hold while the girls and I found ourselves road tripping for a funeral. We left for home early enough in the day to drive straight through, rather than overnighting it like we usually do. It was a long and exhausting time, though more emotionally exhausting for me than anything else, I suppose.
This gave Eldest a couple of days to do what she expected to have at least a week to complete, so those last couple of days were pretty full. Things got just a bit more stressful when we found out the grid wall we'd ordered wasn't in yet - and that when we ordered it, we should have been told there was no guarantee that this particular order would make it in in time. It turned out we should have ordered earlier, but with how late we'd registered in the first place, there wasn't much chance of that. It worked out in the end, though, as some people who'd placed orders earlier never came and picked them up. After a certain number of days, those orders were released for sale. The sales staff were even able to put together four the same colour, even though they weren't the colour Eldest had ordered. Having them was the important part - without the gridwall, Eldest wouldn't have had any way to display her paintings.
Then there was the festival itself, which was a 3 day event. The first day was pretty horrible, as storm after storm passed over the city. We'd been told Eldest wouldn't have room for any sort of tent or shelter, but when we talked to an organizer and was shown where we could set up, we found it to be quite different from where we expected, and we were told there would be no problem to set up a shelter. That lead to a hunt for an adequate shelter within the size restrictions. We ended up buying the floor model of a folding gazebo. It didn't have walls, but it had a roof and was surprisingly inexpensive. Easy to set up, too. Even so, Eldest was glad to have the roll of plastic we'd picked up (we were given a list of recommended items, and clear plastic to protect artwork from the weather while still allowing potential customers to see, was suggested). The downpour was so severe, water actually started dripping through the shelter roof! She was able to drape the plastic across the top of her gridwall display, and when I came back with some lunch for her, I was able to secure it better with some zip ties while she tended to some people who'd stopped to look at her work.
With the terrible weather and lack of customers, Eldest had a chance to talk to her neighbours (and find out she was in the wrong spot!). Most had been taking part in this festival for at least a few years, and they were quick to tell her that this was very unusual. One of her neighbours sold a single painting.
When I came back to help her pack up for the evening, we hung around a bit longer, as someone had shown an interest in one of the paintings, but said she needed to pick up some cash, first. She'd chatted with Eldest for quite some time, leaving her business card as well. It turns out this woman was an artist herself - and a medical scientist. She loved Eldest's anatomical paintings, and encouraged her to keep it up. One of the reasons she went into art herself was due to the lack of technically accurate art that appealed to medical scientists like herself and her co-workers. She also told Eldest she was undercharging for her work, and when she came back, she just handed Eldest some cash and told her she didn't need change. It wasn't until later that we found out she'd paid Eldest almost 50% more than Eldest was asking for!
Based on the advice she'd received (her customer wasn't the only fellow artist to tell her she was undercharging), Eldest reworked her prices that evening, and in the morning she was set up in the location she was supposed to have been the day before. It was a much more pleasant day, which was great, because this time, she didn't have the shelter. The space was narrow, this time being on a stretch of sidewalk, and the shelter was big enough to cover the whole thing. Unlike other sidewalk locations, though, there were no shops behind her; just one of those temporary fences and an open space with some rubble in it.
She sold another painting that day.
On the third day, more storms were predicted. After talking to one of the volunteer organizers, we were told to go ahead and put up the shelter. Protecting the art was the primary concern, and with no shops behind her, she didn't have to worry about shop owners getting upset. With high winds predicted, we pegged the back legs into the dirt just off the sidewalk, but the front was on concrete, so I ended up tying it to a tree on one side, and a lamp post on the other. In the end, the predicted storms never came, but the shelter was still appreciated for its shade - and it was big enough that it pedestrians and potential customers could pass through as if it wasn't there.
She sold two more paintings that day.
Eldest's goal had been to sell three paintings, one for each day of the festival. The sales were enough to cover the cost of the spot and the shelter, had she needed to do so, with some profit. She was also able to finish off two more paintings during the festival (artists are required to be working on something during the event). So all in all, it was quite a productive time!
It was also great exposure for her, with invaluable direct feedback. Because this festival took place along a very busy area, there was a lot of pedestrian traffic that had nothing to do with the festival - they were just people on their way to somewhere else. It was gratifying to see people hurrying along, not really paying attention to the displays they were passing, only to suddenly stop, do a double take, then come back to look more closely at Eldest's display.
Eldest is now looking forward to taking part in the festival again next year, armed with the experiences of this year. For starters, she'll have a lot more time to prepare! Rushing to find frames for her paintings at the last minute was quite the challenge - her paintings aren't exactly "standard" measurements, and custom framing wasn't an option. She'll also be registering much earlier, and booking one of the larger spots, like where we'd ended up on that first day. Getting business cards printed up is something else we'll need to do. We couldn't even print some out at home, since our printer is broken and I've no idea when we'll be able to replace it.
All in all, it was an excellent and exciting event. Even though she was surrounded by paintings, talking about paintings, and working on paintings continuously for 3 days, she came out of it wanting to do nothing more than paint and paint some more!
I'm really quite thrilled for her.
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