Art Show Recap

A crimson red line has been pulled across the note that reads "have my first art show" on my 2012 goals list. Yesterday I went to the gallery and tucked all the pieces back into their boxes for a safe trip home. The show was pretty incredible and I'm still a little awe-stricken over it.

Joe took the day off to help me set up which was a huge time saver. We got to the gallery around 11:15 a.m. and finished setting up at about 6:10, which included our quick trip over to Trader Joe's. The gallery is on the third floor of a really cool industrial building in Madison.

The space was pretty expansive but the huge gridded windows helped a lot since they ate up such a long stretch of wall. Earlier this summer when I looked at the floor plan and noticed that the gallery was over 70 feet long with walls and rooms all over the place, I had a bit of a small freak out...but then when I saw that there were these gigantic windows strung across the wall it helped ease those crickets crawling all over my stomach.

I didn't have much of a plan for where I was going to hang things, so I started the process by laying everything out on the floor. It actually came together pretty well and I didn't find myself teeter-tottering much about things like I usually do. One thing I learned over the course of this art show process is to just pick something and go with it. It usually always turns out fine and I hardly ever end up regretting or questioning the decision I went with. I try to live my life without any regrets so I think that's part of the reason why I'm always so bad at decision making. I am getting a lot better, though.

Another train of pieces. The first one in line ended up selling to our friends who just built a new house. They're going to put it in their guest bathroom. I'll be excited to see it in their new place; they're having a house warming party on Saturday, and by house warming I mean house WARMING. They are burning down the old farm house they lived in that's on the same property, so it's a burning down the house party. It should be really cool. It's going to be used as training for the fire department so that will be a lot of fun. I'll try to take photos.

This photo was taken after the show because I wanted to get it in the natural light rather than under the track lighting. Around the corner there is another room where I had a bunch of stuff as well, but somehow I didn't find myself in that room as much as I had thought I would. I guess everybody just tended to hang out in this area.

I was so focused on making big pieces for the show that I almost forgot about making small ones. With less than 72 hours to go, I spent an entire day making these pieces. I'm so glad I did- they all sold within the first hour! I had people telling me that they wished I had more...I'll have to get on that. They are my favorite ones to make because they come together so much faster than the big ones do and I don't have to *think* as much.

Here's what that one piece that seemed to keep showing up on the blog ended up looking like. A lot busier than I had originally intended....that seems to keep happening to me, haha.

So about 10 minutes to 6:00, somebody walked through the gallery doors and I just figured it was somebody using the conference room. I glanced up and saw that it was my greatest friend Kait who had just driven 2 hours to come! It was so good to see her. Definitely calmed the residual tension of a pre-show freak out that I had about my severely infected eye. And when I say freak out, I don't mean like kicking and screaming or anything like that...more just freaking out that my eye had really gotten as bad as it did and that I could potentially be on the brink of losing my vision and that my eye doctor told me that if it got worse to call him and it was Friday night and he wouldn't be around till MONDAY. I almost thought that Joe was going to have to run the show because it was so terrible. Ugh. But I am happy to say that I can still see and that, although still infected, it's not nearly as terrible. So yes- anyway, Kait came up and it was awesome. I hadn't seen her since my birthday in January so it was really nice.

Joe was on picture taking duty during the show.........but he was really busy so I have hardly any pictures. Dang it. Next time I'll have to either hand my camera to a friend or set it up on a timer or something. Especially since you can't even tell that we're at an art show here! Haha, it's okay though. I remember the night pretty well so it's all good.

So I haven't read my comment/email address book yet but I'm going to after I'm finished typing this up. I wanted to do it while I had coffee in hand. My favorite time to sit and take things in is in the morning.

After the show I realized that Joe and I didn't have any photos together, so I took this one when we went to the gallery a couple days ago. I like how it turned out AND it's one of the only photos I have from the other room that had stuff in in.

And that pretty much covers it! I had a really great time and I'm already looking forward to the next one. I'm hoping for early spring, although maybe I'll find a place for mid winter that lets me have a good, heavy beer [this gallery had a no-alcohol policy] and of course some hot chocolate. One thing I learned after this show is that I never want to have one in the beginning of Sept again unless I'm working less because it seriously sucked the last month of summer right from me and I didn't even realize it until yesterday. We have a half painted house and it's looking like it may stay that way throughout winter, unless we can find ourselves a few more days in the 70s and nights in the 50s. We'll see.

Oh, and another thing I realized after the show- I can finally buy some Frye boots that I've been wanting to buy for years and years and years without feeling bad about it. I was really hoping this would be the case, but I didn't think I'd be able to without pulling from my bank account as well. I'm excited to report that this is not the case. I'll let you know which ones I end up going with. :)