Tag Archives: womens showcase

10/3/11

The Art Museum Mentality

Lots of unsold artwork.

Do art museums ruin art sales for contemporary (living) artists who are trying to sell their work?  In a way they do.  This thought occurred to me last Saturday at the Womens Showcase in central Minnesota.  I’ll get to to that idea in a minute. For various reasons, the recent Women’s Showcase was not a success,  at least not for me and the other artists that were there.  Some of them were downright angry about how this one-day event turned out. I had low expectations, due to my initial misgivings, which was probably a good thing.  In fact, things were so bad that only one of the artists present sold any work at all, and there was a lot of artwork there.  For the rest of us, it was a bust.

Most of the time, you can shrug this off and say, Oh well, at least we got some exposure. But for this event, we did not get much exposure either, because the crowds didn’t show up, and we had to pay a substantial amount to even be there and show our artwork.

Logistically, our art show area was relegated to the very back of the convention hall.  It was not a great location and nothing really led people to flow into the area.  There was nothing specifically to draw people to come there either — no registration to win anything, no give-aways, no food, no drinks, no candy.  Basic marketing knowledge would have helped here, and there should have been some attempts to gather names and email addresses with some kind of drawing.  I mean, come on, that’s just very basic.  There was nothing, not even little buttons or anything to draw people in who wandered by.  How about some freebies or something, or even just a big sign?  No, there wasn’t even a big sign explaining what this area was.

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09/29/11

Women’s Showcase Art Show


Pictured above is “Pipestone”, a watercolor of the granite and pipestone quarry in southern Minnesota. This quarry looks like cliffs in Arizona, but it’s actually a part of a State Park called “Blue Mounds” and there are real buffalo that live there! I actually have some mineral watercolor paint made of the actual stone called pipestone, and some of that was used in this painting. Only a small amount is sold every year to various paint makers.

It turns out I’ll be a part of the Women’s Showcase after all, and it will be held on October 1st at the Civic Center in St. Cloud. It’s an all-day event with live music, displays, art, food, and the whole nine yards. I’m excited about the art show portion the most, of it of course.

I have a lot invested in this show, [painting, work, stress, and framing-wise], so I hope a lot of people come and visit the Civic Center on October 1st. I’ve never been to a “Women’s Showcase” before, to be honest, and I’m not sure exactly what to expect. The artists I have met so far who will be involved will be bringing interesting and exciting artwork to St. Cloud. Not many of them are actually from St. Cloud, either.

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09/26/11

Blue Moonscape

This watercolor was painted mainly for a local art crawl art show that I was asked to be a part of. It’s the kind of watercolor I’d do all the time if I didn’t feel I had to do other things. These drippy kind of paintings are extremely fun to do. But not everything about paintings can be fun . . . an artist always feels they have to do things that might some day sell. At least, I do. I read something very true on Twitter a while ago (of all places). It was, “Whoever said painting was relaxing isn’t doing it right.”

Surprised? The stereotype of a painter is someone doing something rather zen-like. I find painting anything but relaxing, most of the time. It’s difficult. I’m not complaining, just stating a fact.
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