The past summer season of being a recycled arts Artist was by far the most fun.
The Vancouver Recycled Arts Festival (VRAF) was fantastic. The weather was great, the visitors were FUN and the artwork was different than last year. For the VRAF I took twice as many Creepy Babies as last year. However, it was the Ken mummy sculptures that seemed to be the big hit. I sold a few works that had been in the studio for a few years. One of my patrons who bought the coolest Creepy Baby emailed me a week later and asked me to be her mentor for her senior project at a local high school. I don't have kids, I'm way to immature, but this seemed like a great opportunity to work in the community and share some of my ideas about using recycled materials. The project will start in January so stay tuned.
This year I skipped the Mississippi street fair in Portland. Its too long, too hot and those people are more interested in drinking and gawking than they are about buying or discussing the work. However I did attend the ReArt Festival in Eugene.
The ReArt show is a fun show. I don't expect to make any money there, I go to talk with the locals. Eugene gets a lot of flack for being a little too...liberal, but the reality is those residents are interesting, intelligent and they love their local artists. Many of them thought I was from Eugene and seemed disappointed when I told them I was not. All of them were amazed that I traveled down from Portland to sell at a Eugene festival. Its only 2 hours and its such a fun and exciting day for me, why wouldn't I go to Eugene?
This summer I made more revenue at VRAF than last year and I made the same revenue as last year at ReArt. I'm not in this for the cash...If I was this blog would be updated more often and I might actually promote myself.
Now that the summer season is over, I'm hoping to find a Halloween show. I think my artwork would work well there. I have been to a Halloween art show in Jim Thorpe, PA. Halloween Opera in that little town is fantastic. Its a small show but the work there is outstanding. So far I have not seen a show like that here in the greater Portland area.
For the coming months I will be working on more sculptures, crank up the Creepy Baby factory and start working with a new media...porcelain dolls. The first few are halfway done and are just the caliber of artwork you expect from yours truly.
til later,
JP
