March Musings; It’s Spring Art:Surrey!
March has been a funny month; in some ways February seems like yesterday and in other ways March has dragged its feet, although I am super happy spring has arrived. Things have continued to be busy, if a little frantic, on both the work and home front. The plumbing is finally up and running and we now have lots of hot water and a very warm house! The spare room is decorated and my son has moved in; my twinnies now have their own rooms (sob!) and they are loving it - although there has been a lot of popping into each others bedroom to ‘borrow’ things! The work on the house will be ramping up even more in April with the studio and garage conversion; all very exciting!
Work wise its felt super busy and the juggle is getting bigger! I’ve finished all the visuals and planing for the workshops so we are ready for the publishing of the Neuron books next month; also super exciting! The focus is now on contacting schools, libraries and charities and agreeing dates! I have also started planning the final sign for Fishponds park; it’s a historical sign and randomly features a lady who wore a stuffed seagull on her hat! This all meant that Art:Surrey art fair crept up on me and it turned out to be quite the learning curve in several ways!
Illustrating the Neuron series was a pretty intense six months as I had such a short period of time to complete them. This meant I had no time to create any new work and get it framed before Art:Surrey last weekend, so, I exhibited existing work that had been shown at my previous art fair last October. This isn’t the end of the world as I know many artists exhibit work several times before it finds its new home, I think its more that I didn’t have the excitement of hanging new work. I did plan on exhibiting my six original butterflies but the frames were not great and I didn’t have time to get them professionally framed. This was frustrating as I actually think they might have sold!
The exhibition itself was very busy throughout, lots of pieces were bought, and commissions were planned….just not from my stand. By the end of Saturday I felt pretty deflated but by Sunday morning I had pulled myself together and decided I needed to learn from it!
Sunday proved to be much more positive as people were much more willing to chat, I had some friends and family pop along and I decided to ignore the pressure of selling and instead enjoy it. I had some lovely chats both about my work and the up and coming Neuron Series which along with my lovely stand neighbours were the highlight of the weekend.
I met a couple of Primary School teachers who were interested in both purchasing the Neuron Series for their school and possibly arranging future workshops, as well as several parents of neurodiverse children who thought the books were very much needed! This was just amazing to hear.
The people I spoke to about my work asked and then were surprised to find that I didn’t have prints available of The Seasons! This isn’t the first time this has been commented on so I will be looking into having these pieces either professionally photographed or scanned on a print on demand basis. This way I will not have the initial cost outlay of lots of prints and I wont have to store, package and send the prints off, win-win!
In total I sold two prints and made 8% of my stand cost. I know every artist will have ‘one of those fairs’, every fair is a gamble, and it all depends on who walks through those doors. Generally, the same stands sold and visitors were looking for landscapes, seascapes and abstracts and not birds. It did however give me a little push to start moving my business forward, and its changes I have known I need to make for a while, I just haven’t had the time or the headspace. So, I will be running a sale on my Etsy shop before closing it down, I also need to clean up and spend some time on my website which I will begin to sell from, and I will then print professionally on a print on demand basis. I am also itching to create more work which I will exhibit in October, but I am waiting until my studio has been built and I’ve moved in hopefully in May! I have plenty to get on with until then!!!! All in all, I think Art:Surrey was very much a success, just not in the way I thought it might be, and I feel super motivated to make these changes!