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A kudos I forgot to mention last year - I was lucky enough to get the Artist's Choice Award at the New Mexico Arts & Crafts Fair in June last year. Winning awards is always fun - nice to get validation for your work from the powers-that-be, but Artist's Choice awards are especially meaningful. That's validation from my fellow artists!The entry date for the 2008 NMACF is fast approaching (Jan 26): most people don't realize that the fair is juried so far in advance. Some fairs are juried 9 - 11 months ahead of the actual event! When I was doing 20+ fairs a year, the jury fees alone were a serious outlay of cash ... let alone the booth fees, usually several hundred dollars each, paid well in advance of the fairs. When you add travel expenses, motel, meals, etc., you can probably see why I don't travel as far & wide as I used to!
Another honor: I also discovered that they used a photo of one of my pieces on the fair's homepage .... check it out!
DESIGN, PHOTO AND TEXT © DAVID LLOYD STEWART - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I just did the New Mexico Arts & Crafts Fair this last weekend, (more on that later), and I had a realization about this blog. Some of my fellow artists have "graduated" from doing fairs, and now sell their work only in galleries or on their own ... but there is something about doing a fair that gives you an interaction with your customers you just can't get any other way. There have been times when I envied those that have moved along in their marketing efforts - they get more studio time, time doing what they love doing.
And doing art fairs is HARD WORK. When you see an artist sitting in his booth in a festive atmosphere, among all these pieces of his work that project the joy of creation, it's easy to miss the EFFORT that it took him to be there! I'll get into that in a seperate discussion later on ... the point I wanted to make here was that despite the effort, they are worth doing if only for the chance to INTERACT with the wonderful people that collect my work. They honor me with their purchases!Art is a channel for communication. It's communication on a very high level - a high quality that can't be achieved any other way - but it's communication nonetheless, and that requires having someone to communicate TO! Getting direct feedback from the people that I do the work for (you?) is paramount in importance to me. Sitting in my studio and creating work is only HALF the fun. So here's the realization that I had: I started this blog to show you what I was producing ... it didn't occur to me to share other things about the "artist's life" that you might find interesting! I have almost made this thing into a catalog, rather than a venue to interact with you as I do at Art Fairs. I'll tell you a few stories of things I've observed "on the road", share a little philosophy, point to a few observations and ask a few questions from here on out. I hope you will find it interesting. If you do, please feel free to leave me a comment, either at the end of the post, or a general comment in my Guestbook. I welcome the feedback!
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A kudos I forgot to mention last year - I was lucky enough to get the Artist's Choice Award at the New Mexico Arts & Crafts Fair in June last year. Winning awards is always fun - nice to get validation for your work from the powers-that-be, but Artist's Choice awards are especially meaningful. That's validation from my fellow artists!