I finished two sculptures for my gallery today, and drove them out. The gallery is about 45 minutes away in Spring Green, so gallery trips (which I only make a few times each year) are little meditative getaways for me.

Highway 14 takes me west of Madison through pleasant smaller towns like Cross Plains, Black Earth, Mazomanie and Arena, birthplace of one of my favorite beers (Lake Louie Warped Speed scotch ale). Various waterways wend their way on either side of the highway, including Black Earth Creek and part of the Wisconsin River watershed.

Stony Creek, off Hwy 14 West on the way to Spring Green.

Spring Green is a smallish town with a nonetheless healthy tourist trade, driven partly by its proximity to nationally-known features such as the American Players Theater and Frank Lloyd Wright properties including House on the Rock.

The Jura Silverman Gallery in Spring Green.

I’ve been at the Jura Silverman Gallery since 1995. I’ve periodically been at other galleries in Madison, Verona and Algoma, but Silverman is the only one that’s been constant. I wasn’t even out of college when Jura agreed to represent my work, and I was lucky to benefit from her business savvy.

Because of her, I “balance test” all my sculptures to ensure they aren’t too easily knocked off-base by gentle bumps they might receive in a typical home. I also know that some people who purchase my work will visit it repeatedly, sometimes for more than a year, before making the purchase. I also know that blue tends to sell better than other colors amongst the gallery’s patrons. My last 2 sales, in July, had blue flowers and Jura asked that any new pieces I bring also have blue.

Two new glass flowered welded steel sculptures made for selling at the Silverman Gallery.

The gallery is just one outlet for my work — I sell more in volume via friends/acquaintances, etsy and art shows — but it’s an important part of the professional artist’s identity. I scouted and courted Jura for placement of my work in her gallery while I was still earning my MFA, and felt very lucky to be accepted.

Sometimes it’s surprising for me to see pieces of mine that have been “living” at the gallery for awhile – it makes me reflect on the evolution of my work. I wonder what I’ll be thinking and making in the future?

My work at the Silverman Gallery: 6 flowered metal plants / trees in foreground.

Parties — any occasion where people visit your house — are fantastic motivators to clean up, repair, finish all the little things you’ve been meaning to do. Being in a craft show or art exhibit has a similar effect: not only does this public appearance inspire new work; it also makes me consider my promotional and online presence with a clear-eyed view.

My ‘Craft Show Prep’ task list includes items in the realm of art (making some new stuff), marketing (via etsy, Facebook, the blog, my web site, Pinterest, an email and a mailer), promotion (things I want to do differently at the booth itself during the actual show) and strategy (falling 4.5 weeks before Christmas, the show is ideally timed to capture the attention of potential customers who won’t necessarily attend the show itself, but may want to purchase holiday gifts – part of my reason for choosing to enter this particular show).

My two spring shows did the trick in motivating me to make new work… sadly, that didn’t carry through to publishing that work on etsy (my main buying channel). I did manage to take proper photos of the new pieces, and now I need to update my etsy storefront with them.

Thinking about my booth and looking at my notes from past shows, I will pull the trigger on ordering a professionally-produced banner to replace the slowly disintegrating paper banner (a veteran of four shows now).

My craft show table banner at the Winter ’12 Craftacular

The decision about making new work is reached by analyzing past sales patterns (does blue sell better than other colors? do sculptures in a $20-25 price range have more appeal than lower/higher?) and color spectrum: I like my product groups — necklaces, magnets, sculptures — to represent a wide palette. This fall, I find myself needing green, purple, yellow and white flower necklaces; orange, purple and pink sculptures; and dark blue, orange, green and red ceramic flower magnets.

Color range of my current sculptures reveals a need for orange, pink and purple.

The promotional efforts tie everything together, generating conversation and excitement about the show, even by people who won’t be attending – the conversation is my favorite part, and I can’t wait for it to kick in again!

It’s popularity contest time again: applications for holiday season craft shows are flying thick and fast, and the jockeying is on!

It’s a bit like applying to grad school, or dating inside / outside of your known circle: there are advantages and drawbacks of being known vs. being new. If you’re new, you’re potentially fresh and different (in a good way) BUT also potentially a complete black sheep with dismal chances for acceptance, because you don’t fit in with the needs of the particular show’s audience, price range, etc. If you’re known, there’s the comfort of having been accepted before BUT also the danger of contempt-by-familiarity: seen that, accepted that last year, need to feed the audience something new.

I made first-time appearances at two shows earlier this year. The Warner Spring Show in April motivated me to enact new ideas for my booth display.

The Baraboo show in May was my first outdoor show, and put the new displays (and everything else!) to the test with wildly fluctuating spring weather, including constant powerful gusts and intermittent rain and hail.

At the Warner show sales were slow and I didn’t break even (cost of time/supplies to make all the items sold, plus show entry fee). Many other sellers said traffic and purchases were down from the previous year. At the Baraboo show, I did barely break even, despite the wild weather forcing us to close an hour early.

The holiday shows are usually the strong performers for sales, and they’re a bit like college applications: you’ve got your preference (based on entry fee, audience match with your product / price point, location etc), and you’ve got your “safety” options in case your first choice craft show doesn’t admit you — by the time a rejection notice comes through, it might be too late to apply for other shows.

I had considered Art vs Craft in Milwaukee, which has the bonus of being held the weekend of Thanksgiving (prime shopping time), and a proven healthy audience size drawn from the show’s location. The drawbacks for me last year were the show’s two-day running time (wearying to travel back and forth, or expensive to stay overnight), and entry fee. I noticed too late that this year’s show was down to one day (with a correspondingly smaller and more appealing entry fee).

My first choice this year is the Winter Craftacular. For me, this poses the danger of contempt via familiarity: I’ve been in two previous Craftaculars (one Winter, one Summer). So I put my application portfolio together carefully.

Flickr gallery used for craft show application.

From the Craftacular curator’s viewpoint, my strong point is sculpture (it offers variety to her audience, since most other vendors feature jewelry, household goods or wearables), so I made sure to put in a new piece finished since the last time I applied.

And I showed innovation, including a sculpture featuring a different type of ceramic flower I only recently began making.

Then there’s the dance and balancing act between what people are interested in (and what the ‘curator’ selects to offer the audience variety), vs. what actually sells. In my experience, most people are more comfortable spending on functional items rather than purely artistic items, so my magnets and necklaces sell better than my sculptures.

Most shows only have so many spots for “types” of vendors; if I apply and all the jewelry “spots” are gone, I might be offered a slot only to sell my sculptures and magnets, but not my necklaces. My necklaces sell better than the magnets or sculptures and have a great price point resulting in good ROI for me. Since I know there are many other jewelry vendors applying, I choose my application photos carefully to demonstrate innovation in my necklace product line since my previous application: 3 new flower styles using a wider color palette and expanding the price range.

This helps to show that the curator’s audience will see something new from me, and that my jewelry will be different than other vendors’ wares – it’s all about the customer experience her audience gets when wandering the whole show.

I spent a lot of time concepting and building a new display for my flower magnets, and I make sure to include a photo of that in my application, since the creativity of a display has an impact on the customer experience too (and on my bottom line: a poorly-conceived or executed display can undercut even the best product and price).

By now I’ve sent in my application and fee, hoping to hear good news next week, meanwhile start working on new pieces for fall!

There are related patterns in nature, mathematics, music and art – the Fibonacci sequence, Da Vinci’s Golden Mean, and on.

My art is guided by a sense of rhythm instilled by my first sculpture professor at UW-Madison. Rhythm is a pattern (thank you, Fibonacci), and Professor Cramer’s teachings demonstrated that odd was more interesting than even in our sculptures.

Some of us internalized ‘the odd’ more than others. I think I was predisposed toward the ‘slightly off’ as opposed to the harmonious and well-balanced.

Oddness usually manifests itself literally in my artwork, most notably in the number of key elements. When I made lighted sculptures, they always had an odd number of lights (even if that number was 1).

Welded and wired metal lamp with 5 blown glass blooms.

My flirtation with embellished monoprints found me using an odd number of natural pearls as a finishing touch for several pieces.

Monoprint with wire and natural pearls, mounted on raw silk.

When I made pieces with larger glass elements, they were odd in number and uneven in size to boot.

Welded steel sculpture with blue glass flowers

My modern tabletop plant sculptures nearly always have an odd-numbered total of glass pieces.

Welded steel plant with 7 purple glass blooms

A sculpture I did for a charity auction conformed to the charity’s theme (inclusion of the color pink, wall-hung and no bigger than 8×8″), sporting 4 kinds of flowers (large glass, small glass, metal and ceramic), each in an odd number.

Welded steel wall sculpture with ceramic and glass flowers

The oddity is present at the micro-level, too: petals of my ceramic flowers are always in an odd number.

My ceramic flowers with petals in 5, 7 and a 9-7-5 sequence.

It’s getting to the point where ‘even’ looks very ‘odd’ to me!

I took a little trip last week, and it was wonderful for my art.
Not one minute in the studio, mind you, but just as important.

I spent some quality time in a few art museums, did some window shopping, and temporarily changed my worldview by changing locations.

Yes, this all counts toward ‘making art’: my eyes and brain are energized by new input, whether it’s the countryside flying by my car window, the work of other artists, or the stark beauty of nature in wintertime.

This was a common topic of discussion in art grad school; many were the hands wrung over time spent in the studio but no finished or semi-finished art pieces to show for it. Often, the time instead had been spent listening to music, reading articles (usually about art, sometimes other things) talking to studio-mates. In other words, doing all the ‘behind the scenes’ things responsible for feeding inspiration, which in turn makes art happen.

Sometimes this comes about without planning or spending time in the studio: a movie scene, a snippet of overheard conversation, a memory evoked by a song, smell or meal can all become inspiration fodder, eventually producing things the rest of the world would recognize as art.

On my little ‘inspiration vacation’, I was reacquainted with the Milwaukee Art Museum – a gorgeous alchemy of architecture, natural setting and art collection.

Lake MI view from Milwaukee Art Museum

In one of the current exhibits was a painting by Kehinde Wiley that had a fascinating background flower pattern.

Flower pattern from Kehinde Wiley painting

The permanent collection also featured some flower pattern inspiration in the form of an engraved glass vase.

Thomas Webb 1885 glass vase

I also visited the Villa Terrace, a mansion-turned-museum on the lakeshore.

Lake view from the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts musuem

One of the Terrace’s highlights is their collection of work by Cyril Colnik, the vaunted ironworker responsible for outfitting many Milwaukee mansions with elaborate iron gates, stair railings, and fittings.

Iron rose by Cryil Colnik, at the Villa Terrace Museum

Ironwork patterns by Cyril Colnik at the Villa Terrace Museum

A stop at Anthropologie yielded ceramic-based flower patterns, to complete my inspiration journey.

Flower patterned bowl at Anthropologie