A New Venture

Summer has arrived and, hopefully, the tourists will start coming too.

In our area many of the artists rely on the tourists for the bulk of sales. The valley (from Yahk to Riondel) is small town and rural with a total population around 15,000, many of whom are seniors.  To make it even harder to sell art we have a lot of artists and artisans in the area; and, while competition is supposed to be good for business, I am not sure if that applies to art.

This year a venue where I have displayed my art with good success in the past

has closed its art exhibit and I am going to try a new venture - A Summer Art Market!

The Art Market came about thanks to a small grant from the Creston Arts Council. Our first day will be tomorrow, July 1, and we will have 6 artists setting up to, hopefully, sell their art. The Market will only be held Saturday afternoons during the summer. I am hoping that we will get some traffic from the local Farmer's Market and from the Kunze Gallery both of which are just down the street from our location.

As the Art Market is my idea, I have been doing all the organizing - I can't seem to stop - lol. Anyway, I have sent out emails, posted on Facebook, created and ordered rack cards and made up and distributed a few posters. Now I am keeping my fingers crossed that we will get some visitors!

I have my boxes all packed with a wide selection of the things I make and paint: matted and bagged original watercolours and mixed media pieces, Hot Weather Scarves, a variety of my cards, my quilled ornaments and some of the stenciled signs and T-shirts I did last winter. I figure I have enough art and other things to display something new almost every week during the summer.

Although art is not a business for me, it is important to me to sell my work - mostly to make room for new art. I have made a few on-line sales but I am not into marketing and, frankly the Canadian Postal system is pretty expensive for shipping so I am not pursuing that avenue to any great degree. I am much happier just selling locally and am hoping for success in this new venture.

A Crazy Month

It has been a crazy month. I don't know where the time has gone but I have been so busy I haven't had a chance to write. First, because the weather was so good, I spent a lot of time getting my bedding plants into their pots.

This is a photo from last year as this years flowers are still too small to make much showing. I have about 70 pots displayed around the house all planted and waiting for the sun to shine. Now I just have to do my flower beds!

In between planting sessions, I made some more Hot Weather Scarves and Art cards to go with my displays at a couple of galleries up the lake; The Mervin Robertson Gallery and Faeries' Landing Art Market and Bistro.

hand made, hand painted gel scarves

local scenes photo cards

Next, a few members of the Creston Art Club decided to mount a small art show in an empty store during the annual Blossom Festival last weekend. It was only partly last minute but it still took time to organize and to 'staff' the show for the 3 days.

We had a pretty decent weekend and all but one of the artists had sales. Although the building where we have the art is For Sale, the owner (one of the artists) is going to let us keep the display intact so that we can open off and on over the summer until the building sells.

I know there have been other things over the last few weeks that have kept my nose to the grindstone but I really can't think of what they were - like I said, it has been a crazy month.

Nothing Ventured

As an artist in a small rural community, I have found that there are not a lot of venues for selling art. When I saw an ad about the Monthly Pop-Up Mall, I thought I would give it a try.

 Jewellery, interesting bookmarks, tea boxes and soap balls down this aisle.

my table

 'It Works' products for detoxing, revitalizing and more, and the apple seller

Essential Oils, and Epicure with a mystery product in the middle - lol!

Leslie's table

 Leslie is a fellow artist with lovely painted glass products, mostly wine glasses.

Scentsy, Avon and Mary Kay down this side - scent like crazy! There were more that I didn't get pictures of but you get the idea.

The Pop-Up mall is organized for home-based and small businesses to showcase their wares and to let people know they are around. There were 25 vendors with everything from Tupperware to Essential Oils; there was also an orchardist with boxes and boxes of apples and apple juice to sell. This is a new venture and many of the residents of the area are not aware of its existence so visitor numbers were low.

One has to expect that start-ups will take a while to prosper and vendors need to give it time to attract the public’s eye. However, after watching what people were buying and which tables they spent the most time at, I decided that the Pop-Up Mall is not for me. I spent an uncomfortable day amid strong scents from soaps, perfumes and an essential oil diffuser and only made a bit more than my costs.

Although I do not consider my day at this market a success, I figure "Nothing ventured, nothing gained".