Monday, October 19, 2009

Back on my little track.

Our gallery opening for our student show was a success. This show in particular was very stressful on me. I am a person who can handle quite a bit, but when that bit is pushed, not so much. It all becomes very overwhelming trying to juggle to many things at once. Doing an art opening such as this takes a lot of organizing. I equate it to planning a small wedding reception. There's is a lot of responsibility also in making sure other people's art is well accounted for and handled in a proper way. Being such a grassroots operation, I really tried to go above and beyond to make sure we didn't look like a bunch of fumble butts. Actually this was a great turn out people wise, but in a way it back fired on us. Our three main goals were,
1. To give students the opportunity to get there art shown.
2. To make a little extra money for the gallery.
3. To network, by having all those artists enter they were sure to each bring in at least 1-2 people to see their work. Thus, letting people know we exist.
Where the backfire came in, well the co-op members already have an agreement that 50% of our sales goes to the gallery. Part goes to the rent, rest goes to keeping the gallery running. Actually that percent is about the norm for most gallery's. Anyways, we had let the students know if they had their work hanging it had to be for sale and the gallery would get 50%. So what most of them did is walk around our gallery and price according to our prices. Not good. Others didn't want to sell so they marked them at outrageous prices, I mean completely out of touch. Either way, just was a complete disaster.
Art is pretty much is at a stand still right now because of the economy and maybe this will be a good learning lesson for them. Or maybe they simply don't care. I dunno?
So today, I start getting back to all the things I neglected while putting this shindig together. I've fallen behind on painting. We have a small works show planned for middle of November. So I need to get focused on that. Also, I have been slacking with doing my sketches for drawing class.
Need to spend time with my mom and sister and need to have some sex with the hubby.
Important stuff, back on track.

2 comments:

Richard said...

It wasn't that they didn't care, They just didn't know any better.They had an opportunity to get there art work into circulation, and they didn't do it. An artist may think there piece of work is worth $500, but art buyers may think that it is worth only $200. Take it and run.

La Roo said...

Richard this show is up approx. 3 weeks, so they'll get the chance to see if their art work sells. I hope so, just doubtful.
Art is so subjective, so who's to know. If it touches the right person at the right time then you have a sale. Or it could be displayed for years and then in storage with no interest, then 20 years later it's the most interesting hip thing anyone's ever saw.
I think one of the most important things is to get as much of your artwork on people's walls, so that you're being seen and as time goes on and you establish yourself. Then money begins to talk a little more.
Or the more common way for an artist to be reognized is to simply "die".