Notes from the Road

Hello, friends! After a two-week road trip to central Illinois visiting family and showing my work at two art festivals, I am finally back in Texas, back to the blogosphere, ready to share some thoughts.

Number one: Road trips are fun! Even though I was by myself for this one, there is something very liberating about throwing everything I need to live in a truck and driving across the country. It was important for me to do the driving in one day, so I got up real early and got ‘er done. Fourteen hours of podcasts and a few Buc-ees stops later and I was at my mom’s house, enjoying warm hospitality and some home cooking!

And of course being with family was such a delight. Having two weeks allowed me to spend lots of quality time with family I don’t see that often so I took in as much of it as I could. But I was also there to work.

And trust me, doing art shows is a lot of work! When you’re a one-man show like me, I get to do everything! Thankfully, there was no blood (this time), a TON of sweat and only a handful of tears. Tears can come from joy and sadness of course, so I thought I’d highlight just three things I learned in the process.

First off, leaving my artwork unattended overnight in a public park is more stressful than I imagined. Most multi-day shows allow set up the night before open, so on Friday I set up the tent and everything inside it so it was ready to go first thing Saturday. And though each event had overnight security on hand, the thought of leaving a good chunk of my life’s work in a tent overnight without constant watch caused me more anxiety than I thought it would. By the time I’d gotten over it and the second show came around, some nasty thunderstorms rolled through tripping my negative ruminations all over again. Luckily, everything was weighed down properly and everything was okay, but I certainly had my moments.

Second, people can be rude. Most of them don’t even know they’re doing it. I’ve done enough markets and smaller one-day shows now to grow thick skin, but at the art festival I was generally surprised to hear more of this. I get it. My art ain’t for everybody. That’s okay. I can respect that. But if another elderly woman walks into my tent just to tell me: “Oh, this would give me a headache!”…

Which of course brings me to my final point: that people can be awesome too. On the first day of the Springfield show, about ten minutes into the start, I watched a woman get captured by one of my pieces as she walked by. She kept walking past as her head swiveled back to my tent. Then she made a one hundred eighty degree turn and came right toward me.

“I need that,” she said, pointing to a painting of a cyclist I’d just finished a week before the trip. “I have to have that. My son will love it. I love it. The colors, the rider. I have to have it.”

SOLD!

And that, my friends, is what it’s all about. It’s why I keep coming back! What keeps you coming back? To art shows? To this blog? Whatever it may be, tell me in the comments!