I have not been on the site for awhile between our travels and my dissertation. I thought some might be interested in an update on our first year progress. We just returned from an extended trip to Ireland. Sherry participated in the Art in the Open International Plein Air Festival in Wexford, Ireland. It was a tremendous experience. 200+ artist from twelve countries painting at different locations in southwest Ireland. Two of Sherry's works were juried into the show of 250 pieces that is held at the completion of the festival.
I returned to work last week after taking the summer off from my teaching job. It appears that Sherry thinks having me around the house is a distraction. This explains why I returned home from work the first week back to find her and our cat, Radar, wearing party hats. She has finished 11 paintings that she had been working on and had been unable to complete the first week I was out of the house. There may be a message in this.
The main reason for this post is to again offer thanks for the great advice we have received from AFIers during our first year. Out of 12 applications we have 9 acceptances or invites, with one December show still pending. This is far better than we expected for our first year. Our fall schedule is full between fairs, festival, and plein air events. At all three shows we did before our overseas trip, people commented on the quality of our display and expressed surprise that we were newbies. This is a tribute to the information we were able to mine from this site. Thanks very much for your willingness to share your expertise. We will "pay it forward".
My focus now is on finding a camper for the traveling, and staying out of the artist's way.
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I need to make a correction to our annual application stats. I forgot about one show we applied for and did not get in. So we are currently 9 out of 13 acceptances, rather than 9 out of 12.
Very cool, John, about that trip to Ireland and Sherry's success there. I'm envious.
AND your report on your successes getting into the shows. People like you, reading and contributing, help others immeasurably and I (speaking for many) want to thank you for your posts, your questions, your helpfulness and your stories.
Working together we can iron out a lot of the mysteries about this business. It is not for sissies and the learning goes on and on and on ...
What show do you have coming up that you are particularly looking forward to?
Well we are looking forward to all of them. We are especially pleased to be in the Gatlinburg Fine Art festival the first week in October, because it is an East Tennessee show in the shadow of the Smokies less than an hour from home. Scenes from the Great Smoky Mountains are the subjects of many of Sherry's paintings. We are also excited about getting back to the Southeast Coast this fall with festivals on successive weekends in St Simons, Georgia and Bluffton, South Carolina. Sherry will get to spend the week in between the festivals painting on location near Bluffton. Our biggest disappointment of the year was not being invited to the LAL Woodland Art festival in Lexington, Kentucky that Nels reviewed. So we are looking forward to doing the indoor holiday shows in Lexington and Cincinnati(Covington, KY) in November. Lexington is only about three hours from home and we would like to get established in Eastern Kentucky. Finally we are very excited about doing the Pumpkinfest in Franklin Tennessee. Sherry is a member of a Middle Tennessee plein air group called The Chestnut Group, or the "Nuts" for short, from that area and we have children and grandchildren living there. There are a lot of fine artists who call Franklin and Williamson County home. Of course it does not hurt that Williamson County is probably the most affluent county in Tennessee. As you have said the learning goes on and.....