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After an abortive trip to Texas, and a bout of feeling lackluster and burned out, and just laying (lying?) around watching TV, I'm back in the studio and am absolutely loving it. It's fabulous to have TIME to paint, to experiment, to think about how I can improve and then work at doing it. It's grand. 

I'm going to go bigger this year, and bolder. I'm delving into figurative work - people in motion, mainly. I'm raising the colors in my palette, and cutting down on my strokes. I'm excited about this new direction - and scared, too, for sure. But fear often jazzes me. 

All of this is helping me look forward to the next show season, instead of sort of dreading it, as I was a couple weeks ago. I hope you all are having the same sort of rebirth, in this cold, dark month! 

I'm sharing this because I suspect I'm not the only one who's ever done anything like this, and not the only one who's had ambivalent feelings about it. 

I had a very good summer of shows. I got into some top shows, my paintings generally sold well, and I enjoyed myself. I did 25 shows between February and September, and honestly, I was exhausted. 

In September, the dog of my heart died. She had liver cancer, and I had to euthanize her. This broke my heart and left me truly sad, deep inside. Two weeks afterwards, I rallied to attend a plein-air paintout in which I'd been invited to participate. I wasn't up to being social, but I painted and met nice painters, and enjoyed myself. The sadness ebbed. 

Right afterwards, I headed to Dayton, Ohio, for a show. I had a cheap Air BnB rental ($42 for an entire house), so I got there early, to rest and finish my taxes before starting the show. On Thursday, my husband called to tell me that another of our dogs had died.

I went home. Canceled out of the show (lost my booth fee, even though the show called someone from the wait list to take my place, but OK). I simply could not face people, could not interact, could not engage.

A month later, I realized I just needed a dog. I'd been painting, I'd been gearing up for my final three shows, in Texas, but I was still sad. Still lacking energy, drive, hope. My husband found a rescue dog who looked good, so I met her on my way to Texas and made arrangements to pick her up on the way home.

I got to Texas and drove to my first show, Huffhines Art Trails, in a total downpour. Cars were off the road the entire way. It poured, thundered, lightninged, and the show was canceled. I looked ahead to the weather and saw that hurricane-driven rain was predicted for the next weekend, too, when I was scheduled for a show in Houston. 

So there I was, stranger in a strange land, and all I wanted was to go home. I was tired. Spent. Staying with strangers who were nice, but with whom I couldn't be myself. I tried a couple different things, went to Austin (unbeknownst to me, there was a Formula 1 racing event there that weekend, traffic was horrible, there were no rooms to be had). I tried to paint, but everywhere I could have gone, it was raining. I thought about heading to Arizona to see my dad, but he was away for the week. Nothing worked. Nothing felt right. 

Finally, I just decided to go home. Blow off my two remaining shows, lose the booth fees, just check out. 

The moment I made the decision, my world righted itself. I headed east, got my little dog (photo below), and am happily, safely at home. 

I've since felt tremendous guilt about skipping those shows. I've felt that if I were really a tough, serious fair-going artist, I'd have stuck it out. But I have also felt tremendous power and freedom in my decision. One reason to work for yourself is to do just what I did, not work when I really, truly, in my heart didn't feel like working. 

Of course I worry about the money, but there were no guarantees that those other Texas shows would have been good ones for me. I have commissions to paint, I have a project to start, and people have begun to call me asking to buy the paintings I still have. 

I really wanted to share my experience, even though I suspect some artists might deride me for my decisions. It was hard to make these choices, but they were the right ones. And maybe my experience will help someone else. 

ps, Hi, Connie! 

This was the first year for the PA Guiild show to be held in the new convention center smack dab in the middle of downtown Lancaster.  The town thinks of itself as an arty destination and has lots of small shops and galleries and artists studios. A few years ago I was successful with this group when the show was held at F&M college on the outskirts of town. Construction and parking woes caused the end of that location.

The facility is quite large and attached to a new very nice Marriott which gave decent price breaks to the exhibitors although it did not honor the 10% discount we were to get on food and drink purchases during the show.

The load in/out facilities are totally inadequate for a show with 140 art/craft exhibitors.Set up was all day and into the night on 11/11/11 and I was going to space 111 at 1 PM - surely a good omen. We had timed access to the loading dock area and assigned 40 minutes to totally unload and then move to parking about two block away. The loading area could handle about 6 vans or cars and maybe three vehicles with trailers at one time.  From the trailer load out area it was an uphill dolly through other vehicles trying to unload and then one large overhead door and then through a set of double doors that they kept closing. Some people were assigned load in times as late as 7 pm - I don't know how long it took them to get set up but it took me almost 4 hours with multiple dolly trips through the traffic jam.

Saturday there was a line to get in, admission $8.00 with some $2.00 discounts available, show hours 10 - 6.  They advertise heavily: internet, billboards, local TV and radio and postcards.  The crowd was good for the first 4 hours and then was pretty thin and almost non-existent the last hour. A very good blown glass artist from south Carolina was my neighbor with a striking display and he started out doing very well and sold a few of his higher end pieces and lots of his $30 - $60. pieces. He was very happy with his Saturday sales. A weaver/clothing next to me sold slowly but some, A potter friend had made her booth fee, booth fee $450 and up, but not the hotel cost. I had lots of lookers, lots of talkers, lots of artists wanting to figure out how I did whatever. I had two purchasers - both under $100.

Sunday there was no line to get in at the 10 AM open, show to close at 5.  It was virtually empty except for  the exhibitors, until after 12 PM.  People in this area go out to church, then breakfast, etc. After 12Pm traffic was decent with people dressed in their Sunday clothes and ladies in their "arty" clothes.  Fiber and wearables can do well in the area but a couple of my neighbors had pretty slow sales even in this category. Many  of the potters still appeared to have lots of inventory even though I did my part by purchasing from them. Lots of jewelers in the show but I don't know how their sales were - across from me was a local jeweler that was busy talking all day but not sure how many sales she had - she seemed to know half of the town. My neighbor glass blower was selling $20 and $30. ornaments as people admired his work and told him how reasonably it was priced but wouldn't purchase his items over $100.  He did finally have a "be back" come and purchase a nice piece, and it was reasonably priced for the quality. He agonized over a $275. sale for  two full days.  I had people agonizing over $85. beautifully framed reproductions, $3.50 notecards,  The three hours or so that people were there on Sunday I talked until I almost lost my voice.  Results were one sale and a lady who loved my work but it didn't match her sofa.  There were also the artists who wanted to pick your brain. I'm sure some of the more traditional crafts people did well but most were disappointed overall.

By 3:30 or so most of the public had dwindled and we were "bowling in the aisles" and everyone you saw walking around had an exhibitors badge. We were all dreading the impending tear down and load out. At 5 PM we were allowed to bring in our packing materials and begin packing, tear down completely, find one of two people, drag them to your space so they could see it was totally torn down and then be given a load in pass. Now you can walk to the garage two blocks away and then sit in traffic on city streets blocks around the hotel and convention center for about 1 hour or more.  Announcements pleaded with the local exhibitors to kill time, go have a drink, eat, etc. and let those with long drives have first access.  Actually a fair number of them did and I love them all. I was facing about a 3+ hour drive in the dark on back roads. I ended up having time to go have a drink, eat or whatever as I waited almost two hours for my trailer to finally get a loading space after everything was boxed and on dollies.  It took about 45 minutes still to load into the trailer with the same maze of traffic, vans and other dollies, shut double doors, and either a steep ramp or stairs to deal with.

It appeared that about half of the exhibitors were still waiting in vehicles, sitting on their boxed displays and waiting at 8:30 when I left. I was lucky.

I don't know the answer to the load in/out for this facility for 140 exhibitors. They eventually let us use fire lanes and go out the front entrance of the hotel lobby. Traffic was often blocked in both directions. I think the facility was designed without adequate access.  If artists had all day to load out it would have worked but added an extra night of hotel costs.  It should also have closed at 4 o"clock as the daylight savings time took effect and it was dark by the 5 pm close. It was a wonder that someone wasn't hit by a car in the loading area.