Art Festival Booth: Trial & Error

Where have I been lately? Helping my daughter prepare for her first ever art festival booth. Exciting! She entered a contest and was chosen as one of eleven area high school seniors to get to exhibit and sell their work at the Cottonwood Art Festival in Richardson Texas!
Things we learned:
• it’s a lot of work, way more than we expected
• it’s not cheap to mat, frame, make prints, business cards and postcards
• Texas weather is unpredictable (ok, well, we knew that already)
• don’t leave your unframed pieces out unprotected over night, even though protected from direct impact of the rain storm (under a closed tent) that happened over night, the moisture caused these pieces to warp (the framed under glass pieces were fine)
• which brings me to another lesson: try to do art to sell that doesn’t involve glass and frames! Canvas, jewelry, clothing, sculpture and accessories seem to be better choices, not paper or glass
• figured out how to take credit cards with cell phone (pretty easy and fun, once you get the device and app)
• it’s hard to decide what to charge for art
That’s all I can think of for now, but there were other lessons learned! Below are some photos from the festival. Overall, it was a good time, great experience and she made some money to be used toward college. So, yeah

Almost all set up

Taking the shuttle to the festival site

Booth-mates for the weekend… ready to show-and-sell their art

Multi Man

About ten years ago, or so, can’t remember… I was driving down a street in my neighborhood. I passed a man in front of his house, leaning over into the trunk of his car. What was he doing? Getting something out? Or putting something in? I imagined him all over the world, doing different things. And also traveling in time. Maybe he is a caveman carving up his dinner. Or a composer from Austria in the 1800s sitting down to his piano. Maybe he’s on a strange planet far from Earth in the year 5307. Possibly he’s just committed a crime, stabbed someone. We are all, no matter who we are, and where we come from, and what time we’ve lived in (are living in) been in this position, doing SOMETHING. But what? I have stewed over this idea all these years since seeing this man, a stranger on the street. This image has been stuck in my head. So I’m finally doing something about it! I’ve started a new series. Here are the first ones. I have SO many plans for this dude, this man, the multi man….

Multi Man Mowing by Julie Flandorfer

Multi Man Cooking by Julie Flandorfer

Multi Man Being a Caveman by Julie Flandorfer

Multi Man Gardening by Julie Flandorfer

All artwork ©2019 Julie Flandorfer

Emerging Artists

My daughter was selected to present her work at the Cottonwood Arts Festival in Richardson Texas! She’s one of 11 high school students in the area chosen. Go to this link to see her artwork and all the other kids work. And then vote for Lily please! She’d love your vote. Thanks and come out to the event May 4-5! (This is an experiment because neither of us has ever done an art or craft fair! Yikes, wish us luck… mostly Lily. But I’m here for moral and monetary support.)

Click Link. Select Page then Emerging Artists. Scroll down to vote. Thanks!

https://www.cottonwoodartfestival.com/

https://www.cottonwoodartfestival.com/

Work in Progress

I never quite finished this one. Started it about five years ago. Do you sometimes feel you have no free time? At all. I know I do have small pockets of time to create. I just need to plan my days better. Less Netflix lol. And Hulu and HBO and Prime Video. It’s so important to me, to take time for myself, I should schedule it on my To Do list. Tomorrow. I’m doing that!

I was lucky enough recently to tag along as a chaperone with some advanced art high school students on a field trip to The Warehouse gallery. They had an activity of building sculptures with random everyday objects using no glue or tape. Just balancing! It was fun to watch their creative minds at work.

Here is my attempt later at home using much smaller objects, shot in black and white on my phone. It’s much harder than it looks to balance these objects!

Sunkist Sunshine

I created this painting of my family in San Francisco last year. I’m still experimenting with being more abstract with my figures. This is acrylic (lately though, I am mostly using watercolors) and collage items added in from an old comic book. I gave this to my husband as a birthday gift. I think it’s hanging at his work in his office. I did it very quickly. I just can’t seem to work slowly these days! Is that from trying to juggle too many personal projects, work and family members all at once? Probably. C’est la vie! Until next time… happy creating to you all. I hope you’re finding the inspiration, and time, to create to your heart’s content!

Concrete Jungle

NYC Times Square in the summer, sweltering heat, over crowded, lots of energy.

Color Phases

Do you go through phases with colors? We’ve all heard of Picasso’s blue phase and other artists who’ve used color as a main theme. I recently went through a neon phase. (Very alarming colors… not sure what inspired me to use those) Followed by a stint of using very cool, deep blues and pinks. I think I needed these peaceful quiet colors after the neon phase!

Heavenly Bodies

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s Spring 2018 show, Heavenly Bodies, was like an out-of-body experience for me. Just outstanding, from the costumes, to the displays to the music. I just wanted to share with you a few of the images. I would love to go to this show every year! If you haven’t seen First Monday in May, I highly recommend it. Amazing documentary, about an incredible group of talented designers and artists who put together this show, and gala, every year.

new year new work

I had grand plans at the start of 2019. No real set resolutions but just to get going more on my side hustle. What is my side hustle? To create online art tutorials to help inspire others to create along with me! I’m off to a slow start but will get there soon enough.

Following are a couple of recent watercolor experiments and my two work spaces: at home and at my full time job. (Both messy and full of lots of supplies!)

ArtExpectations A New Path

I took a little break after completing the novel art project based on Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. But I’ve been busy! Creating art and teaching a few classes at my day job. It’s been a rough summer with all the hurricanes, earthquakes and then the shooting in Las Vegas last week. So sad. It’s prompted me to be looser in my work. Life’s too short! Here are two recent abstracted figure paintings. Hope you are all well and welcome back to my site.