Fast Forward to February

Whew!  January is Outta Here!!

The 30 in 30 Challenge really helped those dull, dark January days fly by fast, and I'm so glad!  Thanks once again to all who participated with me, it was really fun. xx

Speaking of flying... 

This week I'll be heading out to teach glass workshops in Houston, TX, Portland, OR, and St. Louis, MO.  

I'm so excited!  We'll be designing some colorful fused glass cities in Houston and Portland, and whipping up some fused glass powder sgraffito drawings in St. Louis!  

I'll share what's going on during class with all of you next week so you can enjoy the colorful messes we make in creating our masterpieces!

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To begin February,  I've spent a few hours working on the 'dreadful stack' of 2015 juried art show applications... Every show artist looks forward to this process every year.  NOT.

For those of you who aren't familiar with how it all works, here's the scoop:

Life as a show artist is a crapshoot, it's risky!  There are so many variables that have to crash together in just the right way to be successful. 

Definitely not the path to choose if you want to the 'glamorous life'.

Being an artist pays better in job satisfaction than most glamorous life occupations. That's good enough for me!

Here is how the attack of the 'dreadful stack' works.

First, you have to look for shows where you think your work will sell well.  

How do you know which shows those are?  You work hard and do a lot of them.  

Keep the good ones and mark the not so good ones off the list.

Next, you take awesome photos of your best work, set up your entire display in the driveway, and proceed to take awesome photos of that with your awesome work inside. 

Thank goodness for digital, I don't miss the days of taking slides at all!

After this, you fill in your application and try to explain your entire process in 100 characters or less. Yes, spaces count, lol.   

Now it's time to choose 3-5 photos of your best work, which I find to be most difficult.  They have to look like they go together, and they also have to represent your full body of work for sale.  I work in a few different styles so naturally, this trips me up every year.

Once you've finished all the 'guessing games' and are ready to send your application in, you rush over to your PayPal account and hope there is enough there to pay for the jury fees.

Usually they're $25-$50 per show, and everyone who applies has to pay to have their work juried.  If you're not accepted you don't get your $ back.  If you are accepted, you rush back to that PayPal account and say magic words before you look to see if there is enough to pay the booth fees. :)  Most weekend shows I've done cost between $200 and $800 for the booth space.  

My breathing is labored just from typing this.

Thank goodness I'm almost finished filling it all out and the 'waiting part' is near.