Here Fishy, Fishy!

The Holiday inventory is created, tagged, priced and delivered to the Galleries. I tried to work extra hard prior to the Thanksgiving break so I’d have enough inventory for shoppers during the month of December. I was thinking it felt a bit like fishing. I love to both fish and make art, and was thinking that one of the most important components for both is presentation. When I’m fishing I present the bait nice and fresh, in just the right place, right time and in an attractive way.

I was thinking that it was the same for my art waiting to be purchased at the Galleries. I’ve tried to keep the art new and exciting, priced right, attractively tagged and the Galleries have merchandised the work beautifully. The old saying “if you don’t fish you can’t catch” works for both as well!

It was a fishy, fishy week in the studio this week too. There was a Copper Salmon commission that needed to be made and orders for more Halibut Ornaments and wall sculptures. On request, I delivered a few more pieces to Shelbi Lynne’s new Babes in the Woods Gallery in Girdwood. She’s had great traffic and enthusiastic Holiday shoppers. I was a bit bummed though when I read she had misspelled my name and website (Cyndi…) in an e-mail advertisement. Especially since EVERYTHING

I deliver is individually tagged and even my delivery receipt has the correct spellings of my name, address, Blog and website. These mistakes can happen to all of us this busy time of year, but it is a good reminder to double check posts and links before hitting send. While I appreciated the mentions, having a website address that leads to nowhere doesn’t help either of us. On a positive, when I delivered Copper Salmon wall sculptures to Half Moon Creek Gallery on Friday the store was filled with customers AND beautiful new inventory. It was reassuring to witness all of the art buying going on.

The pictures I’ve posted are of the Halibut Ornaments and some of the Copper Salmon used in the wall sculptures. I like to heat-treat the copper using a small propane torch to give it that iridized color. The copper is very sensitive to heat and the small hand held torch provides just the right amount of flame and heat without “burning” the color out of the copper. Once the copper burns, there is no retrieving that iridized color. Because copper is a non-ferrous metal, the copper components are then hand riveted to the welded steel sculpture’s frame. Though they can be hard to find, I use copper rivets on the copper salmon instead of the standard aluminum or steel rivets normally found at the hardware stores. I do use the aluminum rivets for the Halibut Ornament's googly eyes though. I thought it was funny seeing all of those Halibut Ornaments looking up at me from the studio table as if they were saying “OK, we’re ready, now where are we going?”