Art Makes Anchorage

Giant, 5' tall letters to be displayed at the opening of the district's art show. The "R" is made of recycled, plastic bottle caps and the "T" is wrapped in paper recycled coffee cup sleeves. 

This week I have the opportunity to assist with the Anchorage School District's art show at the Anchorage Museum. We have approximately 350 - 400 pieces of art to display that were juried by district art teachers for grades K -12. I have been so inspired by the work that I've seen! This is one of my favorite events to attend and being able to be part of the installation team has been an honor. Anchorage is fortunate to have incredibly talented art teachers at every level. Over 30 years ago I was selected to participate in this very exhibit and I can honestly say that the support and encouragement I received from my art teachers helped to chart the course for a successful career in Art Making.

Anchorage School District  

District Wide Art Department’s 

40^th Anniversary Year in recognition of 

National Youth Art Month 

March 2 – April 1, 2012

Art Makes Anchorage

Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center

This large, paper maché Lion is almost 6' tall.

My pin I'm pointing to is from the Anchorage School District Youth Art Month 30 years ago, "You Gotta' Have Art" when I had an oil painting selected for display in the very same place! I remember how proud my family and I were to attend the show and have a piece of my art in a museum that was painted by a kid! I shared this fond memory with the team and we took great care honoring and hanging each piece of student created art.

We had two large walls for the
elementary 2-D art, large museum display
cases for the 3-D works and the upper
level of the Museum will
display Senior high works including
pieces of jewelry, pottery and fiber.

A Student with a sense of…

DESIGN can create and appreciate human-made objects that go beyond function and may be perceived as beautiful, whimsical, extraordinary, unique or emotionally engaging;

STORY communicates effectively with others by creating, as well as appreciating a compelling narrative;

SYMPHONY synthesizes ideas, sees the big picture, crosses boundaries, and combines disparate pieces into a meaningful whole;

EMPATHY understands another’s point of view, is able to forge relationships and feels compassion for others;

PLAY creatively engages in problem-solving, benefits personally and socially from flexibility, humor, risk-taking, curiosity, inventive thinking and games;

MEANING pursues more significant endeavors, desires and enduring idea, has a sense of purpose, inspiration, fulfillment, and responsibility in making informed choices towards higher-order thinking skills and transformation.

             -courtesy ASD 2012 Art Makes Anchorage bookmark/brochure

Student created fabric wrapped birch branches made for a FAB backdrop to the hand painted "Starry Night Piano."

Detail from one of several large banners that hang in the Atrium of the Anchorage Museum.

BOO!

Fresh Sunflowers for the Spenard Farmer's Market!

The hardest part of being self-employed is the discipline it takes to go to work on a sunny, gorgeous day –which were few and far between last summer in Anchorage! Plus I’m feeling “all deserving” because I have been working really hard and after I put more than a full week in I just want to reward myself with food and drink on the deck or be digging in my garden. But that’s not possible if I’m to take advantage of all the sales opportunities that are out there from June through August –peak art buying time. PLUS I’ve got a show opening at Katie Sevigny’s Gallery and I am the First Friday featured artist for June which I didn’t necessarily forget about but am finding it hard to believe IT’S NEXT WEEK! Holy cr@p. Good thing I’ve been stashing a few choice pieces aside in the studio -but I definitely need to kick it up from now until Friday when the Show opens! Ooooo boy do I want to goof off. School’s out and both my guys are home. I’ve had to adjust my routine and learn to work around Daddy-O and Gus being underfoot. They are underfoot in a good way but I’m not used to competing for tools, house space, the telephone or computers etc. Derek and Gus will start painting and tearing out all of our carpeting and replacing it with hardwood floors this week, and so starts the summer of destruction-reconstruction-resurrection. Thankfully, Daddy-O and I have been through SEVERAL remodels and know that our marriage can survive. What has been really nice is handing over the House Frau chores to Derek, what a sweetie (in the manliest way!). Every summer we do a bit of a role reversal and I feel like the luckiest

Art Girl around to have my man pitch in and take over all of the shopping and fix us dinner each night!

Wednesday night we took a break to enjoy a clear blue, warm night, by taking a Ghost Tour. Yes, Ghost Tours of Anchorage is hosted by KLEF Radio’s Rick Goodfellow. Rick plays host and historian on the almost two-hour downtown Anchorage walking tour full of mystery and history of Anchorage’s past. As you may or may not know Gus is completely captivated by all things haunted.

Gus even brought along his EMF detector, note book and mini tape recorder while Derek and I simply enjoyed the post dinner exercise and watching Gus’ eyes go the size of saucers at some of the scarier tales!

Dueling Events in a Transformative State

What's better than friends and flowers?! My friend Lynette and I at the Festival of Flowers on Saturday. Town Square, Anchorage.

Dual outdoor events this weekend took some major planning at our house and A LOT of (art)work. Daddy-O and Gus worked our booth at the Spenard Farmers Market and I worked my booth at the Anchorage Festival of Flowers. All three of us, helped get both venues set-up plus Willie

helped after he got off work. Since the Market ended at 3:00 pm, Derek and Gus rode their bikes to the Town Square to help me take-down at 6:00 p.m. We’re just starting to find our groove with the Saturday Farmer’s Market commitment but having committed to the Festival of Flowers meant doubling up on several items like purchasing another credit card machine, misc. sales and display items, printing additional business cards, price tags, signage

and most importantly creating enough artwork to sell at BOTH events. The good news/bad news is both events were relative slow sales-wise (Derek and Gus sold way more than I did –great job boys!) and I’ll have plenty of art to roll into next Saturday’s Farmers Market –yippee! Thanks to Kim (Will’s girlfriend) I even had a great sales assistant, Tiffany to help me at the Festival but we ended up taking turns getting hot coffee & tea (it was really chilly under cool, gray skies), visiting and shopping for flowers more than making sales. I’m

glad she was there because she was fun to visit with and she kept me company. Not to take anything away from the first annual Festival of Flowers but sales and traffic were really s-l-o-w. Since the event was a fundraising event to establish an endowment fund for the City of Flowers Program I hope enough plants and raffle tickets were sold. I definitely contributed by purchasing beautiful hanging baskets and potted flowers for our house.

Another bright spot in the day was my longtime friend Lynette purchasing one of my garden sculptures. She is one of the most sunshiny-cheeriest people I know, her voice is even velvety happy, ALWAYS. It’s easy to think how long Lynette and I have been friends. She was Gus’ kindergarten

teacher and before that, she and her husband Dan were my parent’s next door neighbors, and even longer ago (when we were mere babes ourselves –ha!) she and I were in a Lamaze class together expecting our first babies! Our daughters were born one day apart and we were even in the hospital together! Today our daughters are beautiful, young adults and most people call Lynette “Mrs. Mayor” as her husband Dan is now the Mayor of Anchorage. I still know her as one of the sweetest people I have ever met.

Being around all of the colorful flowers this weekend and watching our trees and garden literally transform this week, I was

inspired to work on my latest project… Rather than take today off Derek helped me make my Topiary Sheep for the upcoming Alaska Botanical Garden Art Show… you are not going to believe how COOL IT LOOKS! I love having another Blog post just waiting to be posted! The Spaghnum Moss Sheep is being watered right now in the yard –we took pictures so stay tuned….

We have two trees in our front yard that are over 50 years old (which is old, for a house in Anchorage) and over 25' tall, that transform with the seasons. The picture on the left in the 3 seasons group shot was taken this afternoon with the trees in full bloom! I think they are Corneliancherry Dogwoods(?) and had Gus glowing pink as he ate his breakfast by the window this morning -which he wasn't too happy about!

It's A Wrap

Whew. The rain held off most of the day and the G Street Artist Fair is over for the summer. Yesterday morning started off s-l-o-o-o-w. I admit I had an uh-oh moment when by 11:00 I hadn’t had a sale –this is in contrast to the last show in June where I had tourists wanting to purchase my work before the fair and my booth were completely set up. But the day turned out good sales-wise, down a bit from the June Show but considering the weather and end of season tourism, all good. This kind of up and down day gave 

me time to think about my artist friends who were new to the event with their inventory questions. Another important consideration of my Show/Fair inventory is always what are my plans for the residual or left-over work? I’d like to not have this issue and sometimes there are not enough pieces left over, but this time I had more than I thought I would left. Oh well. My production estimates were good on the Wind Salmon, steel Garden Ravens and Outdoor Chime Sculptures but I didn’t sell one of the ornaments! Last time I didn’t have enough of the less expensive ornaments and made extra… so much for the “creative crystal ball!"

I also should have had better signage because we needed to use the tent walls to block the stormy weather (sorry, the booth images aren't very good because I was still setting up). I had a smallish sign I hung outside the tent wall to tell customers who was inside the booth. The rain had beat up my potted flowers that I like to have embellish the booth and could only bring the Irish Moss pots –they were the only ones that weren’t slug bit and weather beaten! I try and always have a plan for where leftover works will go. There are usually a few phone calls or e-mails after an event where customers want a piece they saw at the show and regret not buying it, or they are buying as a surprise gift etc., so I usually hold on to all my left-over work for a few days. My plan for the leftover work from this show was varied. Lucky for me, Carol and Vicki from Bad Girls of the North will have another booth at the Alaska State Fair this month and requested a lot of Ravens and some of my fun Dog pieces. My larger wall sculptures (which only a couple of them sold at G Street yesterday) will get to go Half Moon Creek Gallery here in Anchorage, which really needs new work from me. Lastly, my artist friend and entrepreneur Katie Sevigny wanted to buy wholesale a few leftover pieces from me to have in her hip, downtown Gallery, Sevigny Studio.

After re-thinking my not-too-savvy booth components (or lack of) I decided to weld up a new display for my Garden Ravens. It worked great and I think it will also help Vicki and Carol to better display my Ravens at the State Fair. For good sales, the inventory, booth design, pricing and marketing are essential to compliment the actual ART. There is an aRt to the successful selling of ArT at special events, festivals and fairs. As an ARTtist I feel I need to be a super-woman mix of talented-original-being, *gracious* salesperson and wise businesswoman to make a decent, full-time living as an ARTist. Not only do I need to look at new ways to display my work more efficiently and attractively to help with sales, I need to stay on top of technology. For the last show I needed to upgrade (my old terminal which the bank said was no longer "compliant" is on the left) the technology of my merchant services equipment, which is a whole other facet but probably one of the MOST important. My booth neighbor, Shara of Octopus Ink Clothing has a booth each weekend at the Anchorage Downtown Market and had signed up for every G Street event as well. Yesterday she and her boyfriend were running both booths simultaneously. Without power to our G Street Fair booths, I had to manually run my credit card sales and input into the new terminal when I returned home last night, which costs me more by not swiping & capturing or even doing store & capture at the 

moment of the sale. Without power to the booth, Shara uses a battery powered terminal and another artist I know has bought a terminal that uses a satellite phone (the terminal was VERY expensive) to completely capture and approve all of her credit card sales. There is even a merchant credit card transaction App for the i-Phone I might look into but then I'd have to first get an i-Phone...(I'm sayin' it's gonna cost me 'mo money, 'mo money, 'mo money). Anymore 80% of my sales are purchased with credit cards and I can't afford not to accept credit cards. It’s also time to consider what my fair and show schedule will be for 2010 and it’s clear that if I’m going to include more festivals and fairs, I will need to upgrade my booth and get on top of the whole new merchant technology –oh, and make some more ART!

PS- Linda, these are the light strip bars I zip tie to my grid wall panels when I do indoor events with power. They are similar to the lighting

 I use in my studio. I think I need to buy a couple more for the November 6 & 7 Bad Girls of the North Show. *This year the Anchorage venue has moved to the Millenium Hotel.

 

Going with the flow, or freeze, or family...

Crazy weather swings this week from the 21 below to 35 above and rain today have crushed my production schedule. Normally this rain is perfect for adding Nature’s patina to my steel work, but I had no pieces to put out since all week it's all I can do to keep the studio and shop safe and warm. Freezing rain and slick roads closed all of the universities and schools today. This doesn’t happen very often but my son and husband, who is a teacher, both did the happy dance this morning at 5:45 am when we got the call that school had been canceled. Roads were closed and the power was out in various parts of the city.

So much for my day that was scheduled for full-on production that was to be done alone. Oh well. Thank goodness I had picked up my order of steel and my pallet of clay and new shelves for the kiln were delivered both yesterday. As I get older I'm learning not only the value of patience, but the benefit of "going with the flow."

As the rain, wind, and even hail pelted the studio windows, I felt fortunate to be able to be to have an at-home studio that kept me off of the crazy slick roads, and spend the unseasonable blustery day with my family. I managed to finish up the detail work on a couple of sculptures, finished the Sea Otter for the KAKM Art Auction and finished some beading. I wrapped up early and cut the day short to do what we enjoy doing most on a rainy day…

Making sparks fly in the deep freeze

Back to work, no excuses, even if it is 10 below outside. Had I been better prepared this would have been a great kiln firing day, to warm things up a bit but instead I had a metal cutting day planned.

Brrrrrrrr, I was thinking that this deep freeze we are currently in, serves me right for all those epic ski days when I didn’t set foot in the studio and did not get any work done! This may sound a little “Northern Exposure” like, but for the first time ever, I had to put long underwear on under my Carhartt’s to work in the heated shop! Even though it was freezing cold outside, the black iron cut like butter. My Plasma cutter loves the dry air, and I love using way fewer consumables while getting much cleaner cuts. The smooth, quick, cut-once approach suits my freehand style perfectly. I laid out a 4 x 8 sheet of steel and used a Sharpie (which was too cold to work fluidly) to draw out a very cool octopus, Gallery pieces that included several sea life elements, a sea otter, ravens and some other individual artsy works to compliment my new clay work. I only got one sheet cut though, my feet were getting too cold on the concrete slab (even in my favorite pair of SmartWool's).

Some hardy souls are choosing to salute the deep freeze with a celebration of Alaska and life in the North. FREEZE is a bold series of large-scale outdoor installations in downtown Anchorage organized by The Alaska Design Forum in association with the International Gallery of Contemporary Art and the Anchorage Museum. So far, Mother Nature has been the perfect hostess.

The sun doesn’t rise very high in the winter sky and by mid afternoon it was time to call it a day. Even my “Chicken-vane” on our shed roof was cold, must be time for a Hot Toddy…