Painting and patience...

Argh! It's taken ages again! And I DO like blogging, it's just it feels like a guilty pleasure when there's so much WORK to be done! Ok, so as usual, loads to report. Lets see if I can get through a reasonable amount of it this time!

So, first up, I mentioned in my last post that I have some studio space now. Well, this has been really great for me, and has lead to a real burgeoning of ideas and creative work, even though I've only managed to get there for a few days. (That also feels like too much fun to be proper work!). Anyway, after not having done a painting in ages, I'm suddenly being very productive on that front. I also had a go at doing a collage partly using some images of my photos, and partly using some awesome paper I have been saving for just this occasion, which I bought at a sale from the irresistible paper selection at Paperchase (one of my favourite places to get art supplies, when I can afford to get the good stuff! The Manchester branch is just a few minutes walk from my front door, and has a whole floor dedicated to fine art supplies). Ok, so here's some pictures.

My collage piece

A painted study of different textures

A set of four (unfinished) smaller pieces

As you can see, these pictures are much more abstract than my previous painting, and therefore much more like my photographic work. They are all really more like preliminary sketches rather than finished pieces, but hopefully with these I am laying the foundations for some really strong painted work in the future. And that makes me really excited!

In other news: I sold a piece on my Artfinder page! If you sign up to Artfinder, you get a daily email with a piece of work and a paragraph of description from the artists. So, I applied about a month ago tot get my work featured, and then about a week ago it was, resulting in a bunch of new followers and this sale! The picture I sold was this one, already established as a firm favourite of many:

"Red Archipelago"

So, this just goes to prove, if I can get some exposure for my work, I can get some sales from it! This is really encouraging! I just have to figure out how best to do that now....

Also as a result of this sale, I had to actually take steps to find myself a good fine art printer in Manchester. I was really happy with the printer I used to work with down in Devon (the lovely Mike at Formatrix), and I was apprehensive about trying to find someone as good again, but DK at Sketch 360 was so patient with me as I procrastinated about how best to set out the print, and the finished product was every bit as good as my previous print, so I was really happy with the final result. So now I know which printer I'll be working with in Manchester, if and when I sell more prints, and that's a really good thing!

Ok, as usual, so much more to say than I have time to write. Just a few quick things then:

Last week and at the beginning of this week I volunteered at the Future Everything festival, which is a kind of a big deal around these parts, especially for people interested in where the future is headed in terms of technology/science/art/media/society, so every year they have a festival of music and art, plus a conference to debate these things. I was involved in the art part and the conference. Both were really interesting and useful but it would take all day to explain why - maybe I'll mention more next time. For now, here's a good summary of the arty stuff that went on: Future Everything: City Fictions 

review

Also, I will be at Paddiham market tomorrow from 10am. Longtime readers of the blog will remember that it was the very first art and craft market I went to, back in November of last year. I had good sales and response that day, so fingers crossed for the same again. As mentioned previously, I'm going armed with a new secret weapon: Stickers! Check them out:

Right, I'm just going to put down in writing now, so that I'll have to talk about it next time, something I keep meaning to tackle - which is my increasingly exciting and lucrative work as a community artist. This is something I've just kind of stumbled into, but it might be the best long term prospect of making this artistic career move pay off, so I MUST go into it in more detail. So, now I've mentioned it, I will have to NEXT TIME!! 

Oh, and finally, after some thought, I have gone ahead and done what I have been resisting for a while, and joined another social media platform: Twitter. If you have already succumbed then come and keep me company @HannahGerg. I might try and use that to post more small but regular news about what I'm up to, so if this blog moves a little slow for your liking, that might be the place to go.... if not, my patient friends, then next time... 

Art Fair number 2!

Oh dear! The blog has been neglected for a few days whilst I returned to Devon to (hopefully) finalise the sale of our house there. On the plus side, I did pick up lots more of my framed Giclee prints, which until now were being displayed in a restaurant there. Now I have freed them up to be unleashed on the North West! The first opportunity to do so will be…tonight! My second Art Fair of the winter has crept up on me, just like I knew it would.
I will be jumping in the car in a few hours to make my way over to the town of Wakefield, for the start of the MAKE Art and Design Fair. Tonight is an art walk event, with lots of venues taking part, not just the one I'll be in, from 5 to 9pm, and then the Art Fair proper will be on Friday and Saturday, from 10am until 5pm. So, a busy few days in prospect! I'll report on how it all went as soon as I have a minute to draw breath. I also haven't forgotten that I didn't finish updates on my latest ideas and experiments, which will also be coming soon!

One of the pictures I just picked up from Devon

Art Fair Report

So, my first Art and Craft Fair appearance of the Pre-Christmas season, or indeed, ever, was on Saturday. It was at Padiham, which is a smallish town about 30 miles to the north of Manchester, which I had never been to before, and which seemed like a nice little town. The Market itself was in the concert hall of the town hall building, which was a lovely wood panelled, art deco style room, and apart from me I guess there was roughly 15 other stallholders, selling knitwear, ceramics, sewn goods, other photographers, some painters, jewellery makers and a woodworker. So, a good mix. And although there were other photographers, my work was very different from theirs, as it was largely landscape or nature photography, so we complimented each other without being competition.
After spending last week fretting a bit about how my stall would look, I was actually quite pleased with the final result, which you can see here:

The proud smallholder with her wares

So, once I was set up, all I could do was wait for the people to come in and see whether they would want to buy any of my stuff. The doors opened at 11am, and there was a pretty steady stream of people until they closed again at 4pm. Lots of people stopped to look and just for a chat, and then one lady bought a card. Yay! My first sale! There was a bit of a lull in trading for a while after that, but then things picked up again and I sold several more cards. I was "warming up" a bit now, and getting better at talking to the people that stopped at the stand, and explaining a little bit of what my work was about and what inspired me etc. People were really genuinely interested and receptive, and said lots of kind, encouraging things,which was really nice. And then I sold one of my more expensive, giclee prints, which I wasn't necessarily expecting to do, so that was a lovely surprise. Sales in cards and stickers were steady after that. Several people really liked Anna's lamps, but nobody "fell in love" enough to actually buy one. And then, right at the end of the day, I sold another print. I was kind of hoping to sell a few more prints, but overall I was really happy with how the day went.

 I spoke with several fellow stallholders and got some good contacts, advice and ideas out of that, and I gave out my "business card" (actually a postcard flyer from an old exhibition, which I happen to have loads of left over) to lots of people, so overall I'm really happy with how it went. It was the first ever event like this for Padiham too, so I think they must have been really pleased as well. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming, so I will definitely go there again when they do their next market.

 Ok, onto the next! That will be the MAKE Art and Design Fair in Wakefield, on Wednesday 27th and Friday and Saturday 29th and 30th of November. It looks like the emphasis will really be on the "Art" side, not so much on crafts, so I'm really hoping that I will be a big hit there. I have a few weeks to prepare for that, so I'll take the lessons I learned here, (mainly, sell work mounted but not necessarily framed, and have a rack to put the prints in, so I can fit lots more on my stand!) and hopefully have a lots of success there!

The Giclée print I sold

Art and Craft Market Preparation Woes

So, maybe the first thing I should tell you about is the art and craft market I will be appearing at next weekend; Padiham art and craft market .

This is the first of four art and craft markets I will be going to before Christmas; I guess this is the big art and craft market season, so I picked a good time to start going to them. This will be my first ever market of this kind and I am equal parts nervous and excited about it.

The nervousness is exacerbated by the fact that, typical me, I'm nowhere near being ready for it! I've just come back from a month away in Budapest (it's where the husband's from, and I lived there 2000-2005 so it's like a second home.) Anyway, that means it's now a mad rush to get ready. I have lots of giclée prints left over from my last show in Exeter to take, but they are kind of expensive (£55-£150 depending on size and whether they're framed or not) so I've been in negotiation with a local printer to make me some non-giclée but still good quality digital prints, plus some greetings cards, to have some more affordable stuff for the market crowd.
But...I got back late on Wednesday and emailed them Thursday morning, or so I thought. Actually, I had somehow managed to only email myself, thanks to yahoo's new weird system of putting everything into a text message style conversation - argh! The kind of super dumb mistake that's so typical of me! So I finally realised my mistake on Friday afternoon, and frantically contacted the printers, who have now sprung into action, although I still haven't actually sent them the files, plus I still have to mount them all; something I'm doing for myself for the first time too. Then there's the stall itself to consider - how to present my work, whether I have enough stands and display do-das, printing labels.....So, in short, next week is going to be craaaazy busy, wish me luck!

Here's one of the new images I'm hoping to get printed as a digital print. (I can't re-print any of my giclées as they are all strictly limited editions of 10)
Usually I like to think of my pictures as pure abstracts (although I know lots of people like to find images in them, which is cool with me, I'm just quite abstract minded by nature) but this picture has some fairly obvious figurative cues, doesn't it?