Five years at the American Craft Council show
This year was my fifth year exhibiting at the American Craft Council Show. If you don’t know about their shows, here’s a little nutshell. The American Craft Council is located in Minneapolis (formerly in NYC) and they are an organization that promotes fine craft. They put on a conference, host lots of talks and small events, and publish two magazines that “champion handmade”. Each year (for the past 30+ years) they put together a large craft show in four different locations: Atlanta, Baltimore, St Paul and San Francisco. Each is a juried show with 200+ artists working in fiber, metal, jewelry, wood, or glass.
I started with their Hip Pop emerging artists program. That’s an image of my 2017 booth in its cardboard glory. (I actually think the cardboard popups are awesome and I think my work really popped against that kraft paper color.) Hip Pop is also a juried program but allows artists to share a booth with other emerging artists. The booth fees are lower (because of the limited space) and some of the display/lighting is included, so it is a way for new artists to try out the show and see if the audience is a good fit for their work before investing in a full both space. Once you have juried in as a Hip Pop artist, you can return to the shared booth for 3 years and then “graduate” to a full sized booth for the next two. I just completed my fifth year, so next year I will need to re-jury into the regular artist pool.
This year’s show just finished on Sunday and I was talking to someone about how it went and did I make enough to cover my costs. This is something we talk about […]
Thank you American Craft Council Show
I hope that a few of you are visiting because you saw me or my work at the American Craft Council show and you wanted to know more! Thanks so much to everyone who attended: friends, visitors, return customers, colleagues, students, and people who darted-in-grabbed-my-card-and-moved-on-down-the-aisle.
I will have my Etsy shop updated in the next couple of days with all of the things you saw on display in the booth. I did a live video tour of the space; if you missed it on Facebook, here’s an encore (click Read More>>).
In the company of fine craft: ACC Show St Paul
This is where I will be this weekend in Booth 523. It’s a gorgeous show and well worth the visit to talk to the artists that are there about what they make.
Check out all of the details and get tickets at the Craft Council website.
Introspection can be a workout.
In the last week, I have had two grant applications, a scholarship application and an exhibition application all due. That’s not only a lot a writing, but that’s a lot of thinking.
I hope that some of those applications are successful and that I get to do some of those things I applied to. When you spend a whole lot of hours thinking and writing about something, you get pretty invested in it. I am excited about these projects and that makes the waiting all that much harder.
But as I was thinking about it, I really got a lot just out of the process of writing them. Explaining “your artistic vision, your body of work, and your professional goals. This section may be very similar to an artist statement, but should emphasize a self-reflection of your artistic and professional accomplishments to date, particularly as they relate to a clearly defined path towards the future” is a pretty major task, especially when you have to do it in only 4000 characters. To put it in perspective, that’s about 1 page or 500 words. This blog post is already 1120 characters when you get to the period at the end of this sentence.
I tend to use a lot of adjectives, so my personal method for writing these things is to just get it down and not pay attention to the character count on the first draft. Wil Wheaton refers to this as the “puke draft”, where you just get it all out. Gross maybe, but descriptive. Once I get it down, then I start again at the top and start cutting. I always write more than I need. My first draft of the answer to that example question was about 8200 characters. First I delete adjectives. I put in lots of “very” and […]
Making art is pay to play; I wish it wasn’t.
I was reading a post on a friend’s Facebook page a few days ago. Her daughter is a dancer; she was a dancer in her youth. The post (which my friend didn’t write, but was commenting on) was an open letter to some dance-related organization about girls showing up to audition for something and having to pay a fee to audition. There were a lot of comments, mostly that expressed outrage that anyone should be expected to have to pay to participate in an audition. I didn’t comment because I am not part of that community, but I snorted and thought to myself “Welcome to the club!”
As an artist, I have to pay to audition all the time. Nearly everything I apply to has a “jury fee” associated with it. I was talking with friends about this several months ago and we were all surprised. They had never heard of a “jury fee” and I didn’t know that my non-artist friends didn’t know this was a thing. So that seemed like a great reason to write a post about it.
Most of the shows and exhibitions my work would be a good fit for have an application process. You submit an artist statement and maybe another statement about how your work fits the theme of the show. You upload an art resume. Then you choose images to represent your work or the specific pieces you think would belong in the show. The specs for these are always wildly different. You spend a LOT of time recropping and resizing your images so they fit whatever format that the spec says. Then you pay a fee. The last few shows I have applied for have been $15-$45, due when you submit your application. “Art sale” […]
Spoonflower Design Challenge: Rockabilly
This design challenge theme was the cause of a big discussion among my family about what “rockabilly” really was and how you could represent it. Spoonflower’s design spec said “Originally from the 1950s, the iconic genre has a strong following that has withstood the test of time. As you create your entry this week, channel the rockabilly style with themes centered around vintage tattoos, pin-up girls, polka dots and even skulls.” My parents (who remember the original rockabilly trend) said they thought of it more as Elvis and ice cream sodas. We had a good time going through the contest entries and seeing how everyone interpreted the design. (Lots of cherries. Lots of skulls.)
My dad is a collector of vintage guitars, so I decided that rockabilly era guitars were my inspiration. I modeled mine after a Gretsch guitar from the 50s. I started drawing them in shades of grey just to work out the design and get the repeat set, intended to add some color. But the more I looked at the shades of grey, the more I liked it. One of the motifs that popped up when I googled “rockabilly style” was dice, which I didn’t really love, so went with card suits, which I felt like had the same vibe and I loved the tiny pops of red that it added to the design. This was all vector Illustrations in Adobe Illustrator.
The 33 you see on the swatch of the design above is the place I finished in the design contest. 33 of 325, which is my third highest finish ever in a contest (I have ranked #11 and #22.) THANK YOU if you voted for my design. You can find it here on Spoonflower.
Hi, I’m Becka.
Talking about fabric design, Spoonflower, teaching, and the life and business of being an artist.
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