jane-elizabeth-art - Tumblr blog

[jane-elizabeth-art]

Bentonsport, Iowa ! My very first Art Fair

Most sane people wouldn’t start doing a new business venture at the end of the season but I did. At the end of the season another artist friend of mine asked me to be in a juried art fair in October. A fall festival. I thought it sounded fun so I said yes. I have attended lots of art fairs but never actually had a booth. I have lots of retail experience but this was a completely new concept. I bought the canopy, grid walls, iPad, and a couple of directors chairs. I had a dozen of my pieces scanned for prints. Got my website up and running, hung the sign and I was ready to go. Or so I thought…. I had a lot of little details come up that I hadn’t thought of. Wind. The wind gusts were around 35 miles per hour pushing the sides of the tent into my grid walls and shaking my art. That was remedied with zip ties and bungie cords but ugh! nerve racking! Chilly. The sun shine was great but the temperature was in the 40’s till afternoon,Viewing. When I do a painting my mentor always says “less is more”. I think the same principal applies to a booth set up. Too much art to chose from makes it all less salable and hard to view. I am going to try a different layout today and see if that helps. Pastels are best viewed from a distance so I may eliminate the center stand so people can get some distance from it. No cell service. Thankfully most people had cash and the one check I took was from my neighbor.What went right???… Prints. So far I have only sold the stuff I had printed. $5-$47 price range. I am glad I did that. I will invest more into that sort of swag for next year. I also plan to add a few more items that will make a fun gift. Magnets and puzzles I think will go well.Demos. I found that a lot of people stopped that probably wouldn’t have because I was working on a painting. (actually it was my assignment for class with my mentor, David Garrison on Monday.) That also attracted the kids. I enjoyed showing the kids what pastels look and feel like.So today I am going to rearrange and pack up several paintings and maybe have a "" make me an offer"" area of my older work.

[jane-elizabeth-art]

Post 3 Mom’s Birthday

It amazes me and frustrates me when I am pretty sure I have been proactive and sidestepped some part of the grief process. Every damn time. I mean EVERY time I think I got this thing managed, grief wins. After a well planned out holiday weekend with the family, very stress free and fun I got slammed today. At 2 am out of a dead sleep it started. What the h!!! I had this thing beat and plans for today that would keep me busy and get through my mother’s birthday. This is the second one since she passed away. I thought I could get through it painlessly if I only planned well. Well the Lord has this perfect process that helps me grow and strengthens my faith but most days I say, no thank you... I will do my best to avoid it. Today’s efforts to get through the pain included a punch list. (Nothing to argue with just do it)

Shower

Perfume

Mud mask

Comfy clothes for the morning then put on something pretty (or handsome) later...

Don’t cut your hair! Or color your hair or perm your hair! (no new do’s !) Not today

More perfume... (I don’t know why it just happens)

Manicure/Pedicure do it yourself. Be involved in what makes things better. So what if it sucks. Pay for it done later...

Get to the studio and set up

Paint like a mad woman (be rebellious at this )

So my plan isn’t working....Sad days happen. I’ll be back

[jane-elizabeth-art]

Can you sidestep the Mourning

Today I didn’t wake up excited. I made coffee and fed my puppy. His name is Junior. He is a Bernese Mountain dog puppy. He wakes up everyday full of energy and tail wagging. He is about 100 pounds of happy energy. So even if I don’t have that happy day feeling right away he usually delivers it to me. Such a great companion. Life events that are traumatic can stick to me for a time. I have noticed that in the last 5 or 6 years so this year when my mother’s birthday weekend was on the horizon I tried something new. My mother passed away in 2017 and her birthday quite often landed on Labor Day weekend. The family often congregated with her and I had struggled the past several years not knowing what to do with myself and battling the darkness of grief. This year I had a picnic. I invited my daughters who still live close and a few friends. It was a beautiful day with food, friends, kids and dogs. Junior had a ball playing with my daughter’s dogs. Everyone was worn out by early evening. I may do it again next year.I feel like I should say something about my mother. I do not have to do a eulogy about her but I want to say that she was a good woman. Not perfect but she was very supportive to me in my striving. She held the bar pretty high but never pushed my sister and Me too hard. I think she was pretty happy when I started painting and doing more about becoming an artist. She wasn’t one to say things out loud but she would do things so that I knew. She came to events, bought me the whole Bob Ross video set(that was not cheap! 😃) and she paid for most of a workshop that took me to France to study. I am sure there were other things but those came to mind. My father didn’t know much about my art. I don’t remember him ever saying anything about it but when he died I found a painting I had done for him when I was 13. That says something. I was just starting to do graphic design when he passed so he never saw me as a full time artist. Nevertheless, I know he loved me and my sister. My step father “Bob” was my mother’s 3rd husband. He was a hoot! He encouraged me to be brave, kind of an instigator (which I have never really needed) We had a lot of great conversations about business and history. He taught me that you need to roll with life. After only 10 years of marriage to my mother He passed in 2015. I am blessed to have known him.

[jane-elizabeth-art]

Ideas & Cake

Ideas & Cake. Thats a strange blog name but for this part of my website it seemed to stick. I am not a writer so I hope I don’t disappoint anyone. I do not expect more than 5 or 6 people to read this so … yeah. It will be fun. Ill keep these blog posts kind of short and maybe a group of us can start to build something. When I was a young mother (really young) I left the idea of being an artist in the dark place. I only visited it when I was depressed and lonely. My drawings usually reflected that. They weren’t thought out projects just mental masturbation about being depressed, fantasies about what I thought life should be like and the comparison was somewhat horrible. Depression is a real thing for some people. A chemical imbalance that makes the brain less able to feel good. (Simply put) That’s not really my problem. I am just a woman of slightly above average intelligence that had something missing. A lonesome unfulfilled spot. (My friend Patty Q called it her God hole.- A place that only something spiritual could fill) I was also extremely self-centered and needed a lot of control. I didn’t understand that when I was young but I do now. ...Well that’s kinda deep. I am sure there are books written about that but for today we will leave it at that. When I was 30 (through a strange, unlikely, set of circumstances) I began to paint. It helped. So I kept doing it. I read the book “The Artists Way” and the author instructed people like me to do Morning papers. ( Simply put a journal. ) I am not as disciplined as I would like to be or like to think I am. I did those journal entries for a while but soon they drifted out of my habit. 3 children to get up and ready for school, a business to help run, sometimes a hangover to deal with ... yeah, that didn’t stick. 20 plus years later... let’s try this again with a different motive and a better outlook. I hope it is useful.I am not fancy. I don’t have an important college degree. I’m not deep, existential or artsy fartsy, but I am a little different. I find God in everything but I am not a preacher. I may seem firmly grounded to you and still be lost in thoughts and ideas for my next piece . I paint light with my heart and I do it for you to enjoy. If my art moves you. If it makes you happy or even if it matches your couch! (typical artists hate that) Please consider purchasing it. It’s probably meant for you.Have a day that is one to remember! I’ll be back