Exhibitions

On Sunday I took down the Craig Gallery Exhibit (can’t believe the three weeks went by that fast). I was collecting the tags on each item when I discovered a red dot on one of the quilts – SOLD! That was a surprise. From the start I wasn’t sure about pricing the quilts (and other pieces). Looks like I wasn’t out of the ball park after all.

Not only did I sell a quilt, I sold one of the wall art pieces, as well as two 6×6 floral pieces (one has been sold twice – a friend of my sister Donna wanted the same piece that another person had already bought; I wasn’t able to say “No” to her so I’m creating another; that’s actually three of the 6×6 pieces sold).

All in all, a good outcome for a show of this size, in a location like this. A lot of visitors dropped in, they all spent more time looking at the quilts and other fibre art pieces than usual, and all left with smiles. When I was in the gallery visiting with friends who’d come to see the exhibit, all sorts of people either eavesdropped on what I was explaining, or came over more overtly to join the conversation. Everybody I spoke to was very engaged and interested in how my art was constructed.

I learned from the Exhibit that I’m creating art!

Pieces sold:

I’m exhausted!

Thanks goodness I had the foresight to ask a friend to come with me and we had the help of one of the young gals at the gallery pitching in. The Craig Gallery is a largish space – I took 13 quilts, 9 fibre art pieces, 5 floral pieces, and 22 of the 6×6 pieces. (I brought 2 quilts home with me).

Hanging an exhibit is always time consuming – walking into an empty gallery it’s hard to know where to start. I had visited during the summer so I knew more or less how many quilts I could hang on each wall, but still, deciding which quilt to hang where takes time. We arrived at 10:00am; finished at 2:50pm (with a half hour for some lunch and a large glass of water).

I still have work to do – there’s a spot for one more small piece (which will need a label) – I will take that with me Thursday before the opening begins and hang it then. There’s also a video screen outside the gallery which presents a slide show of what’s inside – I need to create a slide show of the quilts and other works and email that to the gallery.

Nevertheless, the exhibit is hung. While we were finishing up, people started coming in – the front door was open, even though the gallery was formally closed. We welcomed everybody who wanted to see the show.

I had fun explaining what they were looking at – if you’re not a quilter you have no idea what work actually goes into this kind of art. The question I’m always asked: “How long does it take to make one of these pieces?” I can calculate the “cutting, piecing, assembling, quilting, finishing” time – I can make a quilt in about three weeks. But how do I calculate the “thinking about it before you begin time, the collecting fabrics time, shopping for that last bit of colour fabric time, selecting thread colours time, creating the quilting design time, sleeping on it time, looking at it on the design wall time”? Incalculable.

This is how the show looks (click on the images to see enlargements):