Another Opening

My painting next to a portrait by Heather Stormer

Well, One New Painting opened this past Friday. You know, the show I've been freaking myself out over. Yeah. that one. Painting finally got done, ahead of time, for once, and brought into the shop. I helped clean and hang the show. There were a few paintings in the group that I seriously wish I could do. The use of color and mark and sheer drawing ability in every singe piece was just stunning and made me feel like I knew nothing about painting or drawing- until I realized that those painters have a good 30 or 40 years on me, and a degree or two more than me. The ones I talked to told me about the work they were doing at my age, and made me feel a bit better about what I'm doing now. But still, something to aspire too, I guess. I heard a lot of stories from their days as students, and about the work they were doing at my age. Seriously fun stuff.

There had to be well over 100 people that milled through there and saw the art, had a few glasses of wine, and just talked with everyone else. A good chunk of my friends showed up, some from high school and some from college, which was a real relief to see familiar friendly faces in the crowd. A lot of people I spoke to didn't quite believe I was one of the artists at first, and the one that did didn't believe I was still a student. The ones who thought I was one of the artists thought I already had full gallery representation and dealers. Which made me nervous and massively caught me off guard. I'm still a student. While yes, I do have time to be entering some shows, the idea of actual representation and actually working with a gallery is so far out of my mind right now....

Most people just commented on my hair or my zombie heels. Which leads to a great piece of advice I got during the night "The only ones that make it in this business are the ones with big personalities or rich friends" I seem to have both going for me. So there's hope. Kind of.

The REAL kicker of the night was when Michael Scott showed up. With his own bottle of tequila and limes. He'd told everyone he had an event on the other side of the country to be at. So the entire gallery went silent when he just walked in, since everyone knew who he was, and he's kind of a big deal. And he lives on the other side of the country. I honestly didn't get to speak to him too much. It was a wee bit intimidating just to be in a show with him, much less actually talk to the guy about art.

It was a fun, exhausting, and somewhat intimidating night. I met a lot of people, got a lot of great feedback and comments on my painting, and got a lot of words of encouragement. It'll be great to see the show over the next few weeks, and hopefully the shop will do more things like this in the future.


More photos to come as I get them.