miracles can still happen.

We're slowly getting our art festival application letters and emails in with 'Congrats - You're in!' - Mind you, we decided that this year, we'd cut back, giving us time to really produce for the big shows that we try to do every year and make the most of those - And so far, our schedule looks like this:

April: North Shore Unitarian Church-small but comfortable show, very well organized & attended!-(Deerfield)

May: Open Studio w/the ChicagoStyleCrafters Street Team - Date TBA

June: Wells Street Art Festival (Chicago)
Fountain Square Art Festival (Evanston)

July: Art Fair on the Square (Madison)

Come again? Did I say Art Fair on the Square in Madison, Wisconsin?

Why, yes, yes I did.

Phew + HAAZAA! Signing into our email yesterday we found a congratulatory note from Katie Hunter informing us we'd juried into Art Fair on the Square in Madison, WI! We tried about 4 or 5 years ago, with a much more painterly/Spanish influenced type of work, like this:



And now, this year, we applied with images I took for Etsy & Flickr :)



So I have to ask myself: Do I need to go get professional slides done anyway, after seeing that what I shot worked on what we consider one of the top ten most difficult shows to jury into on the circuit? I'll be honest, I posted those images on Zapp with complete descriptions about our diy/modded machinery and our Gocco screening, thinking for sure that they'll boot us out & not even give us a second glance - I always considered it a more conservative show - But now I'm gonna have to rethink my stance. And I guess I'll have to see if we'll jury in next year with new work :)

But what a relief! Our July's past have always bombed with shows - Last year we got lucky, got into Art vs. Craft and our July was saved :) We're hoping and crossing fingers (and I shall be lighting a candle of good vibes) that Faythe & Kim can book the show either before or after Art Fair on the Square - We really want to go back to it, and the CSC Street Team is planning a table there if they'll have us :)

-Nancy

The realization...Part 3

Gah! It's been 14 days, and Andy is antsy for me to finish this up so he can blog about, well, other stuff. And yes, I'm still writing about the ACC show in Baltimore this past February :)

Let me say, before I go any further, that the traveling & event, as a whole, was a wonderful experience. We were able to share this space and our circumstances with peers like Dolan Geiman & Ali Walsh , Kevin & Julie of Yee-Haw Industries, and Amy Allison of SODA.

We also got to meet some really cool people, like Matt & Christine (who gave me Etsy Artist Trading cards!), John Pagliaro, and Lois Aronow - With whom we hung out with one evening :)
The people that made me feel especially mushy were our fellow Etsyans who came in to meet us, to name a few: Rania of GoshDarnKnit, Elisa of elisasherejewelry, Jill of jillpopowichdesigns, and Megan of vwstudios - That really made our weekend! And I cannot leave out all of the artists, artisans & show patrons who came by to talk to us and to say welcome :)

But there was a bit of a dark cloud hanging over our little 35x35ft space at the convention center, and it held bad vibes. There was a lot of rumbling coming from some of the veterans of the show, and most of it was beyond cranky - To the point where it almost came to fistacuffs. There were times when you'd see a few come in to check us out, saying out loud 'Well I DON'T see what the fuss is about!" - I even caught a few artists taking off their badges before coming into our pen.

Now that's unfortunate. We all had high hopes for this event. I don't know how many of these 15 will try for a hard-core *real booth* (and I use this term lightly, as I saw a few regulars with an E-Z Up as their booth) but we've decided to try it next year. You know, all professional like :)


And I am excited and giddy that this is all the talk at the moment, all this 'indie vs. traditional craft' - It needs to be discussed because it's been lingering in many crafters & artists minds. And perhaps someone will bring up the genre of artist that is what Andy & I and so many of our peers fall into: The Shadow Artist. The artists who have been traditionally trained, but have, through necessity, curiosity, fear of boredom or other, gone down a more adventurous path, taking their knowledge and adding some twists to it, and not being ashamed of it. Cultivating that way of craft, always experimenting & perfecting methods, and making it work for you. Being able to comfortably hover over that line between Old Skool & New Skool, like a shadow :)

-Nancy

And the saga continues...

It's my turn to write the last chapter of our 'Baltimore or Bust' blog post, but before I do that, I wanted to pass along some links to other chroniclers who have been writing of their experiences and observations of this chunk of the indie/diy scene. These have been popping up, and I read them - Many of them have been good overviews, talking about how refreshing the New Wave & the Searchlight sections were, others, not so much - Here is a small selection:

- From November of last year, when the New Wave of Craft section was being flashed around, written in the blog of Cindy Edelstein.

- This year, from Rania Hassan, an artist who wrote of her visit to the ACC show for the Crafty Bastards blog.

- Rob Walker, who wrote Handmade 2.0 for the NY Times Magazine, has been writing about some of the activity on his blog Murketing, here and here.

- Came across a blog post from a Annie of Imogene here talking about a recent SNAG conference she attended - And somehow, this is the blog entry that has sparked the most discussion - I myself have commented twice - It somehow came round to discussing the recent ACC Baltimore show, and the love/hate relationship between old skool & n00b crafters.

Excellent, stimulating discussions & observations - Which are fueling me to finish up our last chapter :)

Please, take the time to read the above blog posts, or at least mark'em for later reading!

-Nancy

The inevitable...chapter 2

About a week before the drive, we're feeling pretty comfortable, we just got hit by a snowstorm and the weather is total crap. Using my mental barometer I find myself thinking "oooh its bad now - it can't stay like this for long, we'll be fine!" But it's February, and we're totally out of our element since we don't do shows in the middle of winter - we stay in our studio and make things - We like to call it Creative Hibernation. Besides, this type of weather logic works better in the Summer when we base time/forecasts by the weekend like 'oh it rained last weekend this weekend will be sunny'. Over the next few days the weather does get better; there's a slight disturbance but nothing really significant.

That is until Tuesday, the day before the drive. I should have taken it as a bad omen when Nancy's Dad gave us the weather report in the form of a cackle. All day I kept thinking "it's just lake effect snow, the storm will pass before we leave, we'll be on a toll road that will be plowed and salted" repeating this over & over to myself like a deranged driving mantra. Then at noon when we find out about the featured seller gig with Etsy we start falling behind with our final preparations. We have to photograph the work before we pack it up, think about those interview questions (damn, why didn't we fantasize about this moment more in the past?), and figure out what to do with our Etsy shop (keep it open? Shut it down?) On top of this, we had scheduled one last kiln firing that would come out Wednesday morning if we hustled and applied all the images to the ware. We had a full day of work.

Really late Tuesday (more like early Wednesday morning, 2:30am-ish) I find myself brushing the snow off the van to install a set of new windshield wiper blades. The van's not packed and the final kiln firing just started (about 7 hours late). It's at this point when the law of diminishing returns starts to take effect: What would normally take twenty minutes now takes an hour, an hour later the same task takes ninety minutes. That sharp little voice in your head has turned into a slurring mush mouth - but thankfully, your hands still know what to do. We end up getting some sleep at about 4 in the morning.

We wake up Wednesday to reports of a 22 car pile up along I-94 near Michigan City Indiana. Granted its not the same freeway we would have been traveling on but its still freakishly close. Along with the pile up, we also see news footage of all the spin outs and crashes happening around the city, and we're grateful for the delay. The only problem now: a weather advisory until 6 pm.

By the time we get on the road it's 3 in the afternoon but according to the traffic reports, our road is clear. Within 35 minutes we have crossed into Indiana and I had just commented how we have never made it out of the city so quickly. We come around the next bend and there it is: An extremely long, long line of backed up vehicles.

After standing still for 10 minutes we get a traffic report telling us the freeway has been closed (WTF?!?!) We're pretty much boxed in by semi trucks but some people start to pull U-turns and try to flee like rats off a sinking ship. 35 long minutes later we begin to crawl forward into an increasingly darker storm cloud.

Once we make it through the toll booth about half of the cars around us take to the exit which is good because the road is now two little tire track paths and there is no passing lane. By now our speed is up to about 40 mph and the snowflakes are heavy enough to cause white-out conditions but after about 5 minutes the weather starts to break. We drive until the snow stops falling and turn into one of those seemingly normal I-80 rest stop gas stations.

While filling up the van I catch myself thinking that the worst was over, we could still drive a large part of the trip that night and make it to the convention center before noon the following day (for once, we'd be early!) We'd canceled our Baltimore hotel reservation and figured we wouldn't have a problem finding a room on the road.
After filling up, we start the van up to head out and notice something isn't right, it's too quiet...And cold. After some fierce knuckle rapping on the console, the realization that There's No Heat, *OH SHIT* the heater's out. Perfect.

"Please be a fuse" kept rolling through my head as I pulled the cover off the fusebox only to find the problem was too big for the rest stop gas station to fix. We're *SO* screwed.
Ahead of us is 600 clear yet cold miles, while behind us lay the challenge of driving through a snowstorm with no defroster. Past experiences with roadside mechanics pretty much nullified any argument to find a repair shop: "You got an electrical problem? Hell, could be anything!" So we turned into the heart of darkness and continued on our journey.

After about 2 hours of driving the fear of the windshield totally fogging up was replaced by the pain of the near frostbite in our feet. We pulled into another one of those weird rest stops to warm up and realized the McDonalds was now replaced by a Hardees. Its strange how the toll road tries to provide a semblance of choice with the comfort of familiarity. Just about everything at the rest stop is the same; the gas station, the little knick knack store, the vending machines, but the restaurants keep changing. You begin to navigate by the brand of fast food you are eating - if we could've held out a little longer we could've dined at Roy Roger's!

Back on the road we begin to witness the start of a total lunar eclipse. We have front row seats and a big black sky but driving the van is like riding a chairlift during a midnight ski outing; you try to enjoy your surroundings but really you just can't wait for the fun to begin. As it turned out, the moon rose up and above the van so we pretty much missed all the excitement anyway.

After a few more warm up stops, we find ourselves closing in on Pittsburgh, and this classic rock radio station pops into life. I grew up in Northeast Wisconsin during the 80's and listening to WAPL "The Rocking Apple" gave me a lifetime ability to instantly recognize the opening bars of the worst classic rock songs ever. Nancy grew up in Chicago and she was able to live her entire life with the ability to turn the radio dial to a better station. So now that she's trapped in my frozen little van of classic rock hell I decide to take advantage of the situation by turning up the volume. It's at this moment when the unmistakable sounds of the pseudo psychedelic sci-fi biblical rock anthem masterpiece by Billy Thorpe - Children of the Sun - begin to drift across the airwaves. For the next several minutes Nancy stares in horror as I think I may actually have witnessed a spaceship descend down from the heavens. By the time the power chords kicked in we are both laughing so hard the windshield fogs & ices over opaque from our breath :)
Luckily, we're close to a rest stop and decide we better start looking for a place to stop for the night.

The next morning is worse than I predicted as we are driving directly into the sun and the thin little film of fog & ice on the windshield is wreaking havoc with our field of vision. The road is winding around enough as to not cause too much of a problem and we were following a car that still had visible taillights, so except for a few tense seconds we managed to get to the southeast facing part of our drive unscathed. Soon we were seeing mile markers for Baltimore and we were going to make our 12 noon arrival time - Finally!

Oh, the trip...Chapter one

Yes, catching up. Going to Baltimore was the worst drive ever. It was worse than when Nancy and I drove to New Mexico and broke down in Vega Texas. That trip was in sub-freezing temperatures too but at least we had a case of Grolsch beer (beugel style! Thanks Dad!).

Getting ready for a show is always crazy. Usually we are in overdrive two days before the event and working with minimal sleep until we check in at 6:00 am (then its non-stop for another 12 to 16 hours). Well, with the ACC show we were kind of lucky as our space was restricted to a small "New Wave Artists" section and we only had room for one of our four shelf displays. So really we didn't have much to prepare for except to finish the work to take with us and get the van ready for the road.
With our simple thoughts the plan was to start on Tuesday by closing up our Etsy shop, packing the van, and leaving early Wednesday morning with a Baltimore arrival before 10 pm. We could then take our time loading in and setting up on Thursday and have a nice smooth transition into the start of the show Friday morning.

Well, that all fell apart at noon on Tuesday when we got a convo from an Etsy Admin telling us they wanted to make us featured seller for the weekend. For a second we contemplated backing out of the Etsytunity (an opportunity you get from Etsy? Does that work? No?), asking ourselves if we can keep track of conversations and stay on top of the shop while working out of a hotel "business center". Then we contemplated backing out of the show (because it just may suck and it costs a lot of money to house and feed ourselves!). But eventually as the shock started to settle in we figured we had to do them both.

Coming up: What the hell is going on!

[adult swim]

I must write about this because this is what marks my weekend's ending: Watching Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. And lately, I've been watching almost every show on there, except for Garth Marenghi's Darkplace - I just don't get that one.

So this past Sunday night, Andy & I were watching Squidbillies, and I learned about Truck Balls.
The episode was not about truck balls, but they were part of the story. And tonight as we were walking Ava around to Trader Joe's, we thought about ceramic balls. Hmm. Have these been made? Was this 'truck balls' reference real or made up? So we Googled it, and this is what we found: They're real, they're pricey, and they can be patriotic:I love Adult Swim :)
(this particular set of balls can be found here)
-nancy