After many months of preparation with regards to painting and thinking and painting some more, I am in the homestretch of my October exhibition, "A Perfectly Ordinary Light", opening at Waterstone Gallery in Portland, Oregon on October 4. The work is mostly done (a little tweaking necessary) and just needs framing and labeling. The month of September will be spent mostly on promotion besides the few items just mentioned. It is amazing how many small details there are to mounting a show.
A Perfectly Ordinary Light, 13x31
Doing the work is pretty obivous to anyone who has visited an art exhibition. There are paintings, or some other type of artwork, presented by the gallery and one can see it took months to create a cohesive body of work. But what about the other parts of exhibiting? The promotional activities before the show opens, the inventorying of all the art before the work is delivered, the additions to websites, and the all-important selling of the work in order to support the artist and their contining career. There are a myriad of small and large parts that go into being an artist, and exhibiting your art in a gallery.
Sparkle, 25x19
Of course all of this is more work for an artist such as myself who shows her paintings in an artist-run gallery as I have to do all the legwork and much of the promotion. But it is a wonderful challenge, and makes me appreciate all the work that commercial galleries do to promote their artists.
I hope that if you live in the Portland area, or are in the area visiting during the month of October, that you will get to see my show at Waterstone Gallery. And if you can't see it in person I hope you will visit it at my website or the Waterstone website after October 1. It isn't the same as seeing it in person as the surface of the paintings is so important but I am most grateful for any sort of visit you might make.