Wednesday 18 June 2008

Derbyshire Open Arts





Well for several weeks I couldn't decide if I should join this years Open Arts exhibition and then a gentle push by my partner Sean and and a last minute scramble to fill in all the relevant paper work and lo and behold I was in !

Well that was the easy bit. The exhibition as the title says is Derbyshire wide and enables artists to open up their homes and studios to the public for the May Bank Holiday weekend.

It s been a huge success since it started and I was really excited at the prospect.

The house has undergone some serious renovation in the last few months and was just about ready in time. I was fortunate enough to have plenty of wall space in which to show my work and I also invited two artists form college to show some of theirs as well.

We even decided to have a preview evening, which may sound like an excuse to drink wine, but its all part of the exhibition and was enjoyed by all, as was the wine !

The exhibition itself was brilliant with a steady flow of visitors on Saturday and Sunday, several had travelled some distance to view some of the local exhibitors, Monday was very busy, in fact I stopped counting after 70 had come through the door.

Overall it was a great success and twelve of my works were bought which means I have to work even harder to replace these - I even sold my first photograph print, bought for Sir Martin Doughty no less !

One visitor even did a little video of their trip around my home and some other local exhibitors which you can see below.

The experience certainly helped form a business thinking point of view as well - simple things like labelling works properly, cataloging items, visitor books all easily forgotten when showing in other exhibitions, but when you are creating the exhibition in your own home its all down to you.







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