Sunday, November 22, 2009

Art from the HEart: recap

This was the 10th anniversary of Art from the Heart. It was one of things I was looking forward to, after weeks of focusing intently on houses, both mine and other people's.

(Which is a rather cryptic way of saying that we bought one house and sold another in the last month...)

The last two show + sales featured lots of artists and lots of people looking at the art, and this year's Art from the Heart show was no different.

One hundred and forty-seven artists had three pieces each on display and hundreds more came out to see, which meant that the MERC community center was packed.

My usual modus operandi is to do a quick tour and find out where my art has been hung, so I can sit somewhere and watch people look at the work.



I found my work quickly and noted with some dismay that one of my pieces was hung sideways. But, since we'd dropped off our pieces without hangers attached (we went straight from the framer's to the art drop-off location), I couldn't in good conscience complain about that.

So I didn't complain.

I also try to make two-three circuits of the room, one to make first impressions of the other work on offer, to see what draws me and what doesn't, and then another and another so I can properly shed those first impressions.

At some point during these go-rounds, I read through the programme, which includes pictures and bios of the artists.

There were several returning artists this year, whose work I hailed while dodging the throngs of people. There were also several many new artists whose work said any number of things...



Finally, I usually like watching the people buying art, how quickly they walk, how quickly they decide...except this year, it was different.

Instead of a headlong rush on the art in the first half hour of the sale, there was apparently a steady stream of sales in the last few hours.

I was tickled, while walking from the community center playground with M and Aa towards the end of the sale, to see a girl unlock her bike with one of my pieces under her arm.

One thing the organizers did this year was to offer artists a ten minute consultations with visual art professionals - in this case, arts writer/educator Amy Karlinsky and artist Racheal Tycoles.




I met with Tycoles, whose work "depicts the post-industrial landscape as a reflection of the romanticism of the past, the dystopia of the present and the search for the sublime." She also works in photography, which I thought was almost too too apt.

So I turned my upside-down piece right-side-up so she could see it, and listened.

And then I accepted the money for my piece & trucked my other two pieces home in the late November fall sun.

I didn't wear a frock either Friday or Saturday. And I was a little overwhelmed, first by the crush of people at the opening reception Friday, and second by the rush of buying/selling houses.

(Don't even ASK how the manuscript-editing is going. But give me a few weeks and I should be chugging along...)

2 comments:

Jenny said...

I've never been to Art from the Heart and I wanted to go this year, but didn't get out. I feel especially bad because my pal Mama Cutsworth was DJing. Interesting that the pace wasn't so FRANTIC this year.

Brenda Schmidt said...

Congratulations A! Sounds like it was a lovely time.