Art Show Booth Setup

This is one of my latest journals I've made. I've been doing collage on some of them and painting on others. I've got more than 30 done and ready for the show.

I decided that this weekend was my dividing line - that I had to start finishing everything I had in process instead of continuing to paint. I like to paint. I hate to finish. But, you know, it's the oddest thing - people expect to be able to actually hang something on the wall and not have to put their own hangers on it. So, I've been doing a lot of that sort of thing.

I have a grant I have to finish writing this week so I'll be pretty brain dead by the end of the work day. But I can still do things like put tags on items, which I still need to do. Obviously, I could keep working on this nonstop until the day of the show, but that's just not logical. I want to actually get things done in advance so I'm not frantic right before the show. I'm hoping putting that in print will make it actually happen.

It has, blissfully, cooled off. Summer is officially over and other than missing the fresh vegetables and herbs from the garden, I'm not sorry to see it go. I like having the changing seasons. I'm always ready for the next one - whatever it is. The Kansas State Fair starts on Friday and that's always the dividing point for us regarding weather. The week of the fair generally offers some heat, some cold and some wet. I'm hoping the wet doesn't come the weekend of the show. I'm pretty sure it won't be too miserably hot. I'm hoping it's not miserably cold or wet - particularly wet - I don't want to spend nine hours in wet.

Our tentative plan is to go over very early and set up before the majority of people start doing that and the whole town becomes a traffic jam. We'll see how that works out in reality, but it's a good plan.

I talked to Jocelyn today and she was doing the same thing I was - getting ready for the show. Pretty much every flat surface in my house has something show related on it - the coffee table, the dining room table, the writing desk, etc. And there is glitter all over my house. You could do worse, I suppose, but it's everywhere - even on me - even after a shower. Needless to say, I'm doing some Christmas ornaments.

I've had some folks ask where our booth is going to be and we are SM1 - 33 - that translates to South Main 1, booth 33. We are in the middle of Main Street, with Grand Avenue to the north of us and A Street to the south of us. We are very close to A - the next to the first/last booth in that block. They put booths back to back down the middle of the street and we're on the west side, one booth between us and A street. If you mapquest 1 South Main Street in Hillsboro, Kansas, you'll get a good idea. I'm looking forward to seeing some blog readers there. It should be fun.

We did a dry run on setup this weekend and that was really helpful for me. I have a lot of detail things to take care of yet. Jocelyn tells me this is normal - that you keep doing this refining process, even if you do shows all the time.

Well, it's almost 1:30 a.m. and I have an early day so I need to get to bed. I think I've done all the show prep for today that I can do. I needed this extra day of weekend. I could use one more. But, alas, grants don't write themselves so tomorrow I will devote myself to that and hopefully get most of what's left to do done, then I can work on it a bit more throughout the week to improve it. I'm weary just thinking about it. I'd much rather be spending all my time thinking about art shows.