Art show report......

Our display panel of work by myself and Della

Iowa has found new ways to make a living when the crop prices continue to fluctuate.  One of them it to create vineyards and sell wine.   We now have more acreages of land in grapevines in the state of Iowa than in California.  At this Snus Vinyard and Winery, near Madrid, Iowa, we were asked to join an art group and show our work.

It was held in a part of their facility that they rent out for banquets and catered events including weddings.  The wine tasting and sales were going on in a lower area of the building and we filled up the banquet area with our goods for sale.

This is our first time out to do a show since I retired so we had a meager amount of items.  We sat up in the corner next to the window and hung art work.  It was a good time to make new friends and to learn the sales business of this kind of venue.  We do want to continue to do more shows.

This is our table in which we laid out prints that we created for sale.  We bought a special paper for that and the prints turned out great.  My wife sold that Panda to the top right.  It was an original pastel that sold a few years ago to someone in the United States. 

Our neighbor, Cathy, to our right was an artist and photographer. She had some wonderful work.  It was fun to work next to her and to watch her sales craft.  We learned a lot by observing the other sellers.

A fellow teacher friend and her husband had a watercolor painting booth.  They travel in the summers and paint along Lake Superior,  just like we use to do a few years back.

Or neighbor to our left was Mary.  She has a shop in Perry and sells her stained glass work there as well as sells other artist's work on commission.  The had some very pretty, well designed pieces.  I was envious of the buyer of the larger stained glass piece hanging there.

One vendor carved gourds as seen above.  They were stained, polished and carved, not necessarily in that order. They were really fun to see.  Gourd carving has become a serious art form in this country as it has been for years in South America. This is a container she created. Can you see the ginko tree leave patterns on the lid?

The show at the winery was scheduled to be on the same day as the celebration of the opening of a bike trail that runs from Ankeny to Woodward.  The winery was actually about a mile north of the trail on a gravel  road.  They bused willing bikers to the winery for samples and it was not unusual to see bikers in there costumes wandering around and viewing the show. Their normal Saturday customers were there and others came because of the advertised art event by the High Trestle Trail Artist guild.

It was a good day for us and we did make some good sales.  We know more now how to market and sell at shows like this and it was good to get out there and have the experience.

Thanks for stopping by..............