Feeling alright! Oh yeah,

I caught some bug and was sick for several days, but now I'm back and good as new. I won't bother you with the details as it makes me think of old people at Tim Hortons, having coffee in the morning and each one-upping the other with how sick they've been, their spouse has been, what aches and pains they have, what their cholesterol levels are and slowly and methodically going through the trials and tribulations of their health problems. I want to shout at them, being old doesn't mean that your only adventures left in life are figuring out your medical mysteries. Well, at least they are out having coffee and meeting friends instead of staying stuck in their homes.

Valentine's Day was almost 2 weeks ago. Janne got me a beautiful bouquet of red roses and pink and white tulips ( I adore tulips!) . I know, I know, everybody today says, "Valentine's Day is just commercialism and has nothing to do with love and is just a marketing ploy". Yes, it is but I could say the same thing about Christmas. Not much about Christmas has to do about a savior baby being born or about its pagan origins, but we still give gifts to the people we love simply because, for one moment, we put the brakes on our feet that are always going at 100 miles an hour and we take time to let someone know that we love them. To me, Valentine's Day is a moment like this. Ignoring the holiday to stick it to the industry seems sad to me. It's not about the flowers or the chocolate or the price they cost; it's about the attention. Obviously, it doesn't have to be something that is bought. It can be a poem, a nice supper or a massage. Yes, you can still do wonderful things for your sweetie all year long, but I guarantee you, saying "You already know I love you so let's just ignore this holiday... may get your wife or girlfriend's response of "Yeah, sure, no problem" but actually, most of us would feel let down. What do you expect? " No, you must spoil me today? "

The flowers were beautiful for several days and as they started to wilt, the roses gracefully bowed their heads down low and turned the color of black cherries. The tulips, spread and twisted their petals and I could watch their ballet, a last dance.

My tribute to the dancers:

It's been such a long time.

Wow, I haven't blogged in almost a year.

I've been thinking about it though. So much has happened in the last year for me photography wise and also I think I want to write down some thoughts that come to me just during my daily life that I'm just too darn lazy to write down in a proper journal.

Last year at this time, I was breaking my back trying to sell online and although I had a bit of success, I found it very difficult to get people to actually see what I was offering. It makes me laugh when people complain that someone has hijacked one of their images while I'd be happy that someone just gets to see them.

I put stuff up on etsy and basically worked my butt off re-sizing and creating thumbnails, adding realistic mats and showing how they would look framed. I got a friend and artist from the US to print my images as I hoped to be able to circumvent the expense of postage to the US.

I was lucky to get listed on a blog where people had to vote for your etsy site and during the week that the blog listed my etsy shop, I received several orders. Then nothing. Why, simply because I couldn't be found after that. You are trying to sell the same type of items that hundreds of thousands of different people are trying to sell. Once you upload your new images, within a moment, they are already on page 20 of new arrivals.

When this contest happened, I asked everyone that I knew to visit the blog and if they liked my work the best to vote for me. One of the people that visited and bought something of mine wrote me and asked why I wasn't on the list for artists in the region where I live. I hadn't realized that our town had during the year, opened up a website where we could show our works. So I joined.

A couple of months later, I was contacted to ask if I would participate in an Art festival in our town. It would be a week of visual artists, writers, musicians etc., and it was to be small and intimate, each artist participating 2 hours and showing & explaining their work to the public. It was very last minute. The woman called and said they were sorry to call so late, but due to a mistake they had not contacted me earlier. She called on a Friday afternoon. I was asked if I could participate for both Thursday and Friday evening for a total of 4 hours.

I told her I wasn't sure as I had to check to see if I could get my work printed in time. I got in contact with Brooks (he did my printing) and asked if he could ship me several images ASAP, but he didn't feel comfortable doing it as he didn't know if they would lay in customs and not get here on time. So I decided to print them myself. I ordered the best paper available and a couple portfolios and hoped for the best.

My portfolios didn't arrive on time. I then bought poster board to separate my works and brought them with me like that. I was very nervous. I hadn't really shown my work to anyone in our town; everything I was doing was online. There was another photographer there, a belly dancer, an artist that recycled objects to make different things with them, a sculpture and a jewelry artist. When I got there, I was given a table to set up. I started to set up and then the coordinator came by and asked to see my work and she was amazing. She got me two long tables, each 8 feet long and covered them in black velvet cloth for me to display my works. During the next 2 hours, people came round and talked to me and were so great. I sold 8 large photographs that evening. Mostly winter scenes from the mining village in my town. The nervousness went away and the joy of talking with people and getting their feedback was amazing. I felt they liked my work and they liked me too and it just all felt very good.

The next evening there were not many people. It was extremely hot and muggy and people were not coming into the tent as there was little air. I still sold 4 large photographs that evening and a smaller one to the coordinator. She would have liked to get a bigger one, but since it was taken before I got a better camera, I couldn't upscale it without ruining the quality. She encouraged me to participate in a program our town has to rent out our work for a year and get some exposure. You have to offer up 3-4 items and if accepted, your work is shown at a special evening where companies taking part come and rent work to be placed in a public area. If chosen, you receive 100$ for the year to show each item. When the time is up, the work is returned to you. There are many more art pieces than people renting so there is no guarantee you will be chosen.

I pondered if I wanted to do it or not since I was offering up photographs, they had to be properly matted and framed. You cannot simply drop a standard frame (well you could be that would be stupid) I value what I do and print only with the best materials, archival quality papers, inks etc., and they had to be museum quality. If they were paintings, I could just make sure the edges were painted and be done with but instead I knew it would mean an investment. Hey, if I can't believe in myself, how can I expect anyone else to, right?

So I went to a small gallery/framing shop and asked questions about how much to frame, mat etc., It was not inexpensive but I was interested. I asked if he took artists on consignment and he said, sadly, no. He had a list of artists that he worked with but he couldn't just put anyone's work up as all the artists would want their work displayed. I asked if I could come back with some of my work and we would choose what type of matting and frames I would take . A few days later, I went back (armed with my portfolio that had finally arrived). He took his time and looked through them and to my surprise said "I love these" and would be happy to put work up on consignment. Not only that, he'd frame and mat several pieces and put them on his gallery wall. Wow.. you can't know how good that felt.

So just after this I got 4 pieces chosen to be rented out. I don't know why I get so nervous at these affairs. I guess it is a bit like they are your children and nobody wants to hear anything bad about their children. When you try to show people your voice and vision, it comes from within you. What you show is who you are. I guess deep down we just all want to be loved. The artwork was displayed and people were roaming around looking at them, writing down numbers and choosing what they liked and hoped to get.
There were some really gorgeous pieces. I talked to a few of the artists that had participated in earlier years and everyone was telling me not to get too excited or discouraged, that not many pieces are chosen and many people don't even get a piece chosen at all. That night between almost 40 artists, 120 odd pieces were being shown and only 37 pieces would be taken. The odds were not good. Ouch. After cocktails and the viewing, we all sat down to await the choices. The different companies and corps etc., were chosen at random from a jar and whoever was chosen then gave their first choice.
First choice out of the box was for a Law Firm and they chose a beautiful piece by a guest artist named M. Plante. Beautiful. When the 3rd card was pulled, it was the Toronto Dominion Bank. They chose a piece of mine. I'll upload photos later.

A few more pieces and the Physiotherapy Clinic from our town had chosen again a piece of mine. Wow, I must have been blushing for sure. Then a 3rd piece was chosen to be placed in the offices of the Art Curator for our town. My 4th piece was not chosen but was sold to be put in the private home of the buyer.

It's been a bit of a whirlwind for me. They are not selling like hot cakes, but each month that goes by, I sell a couple of pieces from the Gallery. I've also sold a few pieces to a woman from Ottawa that buys and sells art. Just last month, a piece of mine was bought to be given as a art and culture prize to the Centre de Musique et Dance. Seeing one of my photographs in the newspaper was quite a thrill for me. :-)

I've learned a lot in the past year. I've learned that I shouldn't have waited so long to put myself out there. I've learned that although it is scary, no guts, no glory so I 've learned to trust my gut. Online contests are fun but getting a lousy score on something you feel truly shows your vision is not something to cry about. As an artist, you have to believe in yourself. You may like what I do or you may not, but I don't want to put out what I think you'll like; I want to put out what I love and what I want you to see. That's all I can do. No pretending. No trying to replicate what someone else, that is successful, does. Just me. Just my experimentation with the media to try and show you how I felt at that moment. Not exactly how it looked, no. I want to show you what it was that made me take a picture of it to start with. Not how Jo Blo may have seen it. Not how someone else thinks it should look. I try to find what spoke to me about it and then give it my voice.

More soon I hope.