So I just finished two days in Georgetown at their annual Christmas Stroll. It rained. For the second time in – what’s it been, SIX months – it rained. It could have been worse, for sure, but the crowds from last year definitely weren’t the same.
A fellow vendor kept popping by here and there to see how things were going. According to him, his hand-cut stone crosses (the only things he had for sale, and starting at $30) were flying so fast, there was a line for people to check out. By midday Saturday he claims to have sold between 100 and 120. WHAT?! The most I could get from my shoppers was a smile and “oooh, this is really pretty stuff!” before they meandered away to another booth. The cheeseball woman next to me and the bedsheet lady across from me were doing great from what I could see and hear. It was only Friday night when I figured I’d made another mistake by trying my luck at a festival.
In business, success is generally defined by how much money you make. Or how many people buy/use your product. In the art business, that’s the wroooong way to think; sure, a successful artist could be selling like crazy with paintings going for thousands of dollars. Then again, Vincent Van Gogh only became famous after his death. It’s tough to sell art, and very easy to consider it a personal failure if your art doesn’t sell, no matter where the venue might be.
So Friday I was deeply discouraged. I knew I had to go back for a full day on Saturday and tried to keep my hopes up about the weather and about people’s moods. Turns out, the weather was better than expected. And while people kept walking past, smiling vaguely as they quickly looked on to other things, something caught my attention. Nearly every child that passed by either opened his eyes up wide, gasped, pointed, giggled, shouted some version of “wow!” – and often it was all of the above. The kids were fascinated by what was in my booth. They loved pointing out all the different piggy banks to their parents, laughing at the props and glam each one had. And the bright colors of my glass paintings drew them forward almost in a trance.
I LOVED to watch their reactions. Because those are MY reactions when I see something I like. Towards the end of Saturday, though I hadn’t sold much to the grown-ups, I felt like a huge success with the children. We all know, kids are honest. If they don’t like something or someone, they’ll just outright say it. If it doesn’t do anything for them, they ignore it. And if they like it, they’ll come closer, smile, want to interact. So many kids today wanted so badly to have the stuff in my booth. I’m such a kid myself, and I related to their mindset so much better, that it’s kind of an honor to make something that fascinates a kid.
One girl even said (to her friend, not to me), “This is the coolest booth in this place.” Now that’s awesome. I left without making a “profit” in grown-up terms, but the faces on all those kids made me remember – that stuff doesn’t really matter anyway.
bal paisley alphabet series, based on ancient illuminated manuscripts. I’ve always beed so entranced by the huge, florid letters at the beginning of a page. I’m sure that when I draw, there’s some unconscious inspiration coming from there too, if only that I aspire for my work to be as beautiful. I’ve done letters as a part of a larger piece, but never really on their own. So there ya go – something new stemming from something old. 
