Thank you to everyone who came out to visit my booth at the Guilford Art Center Craft Expo on July 18-20.  It was great seeing friends and making new acquaintances and customers: your support is greatly appreciated.  This was my first craft show and the overall experience was fantastic; it definitely exceeded all of my expectations in terms of booth traffic, overall exposure, and sales!  The Guilford Art Center really does a nice job organizing the show, the location is ideal, and the weather was perfect!

Although my sales were good, for which I’m very grateful, the thing that still resonates with me the most is the energizing aspect of the show.  This was unexpected as I’m generally introverted by nature, and I anticipated that I would be exhausted after 3 days of meeting & greeting.  But really I had quite the opposite experience.  I met so many wonderful people, both show visitors and artistic craftspeople as well.  It was the first time that I actually felt like I was a part of an artistic community.  Perhaps this was due in part to the novelty of the experience, but I think more to the connections made.

First, I’m energized & inspired by people who enjoy & appreciate the beauty of unique, handcrafted pieces.  This show was my first opportunity to get so much unbiased, concentrated feedback on my work.  It was amazing to me the number of people who noticed and pointed out the small details that I thought, for the most part, would go unnoticed except to me.  That was cool.

Second, I proactively reached out to several artists (woodworkers and non-woodworkers as well) at the show whose work I admire to lay the groundwork for future connection.  Since I’ve been in the educational and corporate worlds all of my adult life, my networks are mainly scientific in nature and I’ve never really made any meaningful artistic connections, so this show was a great start and I can’t wait to participate in more shows!