The Rollercoaster & the Dream
This past weekend truly surprised me in more ways than one.
I attended my second Blueberry Arts Festival in Ely, MN. This is a big show. It’s 3 days, which always feels like a bit of a marathon, and last year, my first year, I won first place in the arts category (the blue ribbon still hangs proudly in my studio), and my highest sales were at this event last year, so I went into this weekend with really high hopes.
If you were in Minnesota over the past few days, you know it’s been almost unseasonably hot, especially up north. We had highs in the low to mid-90’s with very high humidity. Not something many of us “northerners” are accustomed to. So it didn’t surprise me when at the hottest point of the day, there were less and less people walking around the festival.
Selling art at shows like this is a funny thing. It’s really easy to look around at the amount of people and notice your mood begin to shift with the waxing and waning of customer interaction. I vowed to myself sometime at the end of last summer that I would remember that this waxing and waning is all part of the artist’s journey and it isn’t worth my energy to worry about such a fickle thing.
But, it can be difficult to not get discouraged from time to time. I’m human, disappointment is part of life, and being an artist means that in exchange for pursuing my passion and getting to live my dream, I don’t always have predictable income. So when the festival died down quite a bit midday on Saturday, I found myself feeling a little down about the decline in people coming to visit my booth.
Fast-forward to Sunday, midday. The morning had been relatively steady, with quite a handful of people saying, “we’re going to swing back on our way out.” So I waited hopefully for those who seemed interested in taking a piece of my art home with them.
I then get a text on my phone from the festival director saying that we are closing two hours early because of a pending storm. I panicked. People said they were going to come back, what if they miss me!?
Just as I stopped myself to take a deep breath and calm my thoughts, person, after person, after person, starting piling into my booth. Leaving with prints, with packs of greeting cards, with bubble-wrapped original paintings.
I ended up making the majority of my sales literally in the last two hours of this three-day festival. What a rush.
My point in all of this? The life I choose to live every day naturally puts me on a bit of an emotional roller coaster, and I have to remind myself to get off of that roller coaster to save my own sanity at times. I have felt more feelings in my short time of creating and selling my art than ever in my life, it scares me most of the time, I am constantly pushing myself out of my comfort zone and…
I wouldn’t have it any other way. Truly. Making art and sharing it with you has made me that happiest woman in the world.
Thank you to the people of Ely, MN for surprising me in the greatest way possible. Especially to those of you who showed up Sunday afternoon. Watching you walk away with my art tucked under your arms brings tears to my eyes every time.
I spent the day today framing and matting a few new pieces that I am so excited to share with you… Head over to my shop to take a peek!
