Studio Tour...... for another year

Well, the Oak Bay Artist Studio Tour is over for another year. I loved every minute of it and hope that I'll be able to do it again next year! Since we just returned from Italy 5 days before the tour, I didnt get any new work finished in those few days......but spent the time cleaning and sorting and arranging all the furniture and art.

 Visitors mentioned how tidy and well kept my studio is, but they didnt see the piles of stuff at the back of the basement. Today I'll be pulling that stuff back in and it'll look like a messy working studio once again!

I love being able to talk about my work and how its created, most visitors are curious about the products I use and the stages of development, they are surprised when I tell them that all the fabric I use in my work has started out as plain white or black and I've dyed, painted, and printed on it. I see these tours as an educational time for the visors and they are always appreciative that I spend time talking about the process as well as the end results.

It's interesting to see which pieces engage the viewers, it's often either my most representational or my most abstract, not so much the art in between. As I'm working more and more to the abstract, I wonder what their responses will be then. My plan for next years tour is to have all completely new work in two very different styles that I've been developing......we shall see what happens!

I was tickled that one person came in because her friend in Ontario gets my newsletter and told her about it. Another visitor recognized a piece from the Sooke Fine Arts Show and another person asked where "I was represented", meaning what galleries took my work.....oh, I wish!

I had a display of samples for the workshops I'll be teaching here early next year and got some good responses from those. Workshops always fill for me, but its nice to start early to promote them.
So those are some observations, the hot apple cider and shortbread cookies were a hit too!
And now....back to work!