Going big by thinking small

So you may remember I was headed here last weekend...

to sign and sell le book, Mixed Media Dollhouses. (I'm a major contributor, doncha know.) And I have to tell you, I was kind of dragging myself to do it. Not because I didn't want to go, but because I was sure I hadn't done enough to get ready for it. No one's going to come to the show because it'll be too rainy/too sunny...

everyone will be setting up for nothing....

 no one will get what my art and the book is about, except the organizers Karen and Sue...

... everyone I've invited will have better things to do.

But everyone proved my inner critic wrong. Wrong wrong wrong!

My friends Don and Monikka came to see my first demo/mini-lecture -- which is saying something, because they had to find somewhere to stash their three daughters first. (I kid. Sort of. One's a newly-minted teenager, the next "has a hollow leg" as my dad used to say and is constantly starving, and the third is training herself to be a ninja.)

And guess who came all the way from Spokane? My Artfest buddy Nikki! 

And she dug around her purse to show me her portable art kit and journal. A spot of Artfest bonding, right there.

Many of my art friends teach, but I haven't. So it was a nice surprise to have people willingly stand for a half-hour to listen about my ideas on incorporating personal photos and items from your stash in your art. One woman told me my mind goes to weird places, but that she liked how my mind worked. And the woman next to her agreed.

I know I gave at least a couple of people some interesting ideas. The woman who bought the last copy was bubbling over with plans on how she'd use the book. I was told six or seven people specifically asked when I'd be presenting. And Lori Hall, my vendor neighbor at the show, said she thought artists like me are key to bringing in new people to the miniatures circuit. (Lori and her husband have been making miniatures since the 1970s.)

Huh. Someone so immersed in this scene thinks someone new like me is not only interesting, but even vital to their future. That kind of encouragement silences my inner critic quite nicely. It might not look like it from the outside, but having this experience under my belt feels like I'm going big with my goals.