Studio show and sale 2011

This has been one crazy year-- and the last few months, kind of the icing on the crazy cake.  With unbelieveably mixed feelings, we had to close our wonderful tea house in early October.  The details and "fall-out" of that process continue to unfold with no great clarity....  on the heels of the closure of the shop, my husband began a long stint of working out of town which has him in Baltimore for two week stretches back for a quick weekend, and then off again!  To say that these things have been difficult on us would be a great understatement.....

With Dan out of town, i wondered if i would be able to pull off my - what is now annual- studio show and sale.  This would be the 4th year, and i hated the idea of not doing it.   It seemed like a tragedy to skip it-- it is, after all, really gaining some momentum now.... and my guest list is fairly long-- i didn't want to disappoint!  So, unsure of whether or not i really had enough work to even justify it, and not sure how exactly i would pull it all together, i went kind of nuts getting ready.  My children probably suffered the most for it....  but they are such very good sports... and actually really helped me a lot with cleaning up the house and preparing.

Somehow, it all came together.  As it turns out, it was my best show yet, and i had more than enough work to keep it looking bountiful and well stocked!  I sold lots of work-- many paintings included!  -- and this is really the most wonderful part to me-- the paintings.  because that is what i love the most!!  In the next couple of days, i will start to inventory what is left and begin packing things away.  I have a few "appointments" set up for folks who want to do a bit of last minute shopping, and then i will move forward with putting our house back together and beginning to work on creating more work!  My goal this year is to try to stay ahead of the busiest show seasons.... the key element here is to stay/ get busy working again right now and adding to the existing inventory that i have and just to keep churning it out and stocking it away.  I would really like to avoid the pitfall that seems to trap me every year; where the winter months seem to pass by without my doing a great amount of work and not getting down to business in the studio (in a serious way) until sometime in the spring.  This year i will strive to keep up with production all along, thereby (hopefully) avoiding the summer stress-out that i usually end up in.   we'll see how it goes :o)

Here are a couple of photos from the show before i take it down.  To see more, check out the album that i posted on my facebook business page: chARiTy elise studio show 2011

the last photo shows a couple of the paintings that sold.  so excited to get back to some painting!