Collina’s

I attended the Artists’ Business Practices educational event sponsored by the Visual Arts Alliance where David Hardaker of Avis Frank Gallery was the host speaker. One of David’s key pieces of advice was to ‘get your art out there’ and he spoke highly of using bars, restaurants, coffee shops, etc as venues.

Being an every-so-often patron of Collina’s Italian Cafe in the Heights, I had already made observations and done a little research on who had their art on their walls.  But being inspired by David I approached the manager when I was in the area and got the low-down. Seeing that there was an open wall I decided to grab it.

There were really just a few conditions:  1) There is no insurance on the pieces (alright I guess); 2) No animals (not a problem); 3) Food & beverage depictions preferred (not a problem!).

So up went my “Spin the bottle” encaustic and below that the accompanying ceramic print.  I took the opportunity to try to make it as easy as possible for anyone to buy these by putting QR codes on the labels linking to PayPal.

And since this was cause for celebration, we had a nice dinner there that evening with friends to mark the occasion.

I’ll see how this goes, and keep my eye out for other good places to ‘get my art out there’.