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Announcing my Spring 2015 World Tour

World-Tour

I am delighted to announce my first ever World Tour!

OK, maybe it’s just a Texas tour with a vacation to Mexico at the end, but hey, I’m living a dream here. I am excited to have been accepted into the following art fairs/festivals:

  • March 7: First Saturday Arts Market / Houston Heights
    This is the hip/funky monthly arts market very near to my home and the place that I first erected my white tent.
  • March 27-29: Bayou City Arts Festival / Houston’s Memorial Park
    This is the big one. This was my stretch goal/aspiration when I transitioned from corporate america to full-time artist, so I am especially thrilled to be participating.
  • April 11: Midtown Art in the Park / Houston’s Midtown
    This is another local art fair close to my home held annually which I am looking forward to.
  • April 18-19: Buda Fine Art Express / Buda, TX
    Buda is a small town on the outskirts of Austin. This will be my very first away-trip so this will involve extra planning/logistics.
  • April 25: King William Fair / San Antonio, TX
    This is a one-day art fair held the final weekend of Fiesta. I’m expecting friends and family to meet us there for this event which should be very fun.
  • May 8-10: Allen Arts Festival / Allen, TX
    I applied for this show because it is Mother’s Day weekend and my dear mother lives a half-mile away from this venue. Allen is a growing expanse north of Dallas.
  • May 16-17: Texas Gulf Coast Arts Festival / Clute, TX
    This is the first year for this event, so I am looking forward to a lot of pent up demand for art.
  • May 20-26: Los Muertos Beach / Puerto Vallarta, MX
    Look for me sitting on the beach, under a palapa at Green Chairs, drinking a margarita and watching the waves crash. I will have some art tiles with me, so in response to all the local vendors who traverse the beach selling anything and everything, I will say “Tus cosas son hermosas, pero me gustaría que usted compre mi arte”

So I invite you to look for me under my white tent (or brown palapa)! Links to the art festivals’ webpages are on my Exhibition Schedule page.

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Of candlelights and gaslamps

I am thrilled to have been invited by the Bayou City Art Festival to participate in their Candlelight Art Market in collaboration with The Heritage Society’s 52nd Annual Candlelight Tour in downtown Houston Dec 13 and 14.

encaustic-art-trees-gaslamp-joel-anderson
“Esplanade”, (encaustic, 11″ x 15″), SOLD

My “Esplanade” encaustic was one of the images I submitted for jurying for the 2015 Bayou City Art Festival in Memorial Park.  This apparently caught the right peoples’ eyes and the invitation followed.

Sorry folks, but “Esplanade” sold in early September, so I won’t have it to exhibit, but I will have 6″x6″ ceramic tile prints available for $20.  I also created a variation piece “Gaslamp glow” (encaustic 11″x15″) which I will have.

encaustic-art-trees-gaslamp-glow-joel-anderson
“Gaslamp glow”, (encaustic, 11″ x 15″), SOLD

IMG_0580FYI, the images of the gaslamp are from the one I have in my front yard. Here is the original photo on the right.

 

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Art Marathon

Sept 6 will be a big day.  I have the First Saturday Arts Market from 11 to 6, then that evening I am in the group show Fall 2014 Kaleidoscope at Heights Art Studios & Gallery.

The First Saturday Arts Market was the first thing I applied to back in April of this year.  I’d wanted to be in the June event but September was the first available open spot for me other than July when I’d be on vacation.  Looking back, there is no way I would have had my tent and display ready, much less any reasonable inventory to sell.

That day will be a test of a number of things:

  • Do I have everything on my art fair take-along list?
  • How well does the outdoor exhibition gallery (aka big tent) set up and tear down?
  • Does everything fit into my car?
  • How do my encaustics handle the peak summer heat?
  • What art pieces interest people, and which don’t?
  • What’s the reaction to my pricing?

The preparations for this have been a really fun experience.  Not wanting to pay big bucks for professional display panels that wouldn’t fit into my car, I opted to make my own.  While I think they look pretty good, I way underestimated the time and effort this activity took.  And everything has been a new adventure:

  • Researching & designing my own label/price tags
  • Settling on standard pricing
  • Inventory control
  • Planning exhibit arrangement
  • Publicity

The experience of getting my tent together also helped me achieve my major goal of making my application for the Bayou City Art Festival next March.  The submission deadline was this week and they needed five photos:  four of representative artwork, and the fifth being of your booth as you would be displaying it seven months from now.  The art photos I had, but for the booth shot I needed to have all the display panels done, and enough inventory on-hand to fill up the walls.  I’ll find out in October if I made it or not.  But in the meantime I will have gained the outdoor exhibit experience from the Heights art market.

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Artistic debut weekend – WOW!

In a nutshell:  Friday night I had one piece in Houston’s Lawndale Art Center Big Show which I sold within 5 minutes of my walking in the door. Two more pieces were at Archway Gallery‘s 6th juried exhibition Saturday night, one was already sold by the time I got there for the reception, and the other took 3rd place.  I could not be more thrilled!

“Song of the whippoorwill” my very first showing, with my mentor Salli Babbitt at Lawndale Art Center’s Big Show
“Mannequins at the leatherbar: It’s starting to get crowded”, at Archway Gallery’s 6th Juried Exhibition benefiting Houston Audubon (Juror: Mark Larsen)
“Winged Guilloché” at Archway Gallery’s 6th Juried Exhibition. 3rd place!!!

And here is the YouTube video of Archway Gallery’s jurist Mark Larsen announcing my win:

 

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My artistic debut

Via the Visual Arts Alliance I learned of the Lawndale Art Center’s call for entries.  Figuring it was worth a shot I paid my $30 entry fee and submitted three diverse pieces.

Their entry form said that if you hadn’t been called by 6pm Friday that you had not been selected.  By 5:20 I was already moving into the grief ‘acceptance’ stage, but 10 minutes later I got the call:  I was in!!!!   Whoop!  Whoop!

Of the three I submitted, the jurist selected what I considered my strongest piece, based on feedback from the VAA.

So my artistic debut will be at the Lawndale Art Center’s BIG SHOW Opening Reception on Friday, July 11, 2014 at 6:30pm.

Dear Joel,

Congratulations on having your work selected for The Big Show at Lawndale Art Center. We received 981 submissions by 382 artists. Guest Erin Elder, Visual Art Director of Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, selected 115 works by 106 artists for this year’s exhibition and that includes you!