Tag Archives: art

When Greed Backfires

Posted on by
10

A true story about the benefit of fighting back against lowball offers for the things you want to sell.

Heron
My stepmom made this gorgeous stained glass panel for the door between a bathroom and the pool area.

My stepmom is an accomplished stain glass artist. For years, she produced stain glass artwork ranging from simple window ornaments like angels and snowmen to gorgeous window panes depicting wildlife like herons, dolphins, and horses. She was serious about her art endeavors and, over time, accumulated a massive inventory of raw materials — glass, soldering lead, lead cane — and the patterns, equipment, and supplies she needed to do the work.

Stained Glass Inventory
This is about half the glass she had to sell. To the left, still covered in paper, are at least 50 very large sheets. And then she found a cooler (of all things) filled with more glass sheets. Even the scraps had value — and she had about 50 pounds of that.

She stopped working with glass a few years ago and, since then, all her materials and supplies languished in a shed off the patio and in various storage spaces around the house and garage. When I came by in late autumn on my way south, she talked a bit about selling all this stuff. When I returned in January on my way north, she had taken steps to do just that. She’d called the owner of a stained glass shop about 45 minutes away by car — we’ll call him John — and made arrangements to have him look at it and possibly buy it.

John warned her from the get-go that he would not be offering a lot of money for what she had, but he didn’t give her any dollar amounts. She and my dad decided that they wouldn’t take any offer under $1,000. There was a lot of stuff and it was all in excellent, if not perfect, condition.

The Offer

John drove up one afternoon with an assistant (presumably to help him carry everything out) when my stepmom was out but I was at the house with my Dad.

We showed him the shed full of glass sheets, some of them as large as 24 x 36 inches in size. (This isn’t the stuff you get at Hobby Lobby, folks.) There had to be hundreds of sheets of glass in there in a wide range of colors. He said, “Well, these are the colors your wife wanted,” he told my dad. “That doesn’t mean other people want these colors.”

Cane in Tubes
My stepmom had several PVC tubes of 5-foot lead cane lengths that hung in the garage.

We showed him the PVC tubes full of lead cane hanging from racks in the garage. “No one uses this stuff anymore,” John said.

While not everything else was out (yet), there were bezels and patterns and kits and soldering lead on a table for him to see. He didn’t seem to care about them.

He turned to my dad and said, “I’ll give you $250 for all of it.”

My dad had some trouble keeping his temper. It wasn’t just a lowball offer. It was an insulting offer. I think that at one point he said that he could melt down the lead and sell it as lead bars and get more money than that.

John was not happy. Apparently he thought he’d be able to breeze in and get it all for next to nothing. He said, “I told your wife I wouldn’t offer much. Did you think I would pay retail prices? I came all the way up here to buy this.”

But my dad wasn’t going to budge.

John left. When he got to his car, he called my stepmom. She reported later that he offered her $350 and sounded angry. She said no and apologized for making him come so far for nothing.

John left, but it would not be the last we heard of him.

Facebook Marketplace

Band saw
Need to cut glass? This bandsaw made for glass cutting was in like new condition with all instructions. There was also a grinder and cane stretcher.

As much as I absolutely detest Facebook, I have to admit that its Marketplace feature is a great way to sell stuff. My stepmom is on Facebook and posted a listing there later that day.

The responses started coming immediately. The buyers started coming the next day.

By that time, we’d gathered together everything she had to sell, putting it on folding tables inside the screened-in lanai. The shed with the glass was right there. So when people came, they could browse everything easily. After some uncertainty on how to price the glass, my stepmom settled on a price of $8/square foot. This was a lot cheaper than someplace like Hobby Lobby. And it was also cheaper than what John was selling it for in his shop.

We knew that because lots of the folks that came over the next week or so usually bought their glass at John’s place. Now they were buying it from my stepmom. Apparently, the glass colors she liked were the same glass colors other artists — including the artist’s that shopped at John’s place — liked. (Who knew? LOL.) As for no one using lead cane, well tell that to the woman who bought a whole tube of it — 30+ 5-foot lengths.

Although the first two sales were disappointingly small, when the real artists started coming, the sales got bigger. By the middle of the second day, my stepmom had already taken in more than John had offered for everything — and the shed full of glass looked as full as ever. (I took to yelling out, “Stuff it, John!” every time someone left with glass he could have sold.) Soon she’d taken in $1,000 and there was still a ton of stuff left. Then more than $2,000, with one woman buying $845 worth of glass and lead. Yesterday, my stepmom told me she’d taken in more than $3,000 and there was still stuff left.

Of course, all of these profits could have been John’s if he’d made a reasonable offer for what my stepmom had.

The Best Part

While it’s true that dealing with a constant stream of strangers coming to the house can be a pain in the butt, my stepmom and dad don’t really mind it. My stepmom is retired and is around the house most of the time anyway. My dad works part time and is home in the afternoon. They don’t have to have people coming through the house because everything is setup outside, on the lanai and adjacent shed. There were no weird characters. Everyone was a legitimate glass artist and everyone bought something.

And my stepmom and I think that my dad likes talking to the husbands that sometimes come along on the shopping trip.

My stepmom is happy about how things turned out. Not only is she getting rid of stuff she doesn’t need, but she’s bringing in good money to do it. Because she bought some of the glass so long ago, she’s actually profiting on some of the sales because the going price is higher than what she paid years ago. In the end, she might get back everything she spent on what she’s selling now.

And the buyers? They’re thrilled. They’re getting good quality glass at a good price. They’re chatting with my stepmom and learning from her. She’s giving away a lot of the pattern magazines she’s accumulated.

So it’s a win-win-win — for everyone except cheapskate John.

Stuff it, John!

Exploring Visual Art

Posted on by
3

I begin to explore visual arts: watercolor painting, drawing, and linocut printing.

In my previous post, I shared a lot of info about how I’ve been moving from creating with words to creating with my hands. In a quick review of that post, I realized that I didn’t share much about the art I’ve been exploring.

Painting

Bob at Easel
A publicity photo of Bob Ross.

It started with Bob Ross. You know — the white guy with the afro and soothing voice from the PBS The Joy of Painting series? I don’t recall when I started watching his videos, but I must have seen at least half of them. They’re all on YouTube and if you want something to calm you down or put you to sleep, I highly recommend them.

I wanted to try what he was doing. It looked so easy. But I had no artistic skills. I knew that if I wanted to follow along, I’d need the exact materials and tools he had. But the idea of working with (and cleaning up) oil paints was daunting, especially with so much time spent traveling every year. So I never hunted them down or bought any.

And then I started thinking about watercolor and how easy it was to clean up and how it didn’t matter if the paint dried in your palette. And I started watching YouTube videos about that, starting with videos by Jenna Rainey. I bought her book (as I’m prone to do), Everyday Watercolor, and started following along with her exercises, using her suggestions on brand and colors of paints, brand and sizes of brushes, and brands and types of paper. That’s how I wound up using Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolor paint in tubes, Princeton Heritage Series 4050 Synthetic Sable Brushes, and mostly 100% cotton cold press paper. Not the cheap stuff, but not crazy expensive, either.

It worked out well for a while — until I got bored painting leaves and flowers, which is apparently what she mostly paints. Around this time, I also saw a change in her videos. She’d obviously made the YouTube big time and had money to burn. She had a new studio and new camera set ups and was extremely self-promotional. As a YouTube creator — you know I have a YouTube channel of helicopter videos, right? — I know how they push us to bring in more subscribers, viewers, and money. I find it a turnoff when it goes beyond a certain level. She had gone beyond that level. So I stopped watching her videos.

(I’m so sick of YouTube creators caving to the demands of YouTube and video sponsors.)

I started watching other videos and reading other books and learning from other watercolor artists. Here’s a list if you’re interested:

YouTube Channels

I watch more YouTube than any other “television.” There is so much to learn online there if you are careful about what channels you watch for good info. Some are just plain crap. And I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but if you watch a lot of video, subscribe to Premium. It’s worth it just to get rid of those f*cking mid-roll ads that YouTube demands creators include. You can always fast-forward through the sponsor messages, which are prevalent on popular channels.

Anyway, here are the watercolor artists I watch most on YouTube these days.

  • Paul Clark
    Paul Clark looks like a nice guy, no?

    Paul Clark is a Brit who does a lot of line and wash painting, which I like. He explores other styles, too. He’s got a nice sense of humor and I enjoy watching him paint.

  • Karen Rice Art features another Brit who does a lot of abstract watercolor painting, which I like. She’s very down to earth, with a good attitude.
  • Erin Eno is a watercolor artist with lots of beginner and otherwise very easy tutorials. My only gripe with her is that she has a tendency to overwork her paintings — it’s like she can’t finish. I’ve also seen evidence that she experiments while she records video and has no idea how something will turn out. This occasionally leads her down a bad path, so beware if you follow along!
  • The Mind of Watercolor is Steve Mitchell’s channel. I think it’s more advanced than some of the others, but it does include beginner videos. I like his style, mostly because he’s just explaining things one artist to another.

  • Diane Antone
    Diane Antone. Not sure about the hat.

    Diane Antone Studio is an ambitious channel with lots of new videos every week — she promises a new one every day. These days, many of her videos seem to be the obligatory video created solely to reward a sponsor for sending her product. To make matters worse, I’m pretty sure she’s the one who gets preachy once in a while. (After a while, they all blur together in my mind.)

  • Paul’s Watercolor Studio (which is a new name for that channel) features another Brit named Paul. I don’t like his videos quite as much as Paul Clark’s and I noticed that he’s been doing a lot more promotional stuff than he used to. But he’s still a good resource.

There are a few more I watch once in a while, but I can’t really recommend any of them. So many of them are the same stuff over and over. Or “artists” talking about their life while they put blobs of paint on wet watercolor paper and then doodle on the result with permanent markers. Not something I can really learn from.

Books

I already mentioned one book. Here are a few others I like:

  • Watercolour Book Cover
    Paul Clark’s watercolor book. I bought the ebook version, which is easy enough to consult while I’m painting.

    Watercolour: Techniques and Tutorials for the Complete Beginner by Paul Clark. Yes, the same Paul Clark as the videos. It’s full of practical exercises that build on each other and are not limited to leaves and flowers. I’m working my way through them slowly in a watercolor notebook I have. Oddly, I can hear his voice in my head as I read the text.

  • Watercolor Workbook: 30-Minute Beginner Botanical Projects on Premium Watercolor Paper by Sarah Simon. The best thing about this book is the color mixing recipes with places to paing your own version beside or beneath a sample. It’s challenging to get it just right. The exercises are pretty much the same, requiring you to outline a drawing and then color it in with the colors you mixed for the exercise. The paper is not “premium watercolor paper” by any stretch of the imagination. It’s thick and rough (like cold press) but is definitely not cotton and does not handle water well. I’m about 1/3 done with the exercises but I’m bored with them. Too much like a coloring book.
  • The Complete Watercolorist’s Essential Notebook: A Treasury of Watercolor Secrets Discovered Through Decades of Painting and Experimentation by Gordon MacKenzie is basically a tips book, with a few exercises to illustrate each tip. It’s extremely thorough and has the kind of tips that it could indeed take decades to come up with. It’s the kind of thing I dip into once in a while to fill in the gaps of my knowledge.

The trouble is, watching videos and reading books is not the same as practicing what’s in those videos and books. I got immersed in other things in my life — traveling on my own boat, organizing my last season of flying work, prepping my house and packing for a prolonged trip (with a new house sitter to hold down the fort). I didn’t practice much and, when I did, I didn’t like the results. I was getting seriously discouraged no matter how many videos and books I consumed.

Drawing

And then there’s the simple fact that I can’t draw my way out of a paper bag.

I would never be able to make anything more interesting than blobs of color resembling flowers and trees viewed with my contact lenses out unless I learned how to draw the things I wanted to paint. I love the concept of line and wash — where you take a rough drawing done in permanent ink and add watercolor washes for color, highlights, and shadows — but the only way I could do such a thing was to start with someone else’s picture. That’s fine for practice, but I should be able to do better.

So I started watching videos and reading books about drawing. Here’s what I found helpful so far.

YouTube Videos

Artisto Videos
The Artisto Sketching Course on YouTube covers all the basics.

I’ve only seen one series of videos so far and I admit that I fell asleep watching them so I need to watch them again. It’s the Artisto Sketching Course on YouTube, which I discovered on a slip of paper that came in an Artisto notebook I bought. I can’t say much about it other than the fact that it’s a good primer that covers all the basics. Next time I watch them, I won’t be sitting on the sofa at the end of a long day. I’ll be sitting at a table with a sketchbook and sharp pencils in front of me.

Books

I’ve also looked at a few books, two of which I really like.

Again, watching videos and reading books isn’t enough. I have to practice all this stuff.

Enter Linocut Printing

As if I didn’t have enough art-related hobby stuff to neglect, I got interested in another type of artwork: linocut printing. It started when I watched a YouTube video suggested by The Algorithm: Artist Demonstrating Picasso’s Reduction Linocut Technique. I was fascinated.

Linocut is a method of block printing where you carve a picture or design into a piece of linoleum (or something similar). You then apply ink to the cut surface, put a piece of paper on top of the cut, and rub the paper into the ink (or put it through a press) to transfer the image onto paper. Whatever you carve away has no ink on it so the paper stays white. Whatever remains raised is inked and creates the image. In a reduction linocut, the original linoleum carving is carved away before each color is applied. If you’re having trouble understanding this, do watch the video. It’s very good.

Speedball Kit
The Speedball kit I bought. The only thing missing was drawing skills and paper. I had one of those things.

I probably wouldn’t have gone any farther with this, but I happened to be in Hobby Lobby — which I honestly do hate with a passion but it’s the only art supply store in town now — and they had a Speedball Water-Based Block Printing Starter Set on sale for just $19.99. It had everything I needed (except drawing skills; I wish they came in the box) to create and print a linocut image. I bought it. I carved a simple seascape drawing with a lighthouse and ocean and waves and a crescent moon. It printed okay. (Not good enough to take a picture of since I don’t seem to have any pictures of it and now it’s packed away so I can’t take a picture.)

I was hooked.

Watercolor of Berries

First Berry Print

Colored Berry Print
The inspiration for my berry linocut print (top), my first print with chatter (middle), and my first colored in print (bottom).

What I wanted to do was create single color linocut prints and then use my watercolors to apply color and shading. It would be a line and wash, but the line would be a block print.

But I had a problem. The kit came with water-based ink. Even after it dried, it smeared when it got wet. It would definitely not work with watercolor paints. I needed oil-based ink. That wasn’t available locally, so I bought some online at Dick Blick. I bought Speedball Oil-based Relief Ink because that was the only brand I knew.

Meanwhile, I saw a simple watercolor painting on Mastodon that inspired me. I printed a copy of it and traced it onto Speedball Speedy Carve Block. Since the oil-based ink hadn’t arrived yet — Dick Blick has a great selection, but shipping takes over a week — I printed it with my water-based ink. It came out ok, although there was more “chatter” than I wanted. I’d need to do more carving to get rid of it, but that could wait until the next print, with the oil-based ink.

Although I knew I couldn’t use my watercolor paints to color my print in, I did have oil pastels — we called them “cray-pas” when I was in elementary school and I loved them. I used them to color in the berries as blueberries and apply a gradient background over the chatter. I was pleased with the results. It wasn’t perfect, but at least I liked it. (Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that I’m my worse critic.)

Of course, I needed to learn more. So I started watching more videos and reading more books. And I started learning about more interesting techniques to apply the colors, like chine collé. There was so much to explore!

YouTube Channels

Here are a few very good channels with linocut content worth watching:

  • Handprinted has all kinds of videos about all kinds of printmaking. Very approachable.
  • Laura Boswell Printmaker has more advanced tutorials and demonstrations that really show off what you can do with printmaking.
  • Linocut Elina Artist is wonderful for demonstrations of reduction printing, although she focuses on the actual printing part and not the cutting part. The videos I’ve seen on this channel are not narrated, but they’re fun to watch. I especially like the “Red Rooster” demonstration.

Books

Block Print Magic Book Cover
I absolutely love this book and can’t wait to work through all the exercises.

I only have one book about linocut printing (so far) and I love it. It’s Block Print Magic: The Essential Guide to Designing, Carving, and Taking Your Artwork Further with Relief Printing by Emily Louise Howard. It covers all the basics about tools and materials, explains how to keep cutting tools sharp, and then launches right into several projects, with lots of illustrations and step-by-step instructions.

I’m looking at a few other books online, but I think I’ll hold off until I get to Dick Blick in Washington DC next month where I hope to be able to browse better.

It’s All Packed and Shipped

I can’t do any artwork right now because I’ve packed and shipped all my materials and tools to my boat. After a long, dull summer at home, I’m finally heading back to Do It Now next week. I’m spending these last few days packing and cleaning and getting the house ready for its live-in house sitter. I barely had time to write this blog post, which I started this morning and then finished after a long day mowing my lawn, taking my trash on its 2-mile drive to “the curb,” and prepping my garden for winter.

It’ll take a few days to unpack everything I’ve shipped to the boat — I’m thinking there should be about 20 packages waiting for me when I arrive — and reprovision for the first leg of my trip south for the winter. I’ll be spending more nights at anchorages and should have plenty of time to get some practice in. With luck, I’ll be able to show off more work in a few weeks, assuming there’s work to show. I’ve also decided to do block printed holiday cards this year and will be working on those.

In the meantime, if you have any insight into any of this and want to share some of your favorite resources, please take a moment to leave a comment on this post. I’m really interesting in learning as much as I can from as many good sources as I can. Can you help? Don’t be shy! Leave a comment!

Starting My Watercolor Adventure

Posted on by
4

A video from my personal YouTube channel.

Silly me! I’ve taken up a new hobby: watercolor painting! I started cheap to make sure I liked it before diving in. I do! So I purchased some better quality materials, which just arrived today in time to pack them for my upcoming boat trip.

This video tells you about my progress so far and shows some of the exercises I’ve completed. Then it gives you a tour of the new materials and equipment I’ve acquired. Enjoy!

Words of Wisdom from a Graphic Novel

Posted on by
5

It can be deeper than you might think.

When I was a kid, I glazed over the comic book phase a lot of kids go through. I don’t think I read more than 10 of them. They just weren’t interesting to me. I preferred regular books.


I read The Watchmen at least 15 years ago.

So it’s understandable that I wouldn’t be too interested in graphic novels. In fact, I didn’t know much at all about the genre until years and years ago when I read The Watchmen. This is before it was made into a TV show on HBO (which I still haven’t seen; I’m not an HBO subscriber). It struck me as interesting, but I didn’t really get much out of it. Maybe because I was reading it the way I read books? Fast to get through the story?

I’m older now and I’m more interested in expanding my horizons. That includes what I read. I generally don’t enjoy the latest bestselling literary fiction; I find it dull: too many long, meandering stories that have no satisfying end. The Goldfinch, although beautifully written, was like that. I read a lot of action fiction (think Jack Reacher and Jack Ryan) and mystery fiction (think Dorothy Sayers, Raymond Chandler, and yes, even some Agatha Christie). I’ll read one book by an author and, if I like it, read five more. (That’s what ruined Robert Ludlum’s work for me: his plots are so totally formulaic, which is obvious when you read five of his books in a row.) I also read Star Wars fiction beyond the movies and television shows. I didn’t realize until a few years ago that there are scores of books in the canon and many more that were written before there was a canon.

Anyway, I was reading a book of Neil Gaiman’s essays, The View from the Cheap Seats, and was enjoying the way it made me stop and think about things I’d never really thought about before. I’d read some of Gaiman’s fiction — Coraline, The Graveyard Book, American Gods, The Ocean at the End of the Lane — heck, I didn’t realize I’d read so much of his work until I drew up this little list — but had little knowledge of his graphic novels. But the Sandman series, which is apparently his magnum opus in that genre, was mentioned in one of the essays and I decided to check it out.

I’ll be the first to admit that I avoid buying books these days. It’s embarrassing for a writer to admit, but there it is. I simply read too fast to invest in a book I’m likely to read just once. I’m. not saying I don’t buy books at all — unfortunately, I do. I buy too many books. I have hundreds of books at home, some of which I never even bothered to unpack after my 2013 move from Arizona to Washington. This year, 2022, is the year that I will begin to liquidate my library. (I need to downsize for an upcoming lifestyle change anyway.)

Instead, I use the library where I get books in two formats: ebooks and audio books. I read ebooks in the morning with my coffee and sometimes in the evening before I go to bed. I read audio books while I’m driving or working on jewelry projects in my shop. It’s not unusual for me to be reading two very different kinds of books at the same time. (I’m extremely fond of Random House productions of Star Wars books. Great narrators who voice each character individually and sound effects/music that really dramatize the work.)

I tracked down The Sandman Volume 1 at my library using the Overdrive app and put it on hold. A week later, it was available and I was able to read it on my iPad using a web browser.

I absolutely loved the art that started each chapter in the edition I was reading (which may differ from the edition I linked to above), but really did not like the actual art within the book. But I looked past that and read the story. Or at least tried to. My brain was not accustomed to reading the graphic novel format. I often read things in the wrong order. I found myself missing things because I was too focused on words and not focused enough on the story told in the images that went with them. I got the main gist of the story and enough details to enjoy it — despite the gruesome violence in some parts. But, at the same time, I wasn’t much interested in trying Volume 2 (which my library does not have anyway), especially if the same artists illustrated it in the same style.

The last story in Volume 1 introduced the Sandman’s sister, Death. On a whim, I decided to give Death: The High Cost of Living a try. It was available in my library in a Kindle-compatible format, which turned out to be great for me. This format didn’t show a page at a time unless that’s what you wanted to see. Instead, it used a zoomed in technique to show one or more frames at a time. I’d swipe to expose more frames or zoom to the next frame. It made it impossible for me to read text in the wrong order and it magnified the content so that it was easier for my old eyes to read and enjoy.


Death is portrayed as an attractive goth chick.

I’ll start off by saying that the book is dark. The main character, Death, is portrayed as a friendly, attractive goth girl/woman. (Older than a girl but somehow younger than what you might think as a woman.) The people she meets with in most stories are people who are contemplating suicide or will die shortly or have died or are facing the death of someone else. So the main theme that is explored in various ways is death itself.

As I read, I worried over and over about young people who are contemplating suicide reading this book and thinking its okay. But that’s not the message that comes from it at all.

The book is really about life. That life isn’t always easy. That we make our own lives. That we have to take the bad with the good because the bad helps us see how good the good really is.

The first piece of dialog that really hit me hard is something that I’ve always believed and try so hard to tell other people — especially young people:

… Let me tell you what you get. You get life and breath, a world to walk and a path through the world — and the free will to wander the world as you choose.


Death and Destiny share some good advice with a suicidal teen.

This was said by Death’s brother — I think it was Destiny, although his name was never mentioned — to a teenage boy who had climbed to the top of a Ferris wheel one night to kill himself. He’s depressed because his mom died at the World Trade Center and he blames God for letting it happen. He wants to die so he can ask God why he let it happen. Destiny tells him that God doesn’t answer questions. Later, Death joins them in the panels shown here.

This book is full of stuff like this.

Anyway, I’m enjoying this book a lot more than The Sandman. Part of it is the artwork. Another part is the clear messages it’s sending about life and death.

It’s a quick read for me, especially since I don’t linger much over the artwork. I’m nearly done. But it was on my mind this morning so I thought I’d blog about it.

My Twitter friend Juliana mentioned today how re-reading books at different times of her life bring out different aspects of the books. (I’m paraphrasing a conversation here.) I think she’s right.

I think it’s time to read The Watchmen again, just to see what I missed the first time around.

Welcoming a Vaccine Mandate

Posted on by
6

I share some thoughts about how Washington’s upcoming vaccine mandate may affect my participation in an art show.

Custer's Arts & Crafts
The Christmas Arts & Crafts shows are just two of the shows Jim Custer Enterprises produces.

Yesterday, I got an email from Jim Custer Enterprises, a Spokane-based company that manages arts and crafts and other shows in Washington state. I’m signed up to participate in two of their holiday art shows in November this year. The email was related to a vaccine mandate going into effect on November 15, 2021 for all indoor events to be attended by more than 1,000 people.

My History with Custer Shows

This will be the first time I’m attending any of Custer’s shows. I had originally applied to one of their shows way back in spring of 2019 but my application was late and they were already full. I applied again for the November 2019 shows and was waitlisted. Undaunted, I applied again for their two spring 2020 shows and was accepted. But then Covid came along and both shows were cancelled. The November 2020 shows were also cancelled. So were the spring 2021 shows.

But the November 2021 shows were not cancelled and my previous acceptance got me in without going through the whole reapplication process.

There are two shows — one in Pasco and one in Spokane — and both are indoors. Most of the artists I know in the area are familiar with the shows and several from Leavenworth’s Village Art in the Park, where I sell my jewelry a few times each year, are going to both of them. They say good things. I was slightly concerned when I learned that the shows had an admission fee — it seems to me that less people will attend if they have to pay a fee to get in — but I suspect that if people are willing to pay to attend, they’re also more likely to buy. I’d rather have X number of serious shoppers than X times 5 number of browsers who are coming to waste time (theirs or mine) or look for ideas for their own work.

Because both of the upcoming shows are in November, they are holiday shows full of gift buyers. I’ve been spending the past week making jewelry and, will continue to do so right up until November 3 when I have to pack for the Pasco show. It would be a crying shame if I ran short on inventory and I’ll do everything in my power to prevent that from happening. These two shows are the last two I’ve got scheduled for 2021, so I want them to be successful. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, 2021 is the year that ML Jewelry Designs will finally turn a profit — after years of investing in equipment, materials, and education and taking a big hit from Covid closures in 2020. These shows will be my last chance to make that profit big.

The Vaccine Mandate

The email message I got from Custer talked about a vaccine mandate that I was not aware of that takes effect on November 15 and how it may affect the Spokane show. It started like this:

We are sending this email today to bring you updated Covid-19 protocol information. Last Friday, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee announced a new Vaccine Mandate that is going into effect on November 15, 2021. If you are an artist in both our Pasco and Spokane Shows, this mandate only applies to the Spokane Show since it will take place four days after the mandate goes into effect.

It then went on to provide exact wording from the mandate:

Everyone over the age of 12 must show proof of Covid-19 vaccination (verified by CDC record cards, photo of the card, printed certificate or screenshot from MyIRMobile.com or other immunization records from health providers) to attend the event OR show proof of a negative Covid-19 test taken within 72 hours of the event.

It then explained how the mandate affected the show and reminded artists that if they have not been vaccinated yet, their only current option is the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, since there isn’t enough time now to get both shots of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines prior to the show. If the artist did not want to get the vaccine at all, he/she would have a very narrow window to get the Covid-19 test and prove negative results prior to the show — and testing is backed up in Spokane right now.

(Honestly, I think that anyone who makes a living participating in art shows who is not vaccinated is a total idiot — how can they risk regular exposure to so many people without protection? But hey, I believe in science and I think the “personal freedom” argument is a lot of bullshit fed to gullible people incapable of their own thought by manipulative “conservatives” in their never-ending efforts to divide Americans into Us vs. Them.)

Expected Trouble

The email includes the following, which also came to my mind:

If you are wondering how this will affect attendance, we are in the same boat. There will be people who will be frustrated and upset by the mandate who will make it political. There will also be people who will feel more comfortable attending because of the mandate. At this point, we are so happy to be having any show that we will take what we can get! Truly, it’s better than last year when there was no show at all. The people that will be there, will be ready to buy! There’s no doubt about that.

First of all, I have to admit that I will feel a lot more comfortable participating in a show with this new mandate in effect. I had the less effective J&J vaccine — which was the only one available when I went to be vaccinated at the end of March — and am not sure if I’ll be able to get a booster prior to the show. I’m terrified of becoming a breakthrough case — two of my vaccinated neighbors got it from a vaccinated employee who tested negative three times before a positive test result. That tells me that I can’t put 100% of my faith in either vaccines or tests. Despite that, I feel a lot safer knowing that everyone attending will either be vaccinated or have gotten a negative test. While this does not eliminate the risk (in my mind, anyway), it does greatly reduce it.

I should also reiterate here that I’m not worried about dying of Covid-19. I’m worried about long-term effects that could possibly reduce my quality of living for the rest of my life.

Unfortunately, both shows — Pasco (to be held pre-mandate) and Spokane — are in the red side of our blue state. That means many folks have bought into the “conservative freedoms” argument for not getting vaccinated. Never mind that vaccines for polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, shingles, tetanus, and flu have been either required or widely available and used with little or no side effects for decades. These people have been convinced that their personal freedoms are being threatened by Covid-19 vaccine mandates and that it’s their “God-given Constitutional right” to refuse a vaccine that has the potential to save their life or at least help them avoid a serious, contagious virus.

So I suspect there will be a lot of push back including, but not limited to arguments at the gate. Violence would not surprise me. I hope Custer hires a good security outfit.

I also suspect that folks will be using — or trying to use — fake vaccine cards. I sure hope they’re caught. I believe they should be arrested, but I suspect they’ll just be turned away. If they’re caught at all.

Will folks who, like me, are worried about Covid be more likely to attend? I sure hope so. I’d honestly prefer selling my work to like-minded folks. I’m sick and tired of listening to anti-vax whiners moaning about their freedoms while putting my health at risk.

Meanwhile, I have to admit to hoping that a few angry, idiotic artists back out of the show in some sort of protest. First of all, I don’t need two work among people like that. And second, well, less competition.

It’s Business

In the meantime, I have a lot of sympathy and respect for the folks at Jim Custer Enterprises. These people make their living producing shows and everyone I’ve spoken to about them agrees that they are good people. I can imagine how having to cancel shows for a year and a half must have affected their business. No income for that period! It’s a wonder they’ve been able to survive at all.

It’s this closing paragraph that sums up their situation to me (emphasis added):

As we wrote in our cover letter when you first applied, flexibility is the key to your successful show participation this year. We are in a global pandemic and it is not over. Yes, everyone has an opinion about it. However, as business owners of a company who brings together large numbers of people, we will continue to trust the science and comply with whatever mandates will help the shows go on.

No matter how the show turns out, it’s a real pleasure to do business with an organization that not only thinks like this, but isn’t afraid to make their thoughts on the matter public.