Blog

In the last few years I have participated in a number of exhibitions. Exhibiting my very first time was my most successful in terms of sales. I sold out. A fluke ? I don’t know ? As I think about my pieces for a exhibition in Leeds I wonder what defines exhibiting success .

In 2012 I became aware that there would be an exhibition entitled “The dyeing of the Sun – a meditation on fire “.  I had never put a piece in an exhibition before. I thought about the exhibition brief and my mind started to think about super novas and the wonderful pictures you see of them.

They  have crazy names like crab nebulae and pelican nebulae. These pictures are produced by assigning different wave lengths to the colours of the visible spectrum. How techy.  Just my thing.  I was hooked on this as a exhibiting subject. But how could I get the twinkley effect into my felt?

My answer was to felt beads into the fabric of the felt. They were first threaded onto feltable wool so that they became an integral part of the piece.

So I made a number of pieces using different super nova and nebulae as my inspiration, and there were two placed into the exhibition.

I was totally surprised when a number of weeks later I found out both pieces had been sold. Who bought them ?   So then I measured my exhibiting success by sales. But I should also measure it my being inspired orginally and developing a new felt making technique .

I was so pleased to be selected to take part in the “From the Earth” exhibition in 2016 with a naturally dyed piece.

This success and seeing all the other naturally dyed pieces being exhibited in the exhibition has spurred me into continuing to progress my natural dyeing work. Two pieces of mine that were naturally dyed were sold from an exhibition in Scarborough this week. Another little boost.

In another recent exhibition I placed very high prices on my precious naturally dyed pieces as I did not want to sell them.  I need to save them to be in another naturally dyed exhibition. So no sales were a success in this instance.

They did look good on the wall.

Looking forward to exhibiting next year at Armley mill, again this is different . It’s a collaborative event with all participants inspired by the venue.  It will be wonderful to see all the different ideas and interpretations.

So for me, I am very lucky that it does not have to be all about sales.  It’s about the taking part, the inspiration process and the impact this has on my future work .

After a few years of experience of exhibiting , my  first experience with 100% sales was definitely a fluke.