BOOOOOOOOOOOOOTH!!!

I've had my booth at the Arts Market for about three weeks now, and it's been an adventure!

First off, remember that giant piece of masonite that would later become my booth's back wall?  At the last minute I decided (well, realized) that the idea of taking it on the subway to save money was totally whackadoo and that it'd be faster and easier just to splurge on a cab (special bonus: I could also fill the cab with more merchandise and tools than The Boy and I could possibly carry with us while manhandling that board everywhere).  But the cab companies I called said that their largest car would accommodate items up to 6' long...and the masonite is 8' long.

"But I was finally ready to stop being cheap!!!!"

Soooooo, The Boy and I ended up taking the masonite on the subway, after all.  And then we walked with it from Pape Station down to Queen Street (I'd guess the distance at two miles?  Maybe?) because we didn't figure they'd let us on the bus with it.  I'd tied rope "handles" through the holes all along the outside edge, which helped a lot, but what really saved our lives in the end (or at least our poor sore hands) was each of us looping a belt through one of the top "handles" and using it like a shoulder strap.  It was still pretty harrowing though because it was a really windy day; on several occasions the wind shoved the masonite around hard enough to almost knock us off our feet.  I was a little afraid The Boy would be carried off entirely, like Piglet in that Winnie the Pooh story about the blustery, blustery day.

But we did make it there in the end.

Arts Market administrator Daniel Cohen is awesome, by the way!  He's happy to help each artist get their area customized the way they want - in my case, he attached some beams to the ceiling girders for me so my wall would hang properly.  Look how pretty!

Since then he and his crew have helped me hang a second wall, too!  I'm grateful for the assistance because even if I didn't need to actually alter the building's ceiling - which I'd never presume to do without asking - I'm terrified of ladders and would never have been able to get up as high as he did without either a) falling or b) fainting (which is still technically a form of falling...).  So now I have two beautiful walls hung up and I didn't even have to risk my cranial integrity. :D

Further adventures: last Sunday I brought a folding chair to the Market and sat by my booth all day, just to see what it's like there when I'm not focused on getting things set up.  Well, okay, I didn't sit all day - I also took some time to walk around and look at everyone else's wares so I can (hopefully) talk intelligently about them if given the chance - I want to support my fellow artisans!

I got to polish up my slightly rusty retail skills* with some customers (mostly by chatting with them about other people's stuff, but still!) and I met some of the other booth-owners, who were all friendly and fun and generally awesome.  One of my immediate neighbours, Marjorie, even told me some cool stuff about needle-felting - an art I've always admired but never knew much about.  It's so cool to be surrounded by such creative talent!  I feel so inspired that I'm thinking of resuming my long-neglected Shoutout Sunday posts so I can write about a different cool market vendor every week!

So yeah.  I think I'm settling into the Arts Market nicely.  It's starting to feel like home. :)

I'll leave you with this picture of me setting up the inaugural wall of my booth.  This is just a bit of a tease - a hint, if you will, of what wonders lie in store.  It's the booth equivalent of cleavage.

Bow-chika-wow-WOW...

*Believe it or not, despite my whole "painful shyness" thing I used to be a retail superstar.  Probably because I'm genuinely interested in helping  people find the perfect item - I don't have it in me to do the skeevy high-pressure thing.  Customers may have bought less with me initially than if I'd pressured them, but they liked me more and tended to give me repeat business so I figure I did better in the long run.  Selling my own products feels more awkward and scary than selling someone else's ever did, but I'll adapt.  Eventually.

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Can't get out to Toronto to buy my work in person?  Fear not - you can always satisfy your cravings for funky, original paintings in my Artfire store!  In fact, I have some stuff on Artfire that's too, shall we say, family unfriendly for the Arts Market, like this "ad" for a sparkly pink lipstick or this pirate flag with a twist, so you get to see a side of me that my in-person customers don't. :)  

Caturday: My Cat the Supergenius

So, my booth at the Arts Market is coming along...although it's not nearly in the state I want it to be, yet.  It's surprisingly slow going when you have to schlep all your tools, supplies, merchandise, etc. on the subway an hour each way.  But in the process of getting things in order, I realized just how smart my cat Birch is.

See, one day I was sitting on the couch making signage for my booth, and I had paper and paint and foamcore board and wire and scissors and god knows what else spread all across the floor at my feet.  Birch - who had been asleep beside me - woke up and went to jump onto the floor, and I quickly stuck my hand out to stop him and said "Dude, don't do this right now, you'll mess up Mommy's supplies."

Birch's expression very clearly said "Well what the fuck am I supposed to do?" so I told him "You can go around, like this" and drew an imaginary line around my heap of art supplies with my finger.  Birch immediately hopped down and followed the exact path I'd mapped out for him to go to the kitchen.  After he'd had a drink of water, he came to the kitchen doorway and paused uncertainly, looking at me like "now what?" so I drew another imaginary line back to the couch and patted the cushion beside me and he followed my unspoken directions again.

At the time, this exchange felt totally natural to me: my cat had an issue, he mentioned it to me, and we negotiated a solution, simple as that.  But when I stopped and thought about it afterward, it occurred to me that these sorts of interspecies conversations are probably not standard.  And I'm no expert on feline psychology, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure expressing the sentiment "tell me how I'm supposed to get to the kitchen with all this crap strewn across the floor" with a single look and understanding the concept of "pointing" pretty much makes Birch the Stephen Hawking of cats, or at least the Carl Sagan.

I used to believe that Birchy isn't very bright.  I mostly based this belief on the fact that he'll do the same annoying thing fifty times in a row, even though I punish him; it seemed like he must be too dumb to comprehend the simple cause-and-effect of "putting my paw on Mommy's dinner plate makes her yell and push me."  Now it's dawning on me that he totally knows he's making me mad, but just doesn't give a shit.

So he's not just a genius, he's an evil genius.  I should probably start locking him out of the bedroom while I sleep.

Tell me about your genius animals!

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You can purchase adorable original paintings of kitties - both evil and non-evil - in my Artfire store.  Go see!

Guess who just became a vendor at the Arts Market?

As some of you may already know, I've signed on for a booth at the Arts Market, an awesome little store on Queen Street East here in Toronto.  I start on Wednesday and have been running around like crazy for the last few days, getting ready.  

Stock is not a problem - I have paintings a-plenty.  Paintings stacked on top of dressers, paintings leaning against the walls, paintings in my dresser drawers.  Frankly, I'm afraid that my next major creative spree will finally bring the art-load to critical mass and The Boy and I will be immobilized by an avalanche of canvases and either starve or be crushed to death and the only way to remove our putrid, stinking corpses from the building will be to lift off the roof and haul us out using a crane.

So that's pretty awesome.

The daunting part, for me, is that my "booth" is really just an empty space - if I want any walls or fixtures in there, I have to install them myself.  I've never had to do anything like that before.  The freedom is exhilarating - I can customize my space however I want, as long as I stay within my designated 4'x4' turf - but boy, it's gonna be a lot of work!  Especially since The Boy and I don't drive, or even really know anyone who does.  We'll have to do a lot of schlepping on public transit, I think.

To give you a better idea of what I'm up against, here's a picture I just took while sitting on the couch and pointing the camera down our front hallway.

Pictured:

a) My childhood toy box with arts-and-crafts detritus and camera tripod on top (this is normally the area where I take product photos).

b) Desk lamp protruding into picture (I use this - and its identical twin - to light product photos).

c) Front door with pretty red tassel thingy that my ex got me when he was travelling in China.

d) Bedroom door.

e) HUGE FUCKING PIECE OF MASONITE STRETCHING FROM MY TOES TO THE HORIZON.

You don't really realize how big 4'x8' is until you have something that size in your apartment and have to choose between letting it block the bathroom doorway or the living room doorway.  It is huge, you guys.  And it will hang from the Arts Market ceiling and act as one of my booth walls.

Oh, funny masonite story (that's gotta be the first time anyone has ever said that phrase...): I was too cheap to bring it home in a cab so I wrapped a chain around the middle of it and lugged it home slung over my shoulder like a purse.   

A purse that weighs around forty pounds and is longer than I am tall.

I live at least half a mile from the home improvement store, by the way.  Maybe more.  Also, my apartment is up two flights of stairs.  Once I reached the landing, it looked as though the masonite wasn't going to fit around the corner (and/or the weight of it would keep dragging me down the same four stairs over and over again as though I were an modern-day Sisyphus with boobs and a kickass haircut) but obviously I was victorious in the end.

If you visit the market and check out my art (and if you live in Toronto, you totally should!  I might even be there in person and we can hang), you can look at my glorious turquoise booth wall and know that the one corner is rounded off like that because it kept dragging on the sidewalk while I was lugging it home.  It can be an inside joke between us.

Anyhoo, it's 10am and I haven't been to bed so I should probably go do that.

p.s. The Boy doesn't know it yet, but I'm gonna try to persuade him to carry the masonite to the market with me on the subway.  I think if there are two of us carrying it and I tie rope "handles" through all the edge-most holes, it might not be so bad.  And it'd save me like $50 in cab fare.  Yes indeed, this is a good and sensible idea.  

Can you help me with some market research?

So, I may be selling my stuff in actual venues soon (like, places that are not online).  And I want to branch out into stuff like postcards or necklaces with my images on them.  But I only have the budget to try out a few designs at first and I'm not sure what to pick!

If you could do me a favour and leave a comment telling me which paintings from my Artfire store you'd most like to see as a postcard or a necklace, that would give me a great place to start!

Thanks. :)

Many of my paintings are postcard-sized already!

I'm in an art show!

If you live in Toronto (or if you happen to be here visiting in March or April), please drop by Wise Daughters Craft Market at 3079B Dundas St West (the gallery space is on the lower level) and check out their Women's Art Show!  A couple of my larger pieces will be on display alongside works from talented artists Yvonne Villeneuve (gorgeous, colourful enameled art panels!), Sara MacHin (luminously beautiful paintings!), and Patricia Phelan (intricately detailed textile art!).

This is an example of Yvonne's enamel work.  If I understand the process correctly, it's made by melting different colours of glass onto metal.  Amazing!

There will also be a group of contributors from Sheena's Place, a centre that offers hope and support to people with eating disorders.  I haven't had the pleasure of seeing their work yet, but I can't wait because I suspect these women have a lot of fascinating things to say!


The opening party will be on Friday, March 2nd from 6pm to 8pm - please drop by to enjoy some snacks and hang out with the artists!  If you can't make it that day, don't worry - the show will stay up until the end of April.  But come on, you know you wanna hang out with us. :D

Caturday: Hoomans Are Weerd.

See the top of Birch's head in that photo up there? That white patch with the little black spot in the middle?  That's his Kissing Bullseye - I smooch him there all the time.  He also has big dark spots on his back and butt that I enjoy pressing on while making different-pitched noises, as though he were a very abstract, jiggly piano.

I can't be the only one who does shit like this.  And because cats (probably?) have no conception at all of what they look like - let alone an understanding of the stupid little games humans play - there must be some very confused kitties out there.

"Why does everyone always poke my nose?"

"Why does everyone always tug my tail?"

"Why does everyone always make MOO sounds at me?"

"Why does everyone always tell me not to invade Poland?"

'Course, Birch's favourite sleeping position lately is cuddled up against me with his front paws stuffed in my mouth*, so I guess we all have our inscrutable compulsions.

*Okay, okay, I never actually let him put his paws in my mouth.  But every night, as I'm trying to fall asleep, he spoons up next to me and then flails repeatedly and insistently at my lower face.  I can only assume that his objective is oral penetration.  Or perhaps nasal penetration: on several occasions, his toe got hooked in my nostril and he stayed like that, purring like a bastard, until I manually disengaged him.

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Speaking of alien behaviour...check out this new painting in my Artfire store!  It's a must-have for science fiction fans, and the shipping is FREE. :)

New Zazzle Valentine's Card: Godzilla in Love

...Well, not the real Godzilla.  Some other kind of huge lizard-beast.  And the beast is in love with a tall building, and trying to give this building a valentine.  It's pretty much the cutest thing ever:

Lizard in Love by SheSaidPop

The inside says "You light up my life!" but you can totally change that if you want - it's customizable. :)

Other captions that I thought about using (and that you can put in there if you like 'em better) include "You can't begin to comprehend the enormity of my love for you" and "With you by my side I feel 1,000 feet tall."

The deep blue night sky and softly glowing moon and buildings on this one make me happy every time I look at it.  I bet those things will make your loved one(s) happy, too!