Andrea has recently had her first exhibition of her work and she was kind enough take take some photos and write some text about her experiences below. We are thrilled for her and hope this is first of many!
Bank Holiday Monday (May 3 2010) I did my first ever exhibition and thought you might like to share some of my experiences.
It was a local art exhibition held at the church in Hambleton, near Rutland Water and after delivering some leaflets to try and drum up some commission work a lady rang me and asked if I would like to exhibit….fantastic I thought, at least my leaflets had paid off a little (as no one came back to me with any commissions L ).
So, two weeks to prepare I emailed Melanie to ask for any advice she may have to share and had a browse through the forums to pick up a few tips. I’m so glad I put in a good effort to prepare as it made the whole day much more stress free than I anticipated. My partner works in the printing industry and managed to print a large poster displaying some photos of previous work that I had done as I hadn’t got the actual portraits to exhibit.
I gathered about half a dozen portraits that I had done as practice pieces, some business cards and hand out flyers from Vista Print, my photo portfolio, easel and a table cloth and headed off to the exhibition. Just by pure luck I got myself prime position, facing the doorway which was great. The exhibition was a joint event with Hambleton Open Gardens which helped to attract more people, the guys collecting the entrance fees estimated that there was around 600-700 people pass through the gates!
I didn’t get any firm orders for commissions on the day but I had a good number of people take my details and talk very promisingly of ordering portraits for Birthday presents and Christmas presents. The Rutland Times came and took my photo as I was the only one working on the easel (you may recognise its one of Nicks reference photos J J ) so hopefully I might even appear in the local newspaper.
All in all I had a great day, met some lovely people, exchanged details of some other artists and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I would definitely do it again but next time, as Melanie advised, I will take as many portraits as I can to sell on the day rather than just offering to take commissions. Photos of the day below…
Andrea
Well done Andrea, thank you for sharing.
Your exhibition looks very well set out and your work is lovely, hope you get lots of commissions from it!
Well done Andrea, I wish I had known about your exhibition, I would have come along to take a look as I only live about 30 miles away. Good luck with your commisions.
Andrea, your work is wonderful and you were very brave to show it on this exhibition. Good luck!