I Did It & It Feels Great!

About two months ago, I promised myself that I was going to be completely ready for our Spring Artists’ Workshop Show a full ten days ahead of time. That would be today!

And as of last weekend, all the works of art are finished, framed or mounted, labeled, listed, priced, grouped to show, and packed in boxes ready to tote to the show along with the tools and equipment to set things up.

Trust me, this is an unusual situation. More than once I have found myself working on the last of the finishing touches in the final hours leading up to an event – fingers crossed that all would be ready and stressing myself out just a tad in the process.

Why so different this time? Mainly because I was motivated by a very strong ‘why’. You see a couple of months ago, our daughter asked if we might be available to look after our grandsons while she and her husband did some traveling. Of course, in normal circumstances we would love nothing better than to spend a few days with the boys. The only hitch was that the weekend in question was the weekend immediately before our show. With travel days for us to get there and back, and for them to get to their destination and back, the time stretched to seven days.

After contemplating the invitation for a bit, it was clear that if I said ‘no’, I would be filled with regrets when the time rolled around – disappointed about not seeing the boys and feeling like I had let our daughter down. I remember, from our own busy child rearing days how much we appreciated our parents filling in to allow us to get away for some much-needed couple time.

I decided I wanted to say ‘yes’. I also decided that since we would be returning home with just a couple of days to spare before the show, that the only way I could make it work in a low stress way was to be completely ready before we even left town.

Hence, April 10^th became the new virtual show date. And I was determined to be ready.

If you’ve never done the work to put a show together, you might think the toughest challenge is to create the work. But seriously, that is only one part of the equation. The list of tasks involved in pulling a collection together to show is daunting.

Just to give you a taste, I’ve included a few of the post-it-note mind maps tacked to my studio wall –  created two months ago and worked to completion. The individual notes don’t tell the whole story.

One task is simply listed as ‘finish the edges of the cradle-boards’. Thirteen paintings needed this treatment. Seems easy enough, right? But this one job ended up requiring three different trips to a paint store, testing two different types of varnishes, and applying four finishing coats with several hours of drying time and sanding between coats before I ended up with a finish that satisfied me.  Granted, there was some trial and error involved, and I took notes on decisions and choices I made that will streamline this in the future, but it still took a significant amount of time. And that was just one task.

I’ve still got some work to do on the promotion end of things – blog posts, email invitations, social media posts. Some of that will happen today (like this) and some will be set up to release over the next week or so.

A side bonus in working on this accelerated schedule is that it allowed me the freedom to say yes to a couple of other invitations that popped up – a speaking engagement two days before the show and an invitation to lunch with an out-of-town friend the day before the show. In previous circumstances, I would have said no to both.

So to circle back around to where I started here. The prep work to mount the show is done – ten days ahead of time – and it feels great! Maybe I can register how good this feels and put this strategy to work around other events in the future.

PS – Hope you can come and join us to enjoy the results of the creative labors of all the members of our Artists’ Workshop group. The event will be held at Grace Westminster Church (505 10^th St E in Saskatoon) on Friday, April 21 (5-8), Saturday, April 22 (10-4) and Sunday, April 23 (12-4).