After an exhausting round-trip to Ohio this past weekend we are back and back to work.

The show was huge fun, with lots and lots of people (many of who were decked out in support of Ohio State – Columbus being a college town after all) taking in the sights and sounds, and even smells – of the fair.  Speaking of smells, our booth was located almost equidistant from the Bar-b-Que concession and the kettle corn seller.  The weekend was like getting caught in an olfactory tug of war. One nostril pulled for the strong, smoky BBQ, the other for the warm melodious scent of the popcorn.   I didn’t get a chance to try the ‘Que, but the kettle corn – being easier to eat surreptitiously in the booth- was a hit with Tricia and I.

Before I get to the pictures from the show I want to take a second to let you know about an event going on right now over at Traditional Folk Art.com.  We artists are having a sale to benefit the American Cancer Society, and I want to make sure my readers (all two of you) are aware.  Here is the relevant graphic:

Click Here: if you want to see the work on sale.

Make sure you head over there and take and look.  And if one of the original pieces for sale strikes your fancy – so much the better.

Now, back to the topic at hand – the Country Living Fair.  It was great fun, and one of the best run shows (thanks Stella Shows!) that we’ve ever done.  Not only was it easy to set up and tear down, but having it in Ohio Village, coupled with the decorating talents of Country Living Magazine made it a visual treat.  So not only were we tempted by the delicious smells floating around the village, but the displays and booths were equally appealing to the eyes.

The only drawback, for us anyway, is that with a large crowd you don’t get the opportunity to interact with customers the way a small, intimate show will allow you.  So there were probably dozens of customers who had questions or comments but were unable to communicate them due to the crush of buyers looking over our booth.  But never fear – the WEB is here!  If you missed the chance this past weekend you can make up for it now by looking over the show pictures and emailing us with any questions you might have.  Plus, there is a lot more to see on the web than there was in person at the show.

So without any additional prattling on by me, here are the pics!

The other unusual thing about the show was the number of visitors to our booth who asked to have their picture taken with our Headless Horseman.  The first few were a novelty.  The next batch was a bit unusual.  The remaining people posing just stumped us; until a nice lady asked to shoot an image of it, then explained that on Halloween the Ohio Village has a program about the Headless Horseman, based on Washington Irving’s classic story.  So unwittingly we had displayed a piece that fit into the local narrative – completely unconsciously.  But what was so special about the explanation was that the kind woman explaining was the actual  ‘headless’ rider in the pageant!  If memory serves I think she was eating kettle corn when she told us.  At least my nose thinks so.

Jac

Howdy from Cloumbus Ohio!  We’re here exhibiting at the 2009 Country Living show at the beautiful Ohio village.

Before we got here we stopped in at Around the Bend Willow furniture for a brief respite before the craziness of set-up and show started.  While there I saw this:

This may look like a crow silouhetted against the early morning sky – and it is.  It’s just nt a real crow.   This is a special flying crow we had the last time we visited Ohio for a show.  Rounabouts 2004 or so.  The reason this is so remarkable is that I had completely forgotten about it!  It was ‘sold’ to our friends and put up on their potting shed and put out of our minds.  I didn’t even get an image of it before it was sold.  It was a real surprise to see it sitting calmly up there, waiting for me to finally make up for lost time and shoot a pic of it!

Here’s another pic, this one a quick cell-phone job from setup day at the show.

Once I get back to the studio I’ll upload more images from the show.  Time is short here in Columbus and bandwidth is slim, and I want to save what little is left to update some client’s commission pages.  So enjoy the two pics and sit calmly and wait for the rest.  It won’t be long.  I promise!

Jac

What a washout!  Labor day and today were just chock full of liquid sunshine.  Today didn’t bother me too much since it was a normal workday here in the studio, but yesterday was a bummer.  It was our last day in Nags Head, NC (that’s the Outer Banks of NC for those of you unfamiliar with the town’s location or moniker) and being our last day it would’ve been nice to get to the beach one last time before summer retreats behind the steady advance of crisp frost and colorful leaves.  Hopefully there will still be a few beach days this fall, but with our show schedule this fall spare time here on the farm is few and far away.  But we can hope.

Speaking of schedules: I’ve started to add our fall schedule to the News Blog page of the site.  Visit there for all the current info about dates, times and maybe even some promotions.  Since we added the schedule we moved the last show’s images away, but I’m posting them here for continuities sake.

These are the images from the Small Friends Show on Nantucket this past July.  I’ll be adding individual images into their respective categories as time permits.

So what did we do on a rainy back-to-school-back-to-work Tuesday?  We created stuff!  Specifically we finished up this custom commissioned 40″ Codfish (say that three times fast!)

And we assembled and shipped this piece for a client in Canada:

It is a wall mounted piece of driftwood with shorebirds perched on it – obviously.  But this one was special due to the absolutely perfect way the driftwood lined up on the wall.  It made it easy to orient and attach the birds, and is balanced so well it hangs with a single corrugated picture hanger.  This is a special work, since I doubt we will be able to find driftwood exactly like it again.  But finding new and unique bases for this type of piece is what keeps out work interesting, and hopefully keeps you, faithful reader and customer, coming back.

I’ll do some more updates later, but the rain has slacked off a bit, and it’s time to go and check the rain gauge to see if it’s hit ‘biblical’ yet.

Thanks for reading.

Jac

…to point out that it technically wasn’t two posts in a row to end out the month of August.

Seems that I started a post, realized that the new Flickr plugin wasn’t working properly and bailed out on it, but only after having published it to see if it was in fact working correctly.  Once the plugin was working I went back to it.  Then  I just edited the previous post, which was earlier in time.  So from my point of view I did two new posts in as many days, but the website didn’t show that.

Oh well.  All that really matters is that everything still works, and we’re starting to seriously plow through the image archives and start uploading and adding images en mass to this section (the blog) and in turn add individual images to their respective categories in the main section of the website.

Here are the most recent uploads to our Flickr page, soon to be divided and conquered to their proper individual pages – enjoy

The next thing to look out for will be a new newsletter, as well as a show schedule page.

Due to the downright weird year we’ve been having (weird in the sense that there’s a large recession bearing down on all of us!) we scheduled more shows this fall than normal.  Unfortunate for us, but good for you, the public.  Since we did this foolhardy thing we plan to make the most of it and try and see as many customers and clients as possible between now and Christmas.  So keep an eye out for the schedule, and don’t be surprised if we show up at an event near you!

Jac