Stone Arch Festival of the Arts weekend

Another huge event for me this year was being chosen to do the Stone Arch Festival of the Arts poster and exhibiting as a guest at the Festival on Father's Day weekend.  For those of you who don't know, there are 250 artists exhibiting, bands perform, food is served and thousands of visitors flock to the site along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.  It was the biggest event I've ever shown my work at and I had a prime location at the center of the activity.

Artistic Indulgence who's booth was next to mine, helped me to 'waterproof' the tent on Friday which proved quite useful for the heavy rain that fell during the event.  I'm grateful for their assistance or it could have been a disaster with all my prints and cards.

Saturday started off with a bang. People, kids, dogs, (lots of dogs) came by to check out my poster and the art I brought. I brought along my sample pencil drawings, scans and explained how I build my shapes and fill them with color in layers in Illustrator.  The poster was printed by Ambassador Press in Minneapolis who also prints all my cards.  They did a fantastic job with the quality and the colors.  I signed and numbered 100 limited edition posters which were sold at Artistic Indulgence's booth.  It was exciting to hear people tell me how much they loved the poster. I told people I created a poster that I would want to hang in my house.

I loved meeting all the people including some of my art college friends, business friends and tons of new contacts. I liked the lady who bought a Columbine print because she had a beautiful columbine tattoo on her shoulder, the Concordia grads who bought my corn cards because they are 'cobbers', the people who love 'poppies' and 'ginkgo' art, and was surprised when people wanted to buy my vinyl decorative banners hanging in my booth.  It was fun to tell people how I make patterns of my art and create fabric thru Spoonflower, how I work with Rug Rats to make my rugs and evolved my Etsy shop into a growing business in two years. I'm a long time freelance illustrator but my personal Arts & Crafts inspired art is breathing new life into my career.

The best weather was on Sunday afternoon when the sun finally came out and we took the back wall off the tent to allow some sun in and a beautiful view of the Mississippi. Thanks to those of you who stopped by and thank you to Sara Collins from the Stone Arch Festival for the opportunity to do this year's poster. It was an unforgettable experience!