And the moral of the story is.....

Blue Door Gallery

I’m very excited to say that I will be showing three (count ‘em 3) of my prints in the “Inspired by Heritage” show at Blue Door in Yonkers. I was caught completely off guard by the acceptance letter. After months of regular rejection I had hardly even summoned the flutter of anxious tummy butterflies when seeing the notification in my inbox. Upon reading that all of my entries would be required for the exhibition I leapt up from my seat and did a Snoopy dance in the library stacks.
After the initial explosive joy wore down a bit the panic set in. Here is the moral of my story for anyone just starting out. For the love of whomever you pray to, don’t send images of proofs or of work you haven’t made gallery ready out to open calls!
Why? Because those few pieces will be the ones that are accepted!
Explanation; I had only just perfected the printing method for my new series (Attic Cameos) and only pulled 5 proofs of a piece called Forgotten Aunt. Carried away by the excitement of having a new series after a month of stalemates, I sent images of it to the ‘Heritage’ open call. When I received notice of acceptance I discovered I had one week to wrangle frames for the odd dimensions of two of the entries. After five hours on my knees with a mat cutter in the emptied apt we were moving out of and the only 2 sheets of whitish acid-free matt board I could get a hold of I seriously considered how underpaid framers are. I was only just able to get the proof and other prints set properly before setting off in the pouring rain on a 2 hour commute to Yonkers. I’m rather pleased to say that while I was soaked through the work was perfectly safe in the reused framers plastic from other work I’d had done a year ago.
There’s a mini lesson right there, I never throw away plastic bags, bubble wrap or clean cardboard and it saved my chochskies this time around. So recycle repurpose reuse peoples!