Fryeburg Fair Fiber Center 2008 - personal report

Fryeburg Fair 2008 was very successful for me this year! I went into the fair with concern for the state of the economy. Not only has gasoline and fuel oil been running at an all time high, the real estate, stock market and financial industry have landed a blow that will take us all years to overcome!

The weather during the first two days of the fair created a pretty dismal fair opening with attendance being way down. It was unclear during those first days how the economy was affecting traffic and sales but by the end of monday, I was certain that fair week would not match those of the past years.
To my amazement, as the week progressed traffic flow picked up and days that historically were slow reached record and near record numbers. People were coming and people were spending! I can only speak for myself in this however from what I experienced during the week, it seemed that people were willing to spend money on practical purchases. Sales for wearable items and gift items as well as gloves, mittens, hats & scarves on the cold days sold very well and beyond my prediction given the economic situation.
I did experience a slow down in two of my most expensive items that I historically sell out of. Based on comments and body language, I believe that those sales were affected by their price. Though they are great values and less than they can be purchased for elsewhere, they are items that retail for over $100 and in spite of their popularity and people taking notice of them, I did not sell out as usual.
The other bright spot for me was Hairlock Painting sales! As the guest artist last year, I did not have the luxury of being with or near the work to experience peoples comments about it. This year I added a display that allowed me to show my work in my space allowing interaction with fairgoers and being able to hear and see their reactions to my work. That was very rewarding! I continually hear comments such as "I've never seen anything like it before.... This is beautiful work... How do you do this, it's amazing!" All music to an artists ears :-)
Rumor in the Fiber Center was that Art sales were not up to par this year. I believe that is because people are reigning in their expenditures and purchasing fewer luxuries and fringe items than they have in other years. Though I did not sell as many art pieces as I did last year, I was very happy with the sales I did have especially knowing that the people who bought them absolutely love them!
Additionally, I experimented with Wire & Fiber earrings that I have been creating. My space is very small for the amount of merchandies that I show there but I managed to find a hole and brought a small quantity to test the waters with. I was very please with the results. I had a number of different styles and was surprised that two of my favorites did not sell at all but I had a total of six styles and sold out of several of them. I priced them very modestly at $12US a pair for two reasons. First, this is all new for me and I really wanted to get some sales activity as a test for design purposes. Secondly, again because this is new for me, I did not want to invest in Sterling or fine metals at this stage. I had no idea if they would be well received and did not want to invest too much in materials that may never be used or be wasted while creating. It turns out that I wasted little. This is good because one of my pet peeves is waste and I am a great recycler, reuser, and thrift store shopper. I hate to waste anything! SoI learned alot and am encouraged by the results as well!

So in all and in the end, Fryeburg Fair has been another successful story for me! It is also a bittersweet event. I put in hours of work for my own preperation as well as many more for management of the building. Many 12-16 hour days are lived for days before, during and after to see it through. Additionally, I spend many hours thoughout the year organizing and working on the Fiber Center program. I love it and will not be ready to give it up for a while but as much as I love to see it come, I also love to see it go by. So now I take a breath and begin to make the journey for next year!

In the mean time, the Bermuda Fiber Festival which I organize has begun registration and I will be busy seeing that event through in early December!

More later!
Until then...
Thank you for reading :-)

Fryeburg Fiber Center 2008 Exhibition Review

As I prepare to return to Bermuda for the winter, I find myself with a bit of time to create a post with a Fiber Center Fair report! Yeah! This can only mean that I have caught up for a moment.
No worries though, it will not last :-)

Fall of 2008 will go down in history as a challenging time for many people on many levels! Beginning with the state of our country's economy and the questionable weather in the first few days of the fair we began on shaky ground though ended with a good year for most. Good news, all things considered.....

I will focus this post on The Gallery portion of the Fiber center. Watch for subsequent posts regarding my own fair experience soon!

Julie Yarbrough was our Guest Artist for this year and Julie delivered an incredibly diverse body of work that explored a complete spectrum of emotions ranging from her usual whimsy to a more traditional side that I had never seen in the work that she has exhibited at Fryeburg before. Included were needle felted busts and wall hangings of interesting characters with a depth that brought their images to life as her pieces always do but she went beyond with needle felted fish inspired from her teaching Fiber Arts last year at the Bermuda Fiber Festival.



What I was most struck by were her acrylic paintings and the range of expression captured within them. This of course was a Fiber show and keeping true to the form, Julie incorporated fabrics and fibers into her paintings. Subjects were diverse here as well. Though it was evident that the same artist created all pieces, the pieces moved through expressions ranging from a beautiful country roadside scene to abstracts that provoked thought and deeper meaning than what was evident on the surface.

Hanging Julie's work this year prompted some evolution of the Fiber Center's Gallery Exhibit. The quality and breadth of her work along with the availability of works by Susan Mills, Linda Whiting, Janet Goodwin and my own Hairlock Paintings TM, allowed us to raise the bar and required that we re-think our usual display materials. What we had been using in between the good stuff repeatedly for a few years as visual depictions of what the Fiber Center represents and as fillers for the white spaces were no longer acceptable for hanging alongside a professional body of work but more importantly, they were unnecessary. They served their purposes as adequate fillers in the past but we have now managed to foster and see development of the artists who participate in this event to a point of having a selection of Professional Artwork to hang each year. As a result, and given the materials and artwork that we had at hand for this immediate progression, the entire upper Gallery space at the Fiber Center was filled with gallery quality artwork!

We were rewarded with acceptance from our audience as having noticeably improved our appearance. Of course with that always comes the challenge for next year; Who will our 2009 Guest Artist be, and who will provide work to fill the space? It was suggested by Susan Mills, and briefly discussed as to how to proceed, and though no definite policies have been set in place, we are contemplating a rotation allowing the guest artist to exhibit the following year on the rear upper Gallery wall as spontaneously occurred this year with my own work. As the Fiber Artists who have been participating in this most incredible Fiber Event for so many years continue to grow and build their talents, it is my hope that it will reach a point that instead of having a difficult time accumulating quality work to show, that we have reached a point of having to jury, pick and choose from lots of work to put together future shows!


Each year I am amazed at how far we travel together on this journey and though the road sometimes takes it's toll, I remind myself to take a breath and look to the higher good. I believe we are on that path and I ask you to journey with us at the Fiber Center towards the future....

Bermuda Fiber Festival Registration Begins!

Good morning!

One of my major projects of the year is well under way as the registration for the 2nd annual Bermuda Fiber Festival (or Fibre if you are Bermudian or Brit :-) opens with the unveiling of our informational website! Wow, I never would have guessed a few years ago that I would be helping to bringing fiber education to Bermuda! But then again, there are many things that life has brought me that I never would have guessed about.... I am grateful as well as blessed...

After spending the last month in intensive work, the program is looking great! We have put together a nice mix of various felting and weaving classes being taught by three US teachers. In addition, it has been one of my goals for this event to bring out the local Fiber Artists so that they too would have a venue for sharing their passion for various Fiber Arts and we are succeeding at doing so with the addition of classes being taught by at least two locals and we continue to work at bringing two more into the harbor.

This years program will offer nearly 50 workshops for ages 2 through adult and includes special programs for school groups. Last year's event brought us more than 200 children and nearly 100 adults for fiber education workshops. We hope to bust that number this year with a terrific program and registration beginning well in advance of last year. I will keep you posted on it's progress....

Please take a moment to visit the Bermuda Fiber link and see what my excitement is all about. It is especially gratifying to me that we are unveiling this now, as I prepare to leave for the US for the Fiber Center event at Fryeburg Fair in Fryeburg Maine which begins on Sunday September 28th. This event was the inspiration that helped to create what the Bermuda Fiber Festival has become. This eight day event brings Maine the largest Fiber Exhibition Hall in New England devoted entirely to Fiber and Fiber Education. Each day from 9am - 9pm fair goers are able to experience a myriad of fiber, fiber art, and educational fiber demonstrations. A list of Fiber Center Events is posted on my website.

I will be away from the computer for about three weeks while I prepare for this event and then reconcile it afterwards. I will have some of my Hairlock Paintings on display and my newest fiber earring creation in addition to the usual Alpaca sweaters, and accessories that I always have there.

I hope that some of you will drop by the Fiber Center to say hello......

Commission Accomplished!

First I need to appologize for my lack of postings over the last weeks! I appreciate those of you who continue to visit in spote of my short commings.... I will explain, but first things first...


I have completed the "Bingo" commission and have pleased the client as well as myself with the finished painting. The photo at left was the original that I used to create my rendering of him in preperation for the work. This black & white photo is about 2" x 2" in real life but was of good clarity so that detail showed up quite nicely on it.





This next photo is the drawing I did to use as a pattern or template of Bingo which helps me to plan the placement of fiber which ultimately gives the depth, texture and dimension that I am after in the final piece.







Please accept my appology in advance for the quality of the finished Bingo photo! If you read on you will learn why this is.

Next came the actual painting! I was challenged by this piece because the final size of this canvas is only 11" x 10". To give you prespective, the hair on his chin is only 1/4" long. How was I to manage fibers so short and keep them in line so that they give the appearance of life like hairs coming away from his lower lip, combed perfectly straight? It worked in the end and I am always amazed at how I seem to find a way to move through the challenges that present themselves while doing this work.


I really love this medium.... It offers so much flexibility, so many options, so much depth and a richness that I never tire of looking at it or creating with it. I sometimes feel the need to pinch myself to prove that it is real; that I created this artform, and that it has become a part of my life!


I'm glad to be able to finally share this with you but I am not happy about the quality of the final photo of Bingo. One of the reasons for not adding a post in the last weeks is that I have been having problems with my computer. In my constant need to improve things, I decided that I would like to download the upgrade to my Olympus camera program so that I could take advantage of creating slide shows. Easy to do right? Have you ever heard the phrase "if it ain't broke?" Well let me tell you that if I could turn the clock back I would never have attempted it! Something happened in the download process that has rendered my Quick Time program unreadable to the Olympus program even when I have removed the upgrade and re-installed the original program. Not only do I not have access to the hundreds of photos on my computer with a program that I know and love, I have lost a program that gave me incredibly professional looking photos that I could use on my site. I am currently using Picasa in it's place but it is a poor replacement. I find the cropped photos are grainy and the editing software gives me no where near the qaulity that I had. I am beside myself with grief over this loss. It is only because I have finally accepted that Picasa, for now, is my only choice and that I felt I had neglected this blog for long enough that I am now posting.

I promise to write more frequently now as long as you promise to not judge my photos too harshly until I can find resolution for this photo problem :-)

Until then......

The month of August took me to New England earlier than planned to celebrate a death in the family. Since I was due to travel a week later, it made no sense to return to Bermuda, only to find myself back on a plane in a weeks time.

I used the extra time wisely spending some quality time with the new babies in my family and had a blast! I got peed on, puked on, and even pooped on, and loved every minute of these precious moments with the boys; Henry, Jackson and Owen. I will return to Maine in a week for the big event of my year, Fryeburg Fair, and once it has passed will have a few days to reaquaint myself with them again. I will have to soak up as much of them as I can this trip since my travles will not take me near them again til I'm not sure when next year! They will have grown so much by then!

Audubon Show Report

After months of anxiously awaiting the arrival of my participation in the Audubon Show, it has finally come and gone so quickly, it seems like it must certainly have been a dream! Susan Mills shared a booth with me for this event. Not only was it a blessing to be sharing the workload for set up and tear down for both of us, but she is a dear friend and you ALL know how important quality time is with the people who are important in your life!
Maine finally experienced a few days in a row of good weather and
though we had a shower late in the day on Saturday it was late
enough that it had no grave effect on the event. This Audubon event's presenters, Jim & Holly Gallante do a fine job. Not only is the setting for this show terrific, they run a class act! A few details make such a difference. Exhibitors were welcomed with a little goodie bag, and all attendees had access to coolers of FREE ice cold water, and very nice catered food. Doing shows is always tiring and getting good food and easy hydration is a big deal.

Our booth looked terrific! Susan and I spent hours designing our space in hopes of being able to create the best presentation possible for each of our work. I believe that the pictures I have included will convince you that we succeeded.
Traffic seemed light to me but considering this was the first sunny weekend in Maine for weeks, and summer coming to a close I was not surprised. Having never done this show before, it is impossible for me to judge how attendance compared to other years.

Most pleasing to me when showing my work is the reaction I get from the audience. It is very heartening for me, a new artist, and creator of a new art form to hear people say such things as:

" Your work is beautiful!"
"I have never seen anything like it before"
" How do you do this!"
"This is amazing work!"

These are the things that re-enforce that I am onto something, that I need to continue.... It is validation that the time I have spent in research and development and creating the bodies of work that I have has been worth it.

Now, the work as I go forward, is about sharing it with the public and finding the best venues in which to do that. I welcome all comments and suggestions that you have to share. Feel free to post comments to this posting or contact me with any advise or information that I might find useful. "It takes a village" as one famous woman has said. And whether you like the famous woman who said this or not, it is fact that we can not do it alone. In all parts of life it is the individual with our family, friends and supporters who make it happen for us!

In the end, I learned lots about the show circuit, met some fabulous people and had a great time. Susan's and my work seemed to represent the more Artful side of the show as compared to craft and because of that, I am not convinced that I will pursue this venue next year but in everything, we have the opportunity to seek, learn, and evolve! And so it was....
Until next time!

Owen Finally Arrives!

Sorry for the lapse in postings! I have had a busy past few weeks. My husband's mother passed after a long illness and brought me to New England unexpectedly sooner than originally planned. Though it was a hectic departure from Bermuda, it has given me an opportunity to spend some quality family time that I would not have otherwise had.....
Owen finally decided to come into the world on July 23 and weighed in at a whopping 6# 9 oz! Mom and baby are doing great! I had the good fortune of being able to alter my travel plans to Maine so that I could spend a few days with my niece, baby Owen and his proud dad in Massachusettes. What a treat! It had been a long time since I had spent time with a baby, never having had any of my own, not to mention some quality time with his mom who I don't get to see very often anymore.

This photo was taken of Owen in great grandma's arms wearing the first sweater that I knitted for him. It's a bit big on him but the weather here has been cool so he was glad to have it on this day. He's been an easy baby so far on a good schedule, sleeping and eating well, and packing on the groceries like a champ!

Of course I have since had time with the other two additions to the family, Henry and Jackson which has renewed my interest in knitting for them all! I had been anxiously awaiting my arrival to the US to find some new yarns to make a few more sweaters for them. I especially love to shop Marden's, a local discounter who always has fun yarns that are very well priced. It only takes a few skeins and a few days to make up one of these tiny gems, so since arriving I have found a new pattern for a hoodie and made one for Owen which Henry is modeling for us in this next photo, and I am just finishing up a red one for Henry.

Henry is a good model showing off Owen's new sweater! His will be finished today but in a larger size. In spite of the cool summer that Maine has been experiencing, we have hope that since it is still August, that Henry won't need his new hoodie for a few months so I have made his red one in a larger size.

Now that all of the babies have arrived, and I have had my baby fix, I need to get moving and prepare for the Audubon show this weekend! Hope to see you there!
I will be sure to take some photos to share and give a full show report next week. Stay tuned......

New Commission....

AND BINGO WAS HIS NAAAMOoooooo.......

Summer is keeping my mind busy with the upcomming show at Audubon, Fryeburg Fair Fiber Center planning, and planning the Bermuda Fiber Festival! BUT, I have been commissioned to do a piece which will be given as a surprise birthday gift. The images I'm sharing with you are the original photo that I used and the
drawing that I did which will serve as my pattern or template for creating the actual Hairlock Painting.

The finished piece will be small for a commission at approximately 8 x 10" so will provide some challenges in manageing the details with very small sections of hair. Keeping them in check, seperate and not moving until they are adhered to the canvas will take time and patience.

Working on a commission is very different than creating an imagined image even if that imagined image has been drawn in advance since it makes no real difference in the end, if the final piece is different from the imagined one. There is no one to please but myself. When rendering a likeness of a pet, or of an approved drawing for a client, being on target with the drawing is important. It's what the client expects and what they are paying for. As a result, I do my best to re-create the drawing. I am considering this small piece an experiment which may determine if I choose to do something this small again on commission.

The delivery date for the piece is not until the end of October which gives me lots of breathing space so that I can choose to work on the piece when I am in the right frame of mind. This will offer the best possible environment to successfully complete the piece. I don't expect to take that long so keep an eye out. I will publish it when it is complete!

Don't forget to come and find me at the Audubon Show on August 16th & 17th in Falmouth, Maine! Until next time....