December Shows!

I got an early Christmas present this July, when I was selected as one of the vendors for Yelp's Totally Bazaar! This is a fantastic annual pop up shopping party with more than 150 local businesses at Indy's beautiful Central Library. It's from 6:30-10pm on Thursday, December 10th. Find all the details here!

On the heels of Totally Bazaar is Beech Grove Clay Works annual holiday fundraiser and sale. Join us at the studio, buy a member-made bowl, eat delicious soup, browse through other fabulous work by our members, and have a fine time! Soup for Tots is Saturday, December 12th from 4-8pm.

Feast of Lanterns 2015

Last Saturday was my second show at Feast of Lanterns. I don't often work this festival, since it often conflicts with one of my favorite dance weekends, Sugar Hill. It's hard to be the dancing potter if I never get to dance!

Dancing at the end of the contra dance line at Sugar Hill, way back in 2001.

Luckily, the scheduling gods smiled and I got to do both this year. I was especially excited about my return to this festival, since my last time at the Feast was spent hobbling around in a cast. Not the most fun way to be a pottery vendor. But this year's Feast was fantastic! Beautiful weather, a great location for the double booth I shared with 3 other potters from Beech Grove Clay Works, newly built shelves for my pottery, tasty beverages, and fantastic music.

Setting up with John, Mike and Judy

Those boys from Beech Grove Clay Works up to no good

The great new shelves that I built the day before the festival

Feast of Lanterns is a wonderful festival just northeast of downtown Indianapolis, in Spades Park. It's in a lovely city park, it's FREE, things to do for kids, tasty food and beverages, and great vendors. Like Carrie from Celebration Henna, who was right next door to our booth. I couldn't resist and got hennaed up! Carrie has a great trick of be-glittering the wet henna, which needs time to dry and set up after it is applied. The glitter looks great and reminded me to not mush the wet henna while it dried. And also, everyone needs a little more glitter in their lives!

My glittered peacock still waiting to dry

My henna tattoo the next day, should last for a week or more

And we all sold lots of pottery. It was a lovely day, and then as sunset passed, the lanterns were lit.

And the bands continued to play, even as we started to pack up our booth at 11pm. Tear down is way more fun when done to the irresistible Pork and Beans Brass Band.

Thanks to all my friends, neighbors, and fans who stopped by! Hope to see you again soon! Lots of fun shows coming up for me through the end of the year!

Revamping the booth

At every show or market, I curse the muses that led me to my very heavy, breakable art. And I'm incredibly jealous of the vendors next to me with their easy-to-pack textiles. Sigh. So I'm always trying to try new ways to lighten my load and speed up the setup/teardown times. 

For the last two years, I've slowly collected all the parts for a full 10x10' market booth. Several folding tables and tablecloths with four sets of 3' tall folding oak shelves, big and little wooden crates to fill in the rest of the display space. While they look nice, the folding oak shelves are really heavy, a few of them are wobbly, and some of the shelves are starting to crack. And I've felt that the standard folding tables I use aren't effectively using the booth space. But since the shelves were something I owned before I started showing pottery, I've made do with them, since I wasn't ready to fork over the funds for new display shelves. 

But this weekend at Feast of Lanterns, I tested a new shelf system--one that I built myself!! Endless websurfing for possible shelf designs found me this site with instructions for a shelving system that would be reasonably lightweight and could be stored completely flat. An added bonus was that I could make the shelves as long as would fit in the bed of my truck, about 6.5 ft. 

Here's my sketch that I used to figure out what I needed to buy.

The blog post that helped me with this (Thanks, Blue Starr Pottery!) has step by step instructions. Based on some help from the Big Box Store employee, I upgraded to 1"x 3" boards for the support frames. This meant I needed to find longer screws than what was used in Blue Starr blog. And of course, I wasn't able to find 3.5 or 4" screws that wouldn't split the thin one inch boards that I was using. I could only find 3.25" screws, which added some extra drilling work. I ended up pre-drilling the screw holes through the vertical 6' frame boards--for two screws that would go through each end of the each 15" horizontal shelf support board. Then I used a larger drill bit on each hole, so I could counter sink the screws in another quarter inch. This allowed the shorter screws to get deeper into each shelf support and sank the screws so I could fill all the holes on the vertical frames.

The first of the hinged support frames took quite a while to figure out, measure, and assemble. But as soon as that first one was done, I could use it as the measuring template for the next 3 frames. Way faster!

One of the big things I worried about as I considered these new shelves was the stability. I was incredibly pleased with my initial set up in the garage once I had everything assembled. It was solid! No wobbling! Woohoo. Then I disassembled them (super quick!) and carried it all out into my yard to try it out in the grass. Even on my not-really-level-lawn, the shelves were solid even though they were tilting on the small rise on the lawn. With a few shims, I leveled the shelves and still felt good about how grounded they felt, even without the extra weight of pottery on them.

The new shelf system went on its trial run at the Feast of Lanterns. Take a look at the next post for a view of the new shelves loaded with pretty pottery. I'm pretty pleased The new shelves have a lot of pros--a more effective depth than the shelves on folding tables, one set of shelves for 6 feet rather than two sets on the tables, fits way more pottery than the old set up, and I can use my storage/transport crates on the shelves as part of the display. It does have a few drawbacks--some people don't like to bend down to the lower shelves, the top shelf is too high for some customers to get pieces down on their own, and I'm losing a lot of my "hide the ugly stuff" space under the tables.

I am considering making another set of these, which would get rid of the rest of the heavy wobbly shelves and two of the three folding tables that I have to use. I'll just need to find the time to make them!

Come get a preview of Broken Beaker Distillery!

Broken Beaker Distillery plans to open this fall on Mass Ave. It is hosting its second Art Night this Friday, June 12th, 6-10pm. This event is free and open to the public. There's 10 local artists, food from local venues, and live music. Come out to meet the owners and see how the build out on the distillery is progressing!

March, First Friday, and the 5547 Project

For the month of March, Dancing Pottery will be in the gallery at 5547 Project in the Coal Yard Coffee House at 5547 Bonna Ave, Indianapolis in historic Irvington. There will be an Artist Opening Reception at the next First Friday, March 6, 2015 at 5547 Project. It's part of March -First Friday- Madness Tri-Venue Event.

For folks wishing to avoid the First Friday Madness, my pottery will be in the gallery at Coal Yard Coffee through March 29. Coal Yard and the gallery are open 9-6 all week, with extended hours on the weekends.

March -First Friday- Madness Tri-Venue Event

80+ Artists
12 Music performances
3 Venues

'The Usual Suspects'
Pop-Art Exhibition
Opening Reception
at the 5547 Project Gallery
First Friday, March 6th
a partnership with the Fountain Square & Two Deep brewing co.'s

LIVE music
w. Carey Goodspeed, Phil Sloan,
Ben Myers and Jeff Kelly
35-40 Artists
ALL AGES SHOW
Appetizers by The Flying Cupcake
The Bier Brewery on location
6PM-10PM
Exhibition dates: March 6th -March 29th 2015
Gallery hours: Monday-Thursday & Sunday 9A-6P
Friday & Saturday, 9A-9P
5547 Bonna Ave
Indianapolis, IN 46219

&

'The Eclectic Society '

Mixed-media, Surrealism and Oddities
Art & Music show
at the Two Deep brewing co.
714 N. Capitol Ave. Indianapolis, IN 46204 First Friday, March 6th 2015
20+ Artists
a partnership w. 5547 Project Gallery & Fountain Square brewing co.
LIVE performance w.
The Clams, The Dirty Thirty Trio Ft Sara D, Gypsy Chorus and Emma Crenshaw
21+
7PM-11PM

&

'The Color Theorists'
Abstract Art
&
Music event
at the Fountain Square brewing co.
1301 Barth Avenue, Indianapolis, IN 46203
First Friday, March 6th
a partnership w. 5547 Project Gallery & Two Deep brewing co.
LIVE performance w. Dell Zell, Minute Details, Joy & The Sulks and Tied to Tigers
21+
8PM-12AM


Tickets: $15.00,
Includes: admission to all three (3) events/ venues 6PM-12AM + Indy Brew bus transportation to/from each venue. (Limit 75)

Tickets: $12.00
Includes: admission to all three (3) events/ venues 6PM-12AM

Or $5.00 @ door the evening of the event (per venue)