One of the things I didn't quite realize when I moved to Georgia from Montana was how much longer oil paintings would take to dry. Montana is quite arid, even in the winter months when it snows, and Georgia is the polar opposite in almost every way. It's almost always humid here even when it hasn't rained in weeks. I don't know how it manages it.
It's also been awhile since I had to force paintings to dry faster. In fact, I haven't really had to do that since I moved here. I thought I'd have more opportunities here, but the opposite has been true, which in hindsight makes sense. Leaving the region where I grew my business for over a decade, had tons of friends in the industry, and knew how things worked was obviously not going to be great for business.
But with Illuxcon on the horizon and my brain back in mostly working order I finally had a reason to need something to dry faster. I had to think about it for a minute - how did I do this when I lived in Montana? Oh yeah!
Thankfully the week leading up to Illuxcon was a little on the chilly side so it wasn't a huge problem to have a space heater running 24/7 in the studio. My paintings were still a little damp so we had to place them carefully in the car and off we went on what should have been a pretty easy 11 1/2 hour drive to Reading Pennsylvania. I realize that may sound a little ridiculous to most people, but Luke is a trucker so he's used to driving for that many hours a day.
Unfortunately, very unfortunately, we ended up behind multiple fatal multiple-vehicle accidents and spent between 17 and 18 hours on the freeway on Thursday. My hopes of getting there early enough in the evening to say hello to anyone at Illuxcon were dashed and we finally collapsed into the uncomfortable hotel beds at 2 AM.
The next afternoon we arrived a little sleep-deprived to set-up my booth for Illuxcon. Set-up went pretty easily. I feel like you struggle with this part the first few or maybe half-a-dozen to a dozen times, but eventually you know how everything goes together and you learn how to organize things so that it's easier to lay them all out quickly. Set-up only took us 20 or 30 minutes and then I was off to wander around the show and say hello to everyone I could find at that point.
Illuxcon is different from a lot of conventions where the emphasis is on selling things. The showcase is marketed more towards artists and it ends up being more of a networking or social event than a sales event. I still sold some prints and traded decks, met lots of new people and put faces to names, and talked a little bit about business with printing companies, game companies, and my new agent, Tatiana.
In the end I came home with only one original since it was too wet to send with Tatiana. The rest all went with her and will be available soon at https://www.tdartgallery.com/ArtistGalleryRoom.asp?ArtistId=1534. If there's something you saw at the show and you want to snag it before someone else does, send Tatiana an e-mail at TDArtSales@gmail.com and she'll get you squared away.
I ended up missing the Main Show entirely at Illuxcon since I spent most of my daytime hours trying to get my 13-year-old caught up on his gifted homework and keep him entertained. We did manage to go see the M.C. Escher exhibit at the Reading Public Museum, which is normally $10 per person but worked out to about $6 per person for us with Luke's veteran discount. At $18 for 3 people we'd be stupid to miss it.
Here's my son, wearing my almost destroyed hoodie from the college I took figure drawing classes at, giving us his best post-Escher face.
The exhibit was massive and contained more Escher work than I'd ever seen before, including unauthorized blacklight Escher posters. They were as trippy as you'd expect. Mostly I took videos as I zoomed along after Wolf, who paused at only the most geometric designs.
The museum also has an expansive Founder's Gallery full of oil paintings of all different ages, some ancient art, Native American art, armor, weapons, and furniture, and a Geometric art exhibit, in addition to other things that I didn't get to spend much time looking at. I did get to spend a few quiet moments with Nefrina, the museum's resident mummy.
Nefrina has been at the Reading Public Museum for a long time and they also have this reconstruction of her face as well as a hologram-style video that plays every 8 minutes, wherein Nefrina gives a summary of what we know about her. I actually thought this was a really touching and reverent exhibit, whereas most mummy exhibits seem a little less so to me. I left Nefrina with a head full of new painting ideas and rejoined my family at the traveling Dinosaur Train exhibit.
Here's Wolf realizing that he used to watch the Dinosaur Train TV show. "How could I forget Dinosaur Train?" he asked in wonderment when he finally quit ringing the train bell.
As for Illuxcon the showcase was an interesting experience. I sold a little bit of stuff but the emphasis, as I said before, is more of a networking opportunity. I also think that in general this is a bad year for sales. The economy is fine but wage inequality and greed-flation have a lot of people pinching pennies. Add in the uncertainty of the election and a lot of people are scared to spend any money. Add the two together and things become rather frustrating for anyone selling something people don't absolutely need. I heard some artists complaining loudly about the lack of sales, which I always think is gauche and you should never do in front of customers, but most people were having a good time and the bad apples always sort themselves out or weed themselves out eventually.
The drive home was uneventful, a bit boring and long, but we arrived just in time to go to bed in our own bed. I really needed that after three nights of elbowing my husband on a full-size bed. Why are so many hotels lying and calling their rooms "queen suites" and then furnishing them with full-size beds? Do they really think people won't notice that two adults can barely fit on it? Sheesh.
As for me, I'm giving myself a few days off to do some more cleaning, decluttering, and DIYing just in time for the witches' new year (Halloween/Samhain) before I throw myself at some Yuletide painting. I can't wait to have the studio full of paintings and activity, and maybe even a little Christmas music, once again.
