Ceramic Wales

I was relieved that I finally had some work that I would be happy to exhibit at Ceramic Wales, we were going as a group and as such had mocked up how we wanted to lay out the stand. Cath our technician had loaned us the use of her plinths and cloths and we all decided to paint things grey to give a coordinated look to the stand. 

Rob assisted us with photographing the work and a banner was produced for us to display behind the stand.

Pricing the work was more challenging and we did a useful exercise as a group where we all wrote down what we thought the price of  each others pieces should be. This proved both amusing and interesting, as there was a wide range of ideas on value, some of which were based purely on how much a person liked the work and bore no resemblance to the value of the work as a piece of art!

We learned the importance of planning and preparation for a show, considering things like wrapping and transporting the work, the stand, any display materials as well as packing for a weekend away camping in a field! We also worked out how we would take payments and wrap work for customers and organised how we would man the stall.

Below is a picture of our stall set up, we had a right hand end pitch at the far end of the site.

More pictures of our set up including plinths.

Four out of the five of us sold a piece of work which was great, we also had a really fun time! The first evening was a small camp event where we all came together to share food, drink and music. 

The second evening we joined the majority of other potters on site at the "Sausage Club' where everyone pays a contribution and we all share a meal, this one was curry, and it was amazing.

It was a great opportunity to experience what it is like being at a show, what to expect, what to consider and have the opportunity to meet and chat with other ceramic artists. I had a really fun time but it was also absolutely exhausting. The physical work involved in setting up the show both in terms of the making of the and then transporting everything and then setting up is huge, we all shared the tasks between us this time, but as a solo artists I would be doing this mostly on my own and it is very hard work both physically and mentally and I can see how easily you could become disheartened if you then fail to sell hardly any work.  I can see the appeal of the social side of this world and the sense of community it creates, but am not sure that this offsets the amount of work involved and the toll it takes in making this set up happen 6-8 times a year. I realised that if this was something I was going to consider doing I was going to ned some help in doing it, and I needed to explore this again when I was looking at future opportunities.