AAF tickets

So Autumn has come again – that ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ (John Keats – I googled it). Soon I will be standing amongst a whole lot of Art, in a big tent in Battersea Park. Yes! The Affordable Art Fair is on again, from 23rd to 26th October. As always, if you’d like free tickets, please do email me at gail@gailbrodholt.com. And, contrary to all those rumours flying around, we do let you leave our stand without buying anything. Honest…

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Art Fairs (and the absolute embarrassment of talking about your work…)

So, another year, and another Affordable Art Fair is over. It’s an unusual experience for me, in that I get to meet a lot of people who are interested in printmaking, but who are also interested in buying my work. There were a lot of questions, as always, and sometimes it’s hard for us artists to articulate our answers in a clear and informative way (in other words, we can be unsociable, inarticulate and slightly feeble).

The most important thing here is to appear confident – if you look at the ground and scuffle your feet while you’re talking about your work, then all those lovely potential customers won’t feel too confident either. They’re hopefully going to spend their hard-earned money on your work and they need to feel that they’re making the right decision in choosing one of your pieces.

I know how hard it is though – I’ve never come across an artist who actually likes talking about their work (“I’m not a Performing Seal” and “My work speaks for itself”, etc.,) but like everything in life, the more you do it, the easier it gets.

It really can give you valuable insights into what people like about your work and what they don’t, and it forces you to verbalise what it is you’re trying to achieve. It doesn’t harm, either, to have a little talk prepared in your head before you start (but if a slightly bewildered look keeps stealing over your customers’ faces, then you may need to work on the content of that little talk….)

Talking to art fair visitors is also great for making you feel like a bit of an expert – you tend to forget how much experience you have. When you’re in the company of people who aren’t artists and therefore may not know too much about your work, and the processes you use, it can make you feel very knowledgeable and that’s rather nice.

All that noisy confusion of the fair certainly brings you down to earth – no bad thing for artists who can get very precious about their work if given half a chance. A few days of art fair visitors walking past your work as if it was completely invisible (or even worse, saying loudly to no-one in particular, “Well, I don’t like that”), certainly toughens you up. If nothing else, you learn to shrug internally and ignore it, at least until you can get home and start weeping into that pint glass of beer, wine, or whisky (depending on how bad it’s been).

If you really can’t face talking about your work, then you can always talk about the practical side of your work, your processes or the equipment you use for example. People are always interested in hearing about my printing press. (It’s an old cast iron Albion relief press made in 1841, purchased for a bargain price on eBay and brought all the way from deepest Norfolk to London on the motorway, strapped on to the back of some bloke’s van…..)

Above all, it’s a pleasure to be surrounded by people who appreciate the value of original art and who see a sense of value in what artists are trying to do.

So no more Affordable Art Fair for another year, but if you were one of those people who stopped by for a chat, thank you very much for coming (and to those of you who bought something, an even bigger thank you!)

And now I guess it’s time to get back into the studio and get on with some work, sigh…

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Preparing for the Affordable Art Fair Part 1

And so Autumn comes around again – darkening days, morning chills, a certain decay in the air. Yes! Once again, it’s time for Half Moon Studio to haul it’s sorry arse over to Battersea Park to take part in the Affordable Art Fair….

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Cue to the usual scenes of mass panic – not helped by the huge amounts of editioning going on…..

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With a general air of suppressed hysteria, massed frames pile up in every corner…..

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To a chorus of effing and blinding, enormous piles of prints in various stages litter the studio……

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Calm is restored (temporarily) as the silver bags appear and start being filled with work……

Affordable Art Fair Hanging Day

                                                               Work going in the van…

                                                                     Ready to start….

                                                                  One wall done…

                                                                  Nearly finished….

                                                             All done – time to go home….

Affordable Art Fair Free Tickets

It’s October again and I have a stack of free tickets to give away for the Affordable Art Fair – it’s on from Thursday 25th to Sunday 28th October in Battersea Park.

When that large cardboard box full of tickets, maps and leaflets arrives in the studio, we all know it’s time for our annual collective panicking. Where’s my hanging plan? Have I got enough new work? Have you seen the framing gun? Have I got enough postcards? Where’s the roll of acetate? Who’s stolen the browsers?
And I’ve decided to add a new element to this fevered atmosphere by suddenly switching from my usual black frames to white. (Obviously because I felt I needed more stress….)

Anyway, the free tickets are for either the Charity PV evening (Wednesday 24th October) or the Gala PV evening (Thursday 25th October). The tickets will also get you in for free at any other time if you can’t make it on either of those nights.

Email me if you’d like one – and let me know your address and which day you’d prefer (or if you don’t mind because you’d like to come at the weekend…)

Jags Art Fair 2

                                                      
                                                                      A busy day….

Jags Art Fair

Once again, I will be at the Jags Art Fair in Dulwich, South London this weekend and I will have a full range of current work available to view.
The fair is on from 11-5 on Saturday and 11-4 on Sunday. There’s plenty of free parking, a cafe and profits go to the Community Music Centre project.
More details are here – so please come along and say hello!