Good News, Bad News
October 23, 2010
Opening the kiln lid is like Christmas every morning.
I’ll start with the bad……
Fireborne Glass Gallery is closing its doors today. I’ve shown there since 2001 and have always felt partial to it. Cool little gallery downtown Portland. I became good friends with the original owners, Lisa and Myrna and was the instigator who introduced the current owners, Becky and Len to the gallery when it was up for sale. I thought Becky would be a fabulous gallery director/owner and I was right. She’s sophisticated, charming, and always has a friendly smile for you. I was thrilled when Becky and Len decided to buy it. I’ll still see Becky because we’re friends and Oregon Glass Guild members, but I’ll sure miss Fireborne.
You know me, I can’t dwell on sad news for long….The GOOD news is I delivered almost five dozen bowls and miniatures to the Museum of Glass Store in Tacoma on Friday. I received the order last month and worked hard to get it finished while also producing for my gallery show at The Dalles Art Center this month. If you are near Tacoma or The Dalles, please go see all my beautiful iridescent new bowls!!
More sad news, we had to cancel Powderology at Blue Moon Glassworks in Austin. Unfortunately not enough students signed up to make it happen. I was looking forward to my first foray into Texas, but I’ll get there another time. I’m sorry to disappoint those who had signed up.
Finishing with Good News, my classes in Portland and The Dalles were fun-filled, energetic and most importantly successful for the students! Aquila Glass School hosted my Powderology class mid month where I had extraordinarily creative students. What a great resource Aquila is! My Basic Kiln-forming, 6 week introductory class at The Dalles Art Center will finish up at the end of the month and I’m pretty sure we have new converts to the world of glass. Thank you both for hosting me, I had a wonderful time.
As an aside, my comparisons of Artfire and Zibbet are going very well. In the evenings I’ve added small works like buttons and stars as time allows. I’ve even sold a couple of things! I’m learning more about SEO (search engine optimization) and tweaking both shops with each new page of information I read. Do you have advice for selling on-line? I’d love to hear it!
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Preview of Glacier Series, Shopping for Shops
October 3, 2010
My show at The Dalles Art Center opens Thursday evening, October 7th, where I’m premiering my new Glacier Series. The reception is from 5 pm to 7 pm on the 7th, and I’d love to see you there if you’re in the area. My artwork along with Anthony Kiser’s and Scott Berger’s has been installed and runs through Oct. 23rd.
Many of you know that 1000 Markets has closed and I’ve been scrambling to find a replacement venue. Our shops were transferred to Bonanza, for which I am grateful – uploading photos and descriptions, sizes and prices of every available piece of work can be tedious. I’m not sure however, if Bonanza is a good fit for my work. That’s where I temporarily parked my glass medium. (Edit: it’s now available at Artfire). I plan to sell my other tools and supplies for glassworkers also that you may have seen (and some of you have phoned to purchase) on my website.
After investigating price, ambience, ease of use, and what other artists are showing, I decided to try Artfire. It has Art in it’s name – isn’t that a good thing? And I can sell art supplies there. One of the advantages to Artfire is I can have a kiosk on my Facebook Page! After each long studio day this week I managed to get a front page open and upload a couple photos and descriptions. As I said, this is tedious, even though it’s a simple copy & paste plus upload photos that are already cropped and sized.
Midweek I stumbled across a post in a 1Km Refugee forum that Zibbet had also imported all our shops like Bonanza did. We have until Oct. 5th to open a shop there and utilize their import of our items. I decided to jump in and try it & am so glad I did. I think I’m going to love it. The owner has already given me a new classification for my recycled glass wall pockets that didn’t fit any categories.
For now, I think I’ll leave the Bonanza shop up to see how it plays out, but my real comparison will be between Artfire and Zibbet. Which of the three do you like best? I’d love to have your feedback!
There are a couple other places I’d like to try out, but like everything else right now they’ll be on the back burner waiting their turn. Are you selling on-line? Where? Go ahead – plug in a link to your shop so everyone can see it in the comments section below.
Here are a few of those places I’m looking at, in the order that I’m going to take a closer look (if I ever have a spare moment again):
I have signed up for Etsy also, but it didn’t seem intuitive to me. It’s another one I will probably get back to. Do you have recommendations or criticisms of any?
By the way, my banner for Bonanza was given to me by Alilbirdy2, another Bonanza member. She thought my plain banner (the one I’m using for Zibbet) needed tweaking. I used a combination of hers and mine for Artfire. Not a graphic designer, I’m always appreciative of any help!
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