If you can’t interest ‘em, bribe ‘em

Last Friday I had another successful art show! I sold seven pieces.

My workplace holds a “pop-up shop” twice a year, where faculty and staff members can sign up to be a vendor and show/sell artwork, jewelry, crafts, food items, and the like. I have participated every time with varying degrees of success, selling my work at about 1/3 my usual price because I know my audience — this is a nonprofit and none of us have big salaries.

This shop was a second add-on event to the one from earlier this spring, and it wasn’t widely publicized. It was the very end of the semester, on a Friday afternoon before people probably were starting to take vacation. Only half the usual number of vendors even signed up. I was expecting very little traffic and zero sales.

However! The organizers brought in Pokey-O’s (a local shop that makes ice cream cookie sandwiches), sent out a last minute email to the campus about the free ice cream, and people poured through the doors in droves. And some of them bought artwork while standing in line for ice cream!

I sold “Bryophyte Orchard 3” and had some big mixed feelings about seeing it go. I’m happy it’s going to brighten someone’s wall, and I’m happy to have gotten a little bit of money for it, but it was one of my favorite pieces and part of me wanted to hang on to it.