Phew, its over, its a lot of work, but now its done for another year. Nows the time to look back, decide what worked, what didn’t. Where things could improve. Do I need to apologize to any of my helpers because I may have at some point been a little terse. I try to stay calm, to keep cool, but inevitably at some point I get worked up and say some flip remark that I need to atone for later. I think I did better this year because I’d been made aware of it more from the year before’s tour, that I had been a bit of a “b” and so I was consciously trying to be aware of how how I spoke to everyone. I’m sure I could always do better though, so I need to reflect on that.
Successes:
- Delegating the social media tasks and scheduling them ahead of time especially for the week leading up to the tour was an idea that worked very well. It wasn’t easy handing that over to someone else, but since it was my most trusted friend, I knew she would do her best with it. and she did. She knocked it out of the park. She made some great images and took on Hootsuite like a boss. So everything was set to go for the week leading up to the touring during the tour itself. Then we just added live instas and fb posts when we had the chance. It took a lot of pressure off.
- The food. As always we have great nibbles. John did his meatballs, and we did just finger foods that didn’t require a ton o prep, but were still delicious. We even had a young guy practically tearing up the street to get here, since he remembered the meatballs from last year.
- I borrowed my sisters square tap thingy, which allowed us to take debit as well as credit and cash. Great idea! Also along that, we made sure everything was in the square as an inventory control system. And then Laura used the square like a cash register, so then the totals were easy to track as well as inventory for later. Maybe Ill do a post on more detail about that another time.
- Flow of work: we really tried to edit and organize the flow or movement of the artwork so it made sense, was appealing visually and led the visitors up to the studio.
- Balloon cap thingys from the dollar store attached to the sign mage it easy to blow up new balloons and attach as needed without taking out a loan on scotch tape
The not so successful
- No matter how prepared we are the first couple visitors of the day seemed to take us off guard. I don’t now what we can do about it. The first couple of people always seem to catch us/me feeling a bit unprepared for some reason.
- The step down into my studio that exists – I made signs, bright red and yellow ones with caution tape, but I still have to try and stay on top of everyone coming in because I can tell they didn’t see the sign. Short of flashing lights, I don’t know how to deal with that to make it safer
- The dogs. We put them outside or at the least divide them from the space with a baby gate, but I really don’t see any other way around that. They are good girls, but I recognize not everyone likes dogs, so it’s a necessary thing. I wish it wasn’t.
All in all it was a very successful weekend. My helpers and I are totally done in by the end of it and Monday is a very quiet day around the house afterward, but it was totally worth it. I met so many terrific people, some new, some returnees to the tour. It was a fantastic experience, and forged some great new friendships.
If you have ideas to resolve some of the problems I had, I’d love to hear them. If you want more info on the studio tour itself or any questions about my art practice, feel free to shoot me an email or send a comment.