Laume's Studio

A wood carving from Faerieworlds. Last year he was above the entrance in the sun, but in the middle of the festival he toppled down. This year he was perched up in a tree near the ticket tents and seemed much happier in his shady new location.


I loved this mask. It's worn by one of the band members of Kan'Nal during their performance.


So many of the vendors had the most wonderfully clever booths and of course most of the booths were filled with beautiful treasures! My friend Kathy said she was a bit turned off by how much "shopping" there was but I didn't really see it that way. Instead I thought of it as a free "art museum" and an amazing opportunity to wander and talk with a mulitude of creative people and artists. (Yes, that's little Joli Faery running away from Lisa in the photo, as fast as her sturdy little legs can carry her!)

This year I had some friends among the vendors and I also enjoyed chatting again with vendors who I visited last year and I remembered, or in some cases, who remembered me. Someone on another blog described it perfectly as being like the magical marketplace beyond the wall in the movie Stardust. Yes, it did feel very much like that!

I did wonder how the vendors felt about so much competition for their merchandise and art. The "marketplace" seemed to have doubled in size since last year. Although it's my belief that folks are gonna either buy from you because it's just what they want, or they aren't, so it doesn't really matter how many vendors there are. Instead of seeing it as competition I'm more inclined to see it as a challenge to make ones booth more appealing and ones art or merchandise a better fit the marketplace. Or not. If you love what you do, maybe it's more about interacting and being true to your art than selling it. Every artist/vendor has to decide for themself how to balance the art and the business aspects of their craft.

I'm still feeling itchy to "make things" I've got a dozen ideas spinning around in my head but life keeps throwing other "more important tasks" in my path, family first stuff. I've tried to do something by working out preliminary steps for my ideas, researching techniques, sketching and planning out a few of them on paper. It's all work that needs to be done, even if it's not working directly in the studio, so at least I feel like I'm accomplishing something, even if it's the invisible part of the process. Even if I could lock myself away in my studio, between tearing things apart in a wild, getting ready frenzy before the festival, and my son rearranging things so he could use it as a guest room while we were gone, it will take a while to get things back to working condition yet again. Sigh. I do more organizing than creating in that room - things have gotta change.

In the meantime, I'm at least tackling my more mundane tasks with more enthusiasm. And to the accompaniment of some great new music. On my list today is clearing off some shelves in the dining room so I can put my children's books on them, getting my new (from eight months ago but never opened or used yet) dishware into the cabinets, more laundry, and moving the stuff from our refrigerator's freezer into our storage freezer as a first step towards emptying it for the arrival of our new refrigerator. Oh, and removing all the magnets from the outside. There are so many of them, I wonder if that will affect the earth's magnetic field in some way???