Local Art Walk In Style
My first art walk was in July and I was a total newbie. Luckily, so was the town center that was putting it on. I had the good fortune to be placed with a business that had a folding table I could use and several shelves. Without those, I would have been in big trouble!
A month goes by, and I get invited back to display my photography once again. I had been looking for a grid wall display anyway, but the shipping on those things cost more than the actual piece. I'm a little too stubborn for that. I start searching craigslist for my potential displays. All I find are 2 x 8 grid walls...I could most likely fit those in my giant trunk, but the chances of me buying another boat-like car are zilch. No sense in buying something I won't be able to haul around in a few years.
I scour the web looking for ideas and found a few to build. I was hoping for a quicker, more elegant solution. I went with a friend to Lowes to see what we could do. We came up with a few options, but left empty handed. We ended up at Storables. I had been there the week before and liked some of the shelving, but didn't have a good grasp of how to make it work. My friend quickly fixed that problem.
I ended up buying 2 of the largest black wire shelves they had and 4 posts. We put it together with each shelf at the end of the posts. Instead of having the shelves horizontal, we flipped it on its side. Now I had two grids to hang pictures from. We also played around with options for expansion. Something I'm not quite ready for yet, but know exactly how to handle it when I am.
I used shelf to shelf connectors, J-hooks, caribiners, picture hanging wire, and a leather strip to hang the pictures. The hooks were too wide to fit on the picture hangers attached to the frames, so I used the wire to create wire loops. I could easily hang and remove pictures as need.
I used the leather strip as a soft attachment to the front top horizontal post. I didn't want to scratch up the black metal before the show. I then used a caribiner and more wire to suspend a large picture in the open space. I added a black foam core board on top as a shelf to place a few more pictures.
Fast forward to the actual event.
It was a warm September afternoon and the Mill Creek Town Center was full of people. I had the pleasure to be assigned to Peoples Bank. The bank advertised the even quite well and offered wine and cheese.Several of the first customers were patrons of the bank and were excited to view the artwork. All went great. By the end of the night I had sold 4 framed prints and had gotten compliments on both my display and my reasonably priced photography. Some friends have suggested I raise my prices, even articles I've read say to make sure you price yourself a little bit above average. Maybe some day I'll do that, but right now, I just really like being affordable so people can enjoy my work as much as I do.
To check out more pictures from the Mill Creek 2012 September Art Walk, click here. The following images are from the Mill Creek Town Center Events/News.
