My Uncle Ernest always said "you artists are a different breed of people". I never really realized what that meant till just a few months ago. Let's face it, artists have to play and be happy in order to produce. We all struggle with balancing the business, trying to be "normal", and producing. It's working both sides of the brain. When I'm on a roll of producing, everything goes out the window. I lose track of time and days. I have a hard time keeping a normal schedule of keeping my gallery open and doing the business end.
In order to try to keep the artists and galleries organized we banded together. I started the Salida Artists about 4 years ago. It was a organization that tried to pool our thoughts and money together to promote and advertise the great art town in Salida. We also started the 2nd Saturdays about four years ago. It was a way where we would all try to be open till 7 every 2nd Saturday. It's hard to find us all open at the same time other than artwalk. People would ask why isn't this or that gallery open and we would all say," It's Salida". The 2nd Saturday theme enabled us to be open where people could find most of us open till 7pm on Saturday night. It also makes all of us tidy up our galleries and studios every month.
Then the CCVB, Chaffee County Vistor's Board, merged with us about 3 years ago and started helping us promote also. They wanted us to organize certain themes which they have on their site: headwatersofadventure.com. We also have a list of the galleries in Salida and what we're doing on the 2nd Saturday at: salidaartists.com
I have a hard time with doing their themes because it makes me concentrate on what they want me to produce and not my own. So I usually come up with my own theme. It has to be fun for me or it just doesn't work. If I'm going to stay in town till 7 I have to want to be there.
My themes usually involve some kind of cooking. My gallery/studio is very accommodating for being able to do covered dish parties. I love to cook and if I'm going to stay that late I like to have something to eat. Some of my favorite themes have been "your mama's potato salad", "Dorothy's ruby reds", "hot fun in the summertime", "mochi gome desu" (sticky rice) and a wok demonstration, and "the cabbage tasting".
"Your mama's potato salad" was one of the best. It was not only a tasty treat but a lesson in human relationships. Everybody had their own idea of what a potato salad should be. We had 14 different potato salads there along with burgers from my grill.
Another really fun one was one that I just had this last August, "the cabbage tasting". The city had told us all that we could not give away or consume wine at our galleries unless we closed down areas not open to the public. So of course I had to get on the band wagon and instead of doing a wine tasting I had a cabbage tasting. Which was really fun to see the different ways of making cabbage. I closed down the backroom and we got to sip our wine along with the cabbage and brauts from the grill.
You can still taste my food but you can't drink my wine. But you can almost find me open every 2nd Saturday....
