Somerville Open Studios Recap

Open Studios was surprisingly hectic, but really amazing. I met a lot of people who were really interested in my work; two of my favorites were a young child who came to my table, politely asked to buy a print (after studiously perusing the designs available) and even signed up for my mailing list, and a guy who ran over on a friend's recommendation, took a glance at my table and the drawings I had on display and summed up his review by exclaiming "Holy shit."

Because I was behind the table the whole time, I didn't get a chance to look at many other artists' work, but I did take one opportunity to run around the space a little, and I even had some fans bring me business cards from other artists they thought I'd like. I was recommended to check out one of the tables in the Armory because the artist was working with cut-outs from roadmaps, and when I got a chance to see her work it turned out she already knew about my maps and had bought two pieces from me! It's getting to be a smaller and smaller world, and I love it.

I also met a lot of interesting artists by chatting with the people who came by my table. I had some new, stylized watercolor maps out, and got into a discussion with a photographer about how they resembled some work he'd done with images of cobblestones. 

 

He works with much brighter colors than I do, so his image is a lot more eye-catching. I should definitely think of using more color; even if it's not something I normally do, it does get peoples' attention. I had prints of "Growing Fields" (by far the most colorful map I've done) for the first time at Open Studios, and almost sold out of that one design. I'm thinking of doing the abstract maps (like the one above) in brighter colors, to make more graphic map representations.