Finding the border balance

So, this week marks the second official week after the KC Fringe Festival. What a crazy ride that was for me and everyone else involved.

Last year, I participated in the Fringe Festival as a volunteer. I was shuffled from venue to venue taking tickets, seating people, learning how to tech (!!) a space for the Youth Fringe members and generally running around.

If some of you were reading this blog back then, you'll probably remember me squawking about the lack of direction and general "in chargness" that the Visual Arts Fringe portion had...well, turns out when you squawk loudly enough, you get hired! And thus began the journey of organizing and herding (yes, like cows and sheep and other various farm animals) all the Visual Artists for the Festival this year.

Mind you, I can't organize my car. I don't keep a budget. I hardly remember what day it is sometimes. But, off to organizing I was. And overall, I think (think) it turned out pretty well. I was in a constant state of panic and general frenzy the whole time but aside from the impending sense of "oh god what am I doing", it was fun and a great learning experience.

Almost all of the artists were fantastic to work with. They put in a lot of additional hours to help hang, clean and dismantle all of the odds and ends that it takes to hang 21 artists in a room that is, suddenly, not as big as you thought it was when you agreed to the venue.

There were challenges with working with that many people-there always will be-but I think I at least learned a few valuable lessons about learning to listen while still drawing boundaries around which bits people say actually matter and which don't.

I also got a taste of what it means to try and fit a bunch of egos in one place. Wow. Let me tell you, there are some people in this world who need a whole room just to contain how much they think of themselves and the work they make....not to mention the work itself!

Egads. It took a lot for me to not remind certain people that yes, you have a lot of work and no, it's not all worth hanging. In fact, I would argue that most of it was pretty pointless. Ahem. I can't say that though. Not really. At least not to most people's faces. I just don't understand people who spend more time talking about their work than they do making the stuff. It seems, in most cases, at least, that their time could be better spent.

On the other hand, we had some really good work up too. This year marked a successful turnout for artists in general. The plays were great-one of our local UMKC directors put out another stellar performance called "Head" which was a sordid, sexually charged, awesome retelling of the St. John The Baptist and Solome story. Really great. 90 minutes, straight through with no intermission and some really gritty scenes that I appreciated for the honesty above all else.

Hats off to the actors as well-they busted their asses to make that play work and will continue to bust their asses until the work is deemed finish by the director/writer.

But, back to my group. As I said, we had some really great artists show this year. It makes me very excited for who is going to return and who will come out of the woodwork for next year. If we can continue to blast the quality of artists through the atmosphere like we did this year-we'll be well on our way to being taken seriously in this Festival. "Beginner gains" though can be deceptive. As the quality goes up it'll get harder and harder to out do ourselves from year to year. It's that sort of catch 22 that lets you rocket to a good middle ground but then simultaneously lose and gain ground as you try to break into the "Really Good" category. The ever elusive box called "Successful."

For those of you who aren't familiar with Fringe or the theories behind it, you can go here: www.kcfringe.org and check out the "what's the fringe" page. It gives you a brief background and history on how the Fringe got its start.

Other cities also put on some really fantastic Fringes of their own-Minneapolis and Boulder are just two examples that come to mind. I'm hoping to go out there one of these days and see how they do it-but for now I"ll have to entertain myself with their websites and learn everything I can from talking to positively everyone I can to learn as much as I can between now and next year.

And yes, that means learning how to listen to those people who have been around long enough to build up giant egos and may not make the kind of art that I would make or do make (hopefully) but who have some invaluable experience and connections that make the overall experience of Fringe richer and more....possible.

I'll have pictures of this experience up shortly I do believe. I just have to bring myself to go through all of them. (c:

Oh my

it's been a while hasn't it?

I don't have internet at my house so it makes posting into the wee hours a bit more difficult. Anyway-I'm sitting at the office right now working on some things for tomorrow morning and it occurred to me that while I'm here I could be posting. I'm printing and I've got everything queued up for the next round-just have to wait for technology to do its thang.

The Fringe Festival was a success I do believe-there was some confusion and a lot of improv and required flexibility but I sold lots of jewelry (almost 400 dollars!) and I got to show some new work and stuff like that...always a plus. I also had some jewelry on display for the fashion show this year which was pretty cool. I had a good time too-there were a lot of cool people and despite having to sell jewelry in the parking lot of the venue instead of inside where we all thought we were going to be set up...(as I said, mandatory flexibility) things went well. I had a fantastic designer next to me who not only let me borrow one of their lights so people could actually see what they were shopping for but let me run around in the most gorgeous little shrug I've ever seen for the whole night. Hehe. It was a good time. There was 3 dollar Boulevard beer which was awesome and overall, it worked out pretty well.

I may have found myself a position on the visual arts committee for next years Fringe too...oops. I talk a lot and I have lots of opinions which is not always a good thing I know, but whatever. It needed to work better and I think I could help with that. The kid they had doing it this year got bombarded with two different equally demanding jobs for the Festival and on top of all that, he was getting his ass chewed for not having any information to really give to the artists. So yeah, it needs to have a seperate person in charge. Visual artists-we can be hard to work with, ya know...(c:

I also managed to get the show up at Black Dog Coffee Shop set up. Phew. That was a crazy dash. Remind me to have "spare art" on hand so next time I can just hang stuff and not have to do everything from scratch. Oy.

In other news-been getting some good freelance projects here and there which is good. You can check out my latest creation at: www.maxfearingart.com It's a site I did for a friend of mine who is a local artist. We're trying to get him some web recognition. It's getting there-currently it's a work in progress still but it's on its way. I also did a little bit of work for another friend of mine that I work with....jewelry commissions have been coming in since the Fringe as well. Not enough to pay the bills or buy the totally adorable, must have building that I want in Parkville but ya know. I'll take what I can get. If anyone wins the Powerball and wants to buy me a storefront, you know where to find me. (c:

I'm heading out to Colorado in September to go mountain biking with my boyfriend. It should be a lot of fun. There's a beer fest going on in downtown Denver too that we're going to hit up. That'll be a nice cap to our week out in the mountains camping and biking. Hopefully I don't actually kill myself hehe. We've been going out to a place called Landahl Park in Blue Springs, MO lately that has some really good mountain bike type trails. I know, I live in Kansas, there are no mountains, but this place does a really good job. All naturally cut trails that have lots of technical sections and lots of cool stuff to ride. I dig it a lot. I got a little banged up this weekend but no real battle scars. I was sort of disappointed. (c:

The weather has been crazy hot. I swear God was trying to come through my window last night....it was actually some severe lightening. I really did think that the generator outside my window had been struck....scared me half to death. Today was beautiful-I guess it got all of it out of its system.

Alrighty. Not much else at the moment to really report per se. Just trying to get as much playing outside done as possible as of late. (c: And spending lots of time at the coffee shop trying to get some things finished up so I can free up my time and maybe take on a real project here and there.

I've been reading lately too but that's another post all by itself. It will give me some incentive to post more regularly if I leave it for later. hehe. Hopefully at least.