East Lansing Art Festival

East Lansing Art Festival was my first out of state show this season - on May 20, 21, 2017. I was invited back to this show as an award winner from last year. I decided to go back to this show in spite of the really traumatic experience of having a bunch of my paintings stolen last year. I was overwhelmed by the support of the community, the sheer number of people who reached out to me, shared the stolen pieces on social media, the efforts of the ELPD to recover them and the art fest. I was really hoping for a more positive experience this year. 

I had sent out 20 postcards to collectors & fans from last year to promote the show. I was also a featured artist on their social media & one of my pieces was shown on a TV ad airing in the area. I was excited to show off my new style of mandala paintings & I was also bringing another large elephant piece! I have a new line of florals I started creating in 2017 I was excited about showing in East Lansing.

We got there around 7 pm on Friday night for set-up. I had paid for a corner booth, way back in January. But on arriving we found that we did not have a corner as planned. It was very disappointing as I had brought inventory & planned for the lay out of my booth based on having a corner. Similar to Elmhurst, we were able to set up only the tent on Friday. We didn't want to leave any inventory in the booth overnight. We stayed in a nearby airbnb for the weekend and it was ok. 

The weather was also iffy this weekend with a little bit of rain on both days. However people came out and bought! My biggest sellers were the prints on Michigan state & the Spartans logo. I also sold quite a bit of the Block M prints :) I was thrilled to see so many people remembering us from last year & more than 5 people who signed up for my email list were already on it! 

There was an awards session along with dinner on Saturday evening. We were so exhausted from the drive, set-up & long day in the wind & rain that we went to bed at 8.30 and slept for a solid 10 hours. The take-down on Sunday went by quick & the load out was easy. I was also able to drive the van to my booth on Saturday & Sunday mornings to hang the paintings. 

We only sold a single original small 6"x6" painting, while we were closing up on Sunday. It was a little disappointing to not sell any originals, but at least we sold enough small items to make it a decent show. 

The director was apologetic about messing my corner location & I am not sure if having a corner would have made any difference in sales. We were home by 10pm on Sunday and though I wish we had done better, I don't have any complaints. Only regret was not being able to purchase an art piece from another artist that I liked - hopefully I will see them in another show where I make enough sales so I can choose to buy art too!

Elmhurst Art in Wilder Park

Elmhurst Art in Wilder Park, on May 6, 7 was my first outdoor show of the season for 2017! This is the third year I am doing the show & it is always an exciting one as we get to see so many of our artist friends after the winter break. This year we had the added bonus of having Miranda (http://www.mirandameyer.com/) & Stephen stay with us for the show. 

Our plan was to do the set-up for the show on Friday evening, we got to the venue around 5.30pm. Finding parking was not an issue, but my booth location had moved from the previous years due to rain & the ground being soggy in some places. We had to move the van again to get to a closer parking and dolly everything to our booth.

It's amazing how rusty we had gotten over the winter & it took forever, with a slew of amateur mistakes before we could set up the booth. Luckily we hadn't forgotten any part for the set-up like last year. It was also super-cold. Weather is always iffy at this show, given it is very early in the season. This year I had to pack all my winter gear including hand warmers for the show. We only managed to put the booth up & decided to hang the paintings the next morning. Just the tent & walls took more than 2.5 hours to get done!

We got there early around 8.30 on Saturday morning to finish the booth. I love having a corner booth at this show and it allows me to have more of my work out. Saturday was painfully slow and I had only 7 sales, not even making what I paid for the booth fee in sales. I had even run a facebook ad for the past 4 days promoting the show & my works. Shankar had taken back the front wall to close the booth home by mistake, so, I had to make an extra trip home before we could close up for the day. The highlight of the day was going to a nice Indian restaurant for dinner with friends & family!

Sales on Sunday was even worse than Saturday. The sun started coming out later in the day, though the temperature did not rise. Highlight of the day was quite a few friends stopping by & it was also nice to see a few of my collectors from the years before.

I didn't sell any original paintings & the sales of prints hardly made up for my expenses. A few other artist friends did not even make what I did. This show is the closest in distance & time to where we live. The location is great & so is the promoter. Unfortunately this is the second year I am not making any money doing this show & we have to seriously think about it for next year. I had such a great show the first year I was here and the weather is the biggest factor in determining the crowd & sales. Hoping the upcoming shows make up for this one!

Puppy Woes

I haven't worked on a floral in a long time and inspired by a couple of artists on social media, decided to give it a try for a new series for 2017. I also wanted the flowers to be based on my mandalas, but more organic. So, I started this piece on a nice, large 24" x 30" canvas on the beginning of this month. The first image below is the progress I had made on the end of day 2. Most of day 1 was working on the background and getting an idea of the layout & the colors. I had to take a day in between to travel for family stuff, but got back to the painting skipping doing fun stuff with the family. Second image below was end of progress on day 3 on working on this piece. 

Decided to take a break and go out for dinner with the visiting family and when I got back to the studio, the painting which was drying on top of my table, was half on the chair, covered in paint! Cue our adorable & anxiety laden puppy Kalai! She decided having mommy home for almost all day and having me step outside a bit was too much to handle. She had jumped all over the studio, unscrewed a bottle of paint and emptied on top of the painting and in jumping off sent the whole thing down to the chair and dripping paint on the floor. She also destroyed a pin cushion and managed to get all the pins out without hurting herself. I attempted to wash the excess paint off the piece in the bath tub and managed to get most of it out, but also some of what I wanted to stay.

I had to have my husband hide the piece, given how angry it made me and the frustration of not being able to do anything about it. After 2 days I started a very similar piece (below) and worked on it for another 3 days. I took it to get critiqued at one of my local art leagues and everyone loved it. Given the positive feedback, I finished another one for my show Dots & Lines at the Addison Center for the Arts.

This week, after a friend suggested it was a collaborative piece with Kalai, I finally managed to go back to the damaged one and work on it. Here is the finished piece, completing a series of 5 floral paintings. Two of them are already in a show and I am hanging another one in a new show starting tomorrow. I will be entering the fourth piece in a member show at an art league later this month. The story of a series 😏

Stocking Up

Happy New Year! It's that time when I am taking stock of what's left over & ordering new stuff. I already took advantage of all the holiday sales / free shipping and got almost all of my paint supplies for next year. I also got a whole bunch of new canvases & after making a list of potential paintings I want to work on this year, ordered a bunch more. 

And the good guys from Fedex just dropped off these 6 boxes, ordered over the weekend!

One of my goals this year is to standardize the sizes in which I paint. Though it seems a little hard to eliminate a few sizes, I am not going to be working on 9x9, 9x12, 12x12 & 11x14 anymore. I am adding a couple of large sizes instead - like 36x36 & 36x48. 

Again, in 2016, I want to finish 100 titled pieces! May be more if I keep working diligently over this winter 'break'.  Off to prep & paint now!

Floral Mandalas

A new series I have started recently are a different style of mandala paintings on canvas. My usual paintings all have concentric circles, but this series is more of a floral style, with next layers of the circle forming out of the previous layers. The canvas are also 16" x 20"  - not a square and with only the floral mandala and my signature, curved in a corner. These canvas can be hung in either orientation! The first two below - Blossom & Elegance, 2015 have already found wonderful collectors their second week on show. I painted the other two - Patience & Growth in the last two weeks and really liking how the series is turning out. 

These paintings are all done with 3-4 colors in the background and 1-2 colors in the textured layers. The textured dots & lines are done in dark & light shades of either gold or silver with one other accent iridescent color. By varying the shade and the thickness of the lines, the mandalas are more dramatic. If you are in the Chicago area, please come see these and my other paintings in person at one of my shows this summer.

 Blossom & Elegance, 2015. 16" x 20"

Textured henna style acrylic floral mandala painting on canvas with mirrors. 

© Bala Thiagarajan, 2015

 Patience, 2015. 16" x 20" 

Textured henna style acrylic floral mandala painting on canvas with mirrors. 

© Bala Thiagarajan, 2015

 Growth, 2015. 16" x 20" 

Textured henna style acrylic floral mandala painting on canvas with mirrors. 

© Bala Thiagarajan, 2015

Unexpected Award

It is not often that I paint on a theme that is given to me. I suppose the only time I do that is for commissioned paintings. After the big move however, I joined my local artists association and they had a show on 'Trees' starting in two weeks. I wanted to use that opportunity to show my work to this group and started working on a tree painting in my henna-style with lots of texture. 

Native Roots, 2014. Henna-style textured acrylic painting on canvas.
12" x 16". (c) Bala Thiagarajan, 2014

I was pleasantly surprised to find out a week after the show opened, on a random trip to the library, that the painting got a honorable mention. I am thrilled and looking forward to the next show with a Spring theme!

Ready to Fly

Fawkes, the Phoenix is one of my latest paintings, completed just 3 weeks back for my show at the Yahara Bay Distillery. And with this show, I reached another milestone in my art career - I have sold 100+ paintings since Feb 2012. It feels such an accomplishment for someone who is not trained as an artist. It was also great to see all my friends who have been encouraging me down this career path since day 1 at the reception. It was a great evening. The show runs for two more week at The Gallery at Yahara Bay.

 

A Trip to de Young

A couple of weeks back we were on the West Coast and got the chance to go to de Young, one of the Fine Art Museums in San Francisco, with one of our friends. The "Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Vermeer was on special exhibit and it was a wonderful experience to see it in person and spend some time taking it all in. We did the docent tour of the special exhibit and our docent was very knowledgeable and pointed out so many things one wouldn't know or easily miss. 

One of the most memorable paintings for me, other than the Girl with a Pearl Earring, of course, was the "Fauna and Flora of the Pacific" by Miguel Covarrubias. For me as a biologist, I was very impressed how he brought everything together so wonderfully and also mind-blowing that I have never seen even a map like this before. I came away with more inspiration to continue to work on my Henna Animals series.

 

The glass exhibit was also mind-blowing and we spent quite a bit of time there. 

And as we rounded off American Contemporary work, we came away with a lot of thought and discussion as to what is art and which art belongs in a museum, especially seeing a work of huge canvas painted with a black and blue border and left white otherwise (The blue made the white whiter and black blacker). 

We also spent some time on the observatory, taking in sights of the city all around us!

Photo credits: Sankara Raman, 2013.