I think that a lot of my readers know that I was at Art in the Park last Saturday.
I am correct in thinking this because of the five-hour span of the event I know that I spent at least three hours talking to the people who turned out to say, "Hey, there you are! Hi!" and it was just swell.
No, I really mean it, absolutely topping.
I set out to be in the event by convincing a friend to go into it with me and to bring his tent. I was told that you must have a tent and I didn't and he did so this all sort of hinged on his being willing to come along and bring his tent. I don't have a tent because I can get into enough trouble with a lawn umbrella and some things you just know ahead of time are not one-woman projects.
At Art in the Park, there was all sorts of help but they were very honest and said that there would be help in the morning but breaking down was up to the vendors.
In my mind I have a picture of myself, short round person that I am, clinging to one leg of a tent as the gusting winds sailed it off into the storm clouds somewhere in the middle distance of a Maryland summer's evening. It is not a pretty picture so I have given up the idea of single-handedly dealing with a tent.
The other good thing about having someone with a tent is that he is a really good artist. I mean a really, really good artist. When I grow up I want to paint like he does. That sort of artist. I figured that I could always set up my stuff and then, if folks snooted at what I do, well, there was always his stuff that they could approve of.
This is because, old hand at horse shows that I am, I have never been to an art show — even as a visitor. I had no idea what to expect. I really didn't expect to have people throw eggs and fruit at me — particularly with the price of groceries today — but you know what I mean. I had absolutely nothing to judge myself against.
And, of course, art shows are on weekends which is high traffic time with the horses for their events so that all came first when I was seriously involved with that part of my life.
I will tell you that this was no small undertaking. Everything has to be framed, at the very least, with a nice bit of wire across the back and, if you are like me and work on paper, it has to have a solid backing, with a piece of stout brown paper glued down across the frame even before you put in the screw-in thingies (note the technical terms) and attach the wire to them.
Then you have to take what that art is going to be seen on. In my case tables — they require tablecloths — and something to stand them up against on the tables and then something free-standing to put other pieces on. And it should be organized.
After years of taking out all those horses with their feed, hay, bedding, buckets, stall gates, saddles, bridles and all of the other accoutrements and equine regalia I am an organizational doyenne for gearing up and packing for large undertakings. I could probably stage the reconstituting of a march for Washington's Army of the Potomac or whatever it was called and never turn a hair while I did it.
But this was different. It wasn't just running over the tree root on the lawn when we pulled up to get the car packed and getting hung up and having to reverse back over it. It was that this time I was the one that was going to get inspected and maybe found wanting. I comforted myself that my artist friend had been through all of this before—as it turned out he hadn't either, so there went that. In the car on the way up the only real comfort that I had was the thought that at least I wasn't going to have to deal with 10 or a dozen horses when I got there.
But it worked out really well, there were all of those (you) nice folks to say 'howdy', both of us sold paintings (so, who knew?) and it was a great day.
The only odd thing was that one lady stopped in front of the tent, looked down her nose at all of our horse paintings and said in a withering tone, "Well, this must be the 'horsey set.'"
It cracked me up because, by golly, we were!
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