Here’s a couple photos of what we’ll be selling at the upcoming Open Studio, October 5th and Vendor Night on October 9th.

A large portion of my Pickwick & Plum plan has been to set up an ecommerce store/shop to sell my lovely found objects and other art stuff. And I’ve gone so far as to set up the shopping cart, load my categories, set up my merchant gateway and shipping module… only to discover (okay, I should have seen this coming) THAT IT TAKES F*O*R*E*V*E*R to

1. Shoot the photos
2. Photoshop the photos
3. Describe the product
4. and POST the product

It doesn’t make financial sense to do it – after all is said and done, I’ve spent ungodly amounts of time bringing the products to market. The above list doesn’t even take into consideration that I’ve already spent upwards of 30 -20 minutes finding, cleaning, bagging/cataloging and pricing each item.

I’d have to sell this stuff for millions of dollars, well, tens of dollars at least…

So: WHAT’S THE SOLUTION? Well, my best buddy Rich came up with something that I think might be Brilliant!
But it’s a work in progress, so you’re going to have to wait and see.

And then of course vote with your dollars.

During a recent Powells bookstore foray, I picked up three books about Assemblage Art. Objects of Reflection by Annie Lockhart, Who’s Your Dada by Linda and Opie O’Brien and Art Making – Collections & Obsessions by Lynne Perrella.

There were a number of other books on the subject but I felt that these three had some exceptional ideas/images. I’m not a huge fan of reading about art. Or writing about it either. Those artist bios or comments you read on the walls of art galleries always read like pretentious sales pitches, usually full of heady words about inspiration and voice. Gag me. I don’t want to have to have something profound to say when I’m making something and I usually don’t care two cents what someone else had to say – EVEN THE ARTIST – when they were making something I like. This is why I was a terrible Literature student… do we have to talk about the book? Can’t we just read it? I think I’m in the minority. If everyone were like me, books would be 95% photos and 5% directions. I’m drawn to books on technique and there seems to be very few of those out there.

But, this week I got the flu and have been in bed with these three books and have really been enjoying them. I can’t wait to get well and hit the art studio (probably first with a dustbin and mop, but then with vim and vigor).

I especially like Who’s Your Dada, by Linda and Opie. I met these two at the Las Vegas Art & Soul retreat back in February and they seemed like good folks. The writing is exceptionally good – interesting and honest. I hope I get to tell them in person some time.

The whole idea behind Kickstart is so damn cool… and I’m throwing some support in the form of cold hard cash, to this equally great idea!

We came, we saw, we conquered.

Pickwick & Plum had an extremely successful launching at the Art & Soul event in Las Vegas. We were really well received and sold a good chunk of our inventory. It’s hard to say what was the most popular items. I had planned on keeping a running tally of what was selling but we could barely keep up with handing out change and bagging the items. It was CRAZY!!! Thank god Crista was there!

It was really wonderful to meet folks and talk about the objects. I’d spent so much time getting ready for the event, it was nice to finally get to see people’s reaction.

Here’s are some photos from the event – there wasn’t time to get any ‘action shots’, so these are at the tail end of the event. Best laid plans… and all that…