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Showing posts from January 16, 2011

Big Thanks and New Stuff!

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Soooo.... Last weekend, I attended a weekend's worth of workshops hosted by the Northwest Art Alliance , the fine folks who bring us the Best of the Northwest art fairs several times a year. We talked about jurying (that thing where you send in pictures of what you hope the people who run shows really want to see and then you never know why they must hate you specifically), and thing like booth design, selling techniques, wholesaling, photoshop techniques and photography. I want to thank everyone who volunteered their time and energy to make the weekend happen. Not just the organizers... while I know it was a huge amount of work to get it up and running, and watching Karen Seymour work the registration desk Saturday morning was a tutorial in multitasking and good humor, I want to thank all the other artists who showed up to learn but wound up accidentally teaching, either by speaking up when a presenter got stuck on a question or just by allowing an image of their work to be p

King of all Social Media

Here is the interview I did on the  KVUE Morning News in Austin on opening day of the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. If it seems like I'm driving the interview, that's all to the credit of Melissa, the interviewer. When I arrived that morning, I was presented with a prepared script covering what I would be talking about. It was hokey and contrived, not to mention inaccurate. The staff brought me out to the studio to sit off-camera one segment early and when I mentioned that they were acting on the wrong information, the quick-thinking anchors, Melissa Gale and Olga Campos  actually heard me and then just asked a few questions and let me talk. What you're going to see here is Melissa then recalling all the points I brought up and feeding me the right questions to get the all the info out that we had just covered off-camera. She was able to completely change her game plan two hours  into a two and a half hour broadcast that had started at 4:30 am.  God only knows what time she

The Dog Who Ate Christmas

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Sun's up in Seattle... just barely. Last night there was a windstorm so strong it folded up the patio furniture and threw it all over the yard. I slept on and off and was up before 6. I must still be on Texas Time. Maybe with this guy... This is Bear Cub. Once upon a time, he was a lost and scared dog and a sweet family took him in and gave him a home, sort of filling a place that was left when a scrappy, adventurous little terrier was lost. You can never quite replace a beloved animal. No two are alike in the ways that they get into your heart and your life. You think you know how an animal is supposed to work and then another one comes along and turns everything you know about them upside down. And it's all good... it's just a different good. Bear Cub defied expectations. In his prime, he was a substantial piece of dog, kind of a lean Rottweillery kind of guy with a nice deep bark, intimidating if you didn't know him. When I first met him, I was down for Christma