I've realized through trying to post every week that when I get busy, I don't write! I spent the entire summer of 2022 traveling and setting up my Starfish Earth Clothes booth at so many art festivals I was constantly overwhelmed and over worked. My boyfriend Ben helped me at all of them and even exhibited at some of the same ones. We had a lot of fun but really felt like we'd been through the wringer when the season finally ended at Christmas time. From April until December the shows I did were Chillicothe Earth Day, Delaware Arts Festival, Maple and Main Music and Arts Festival, Worthington Arts Festival, Comfest, Westerville Art & Music Festival, Willoughby Arts Festival, Art In The Park Medina, Lakewood Arts Festival, Chardon Square Arts Festival, Yellow Springs Art On The Lawn, Art On the Commons Kettering, Art On The Green Hudson, Upper Arlington Labor Day Arts Festival, Black Swamp Arts Festival, Grove City Art In The Alley, Jack Pine Glass Pumpkin Festival, Yellow Springs Street Fair, Christmasfair, Clintonville Art Guild, and Winterfair Columbus, plus a pop up holiday show at Ohio Designer Craftsman where I did a silkscreening demo. Whew! That was a lot of shows! So for this post I want to retroactively put some photos up of the art festival season. Now that we are in my slow months I don't have many shows and I just do livestreams and Etsy sales to keep my customers engaged and so they don't forget about me.
The gigs I played this summer were also really fun and I'll add some of those pictures as well. Gathering Stars played at Earth Day, Comfest and Rambling House. We also played a scaled down version of the band at my annual Pie Festival. That is worth a whole post itself so I'll wait to put those pictures up.
Heres a summary of April through July shows and highlights:
April highlights: Earth Day Chillicothe when Ben won best of show, I had a booth and did well, and Gathering Stars played and it went great. Also, it was beautiful weather which doesn’t always happen at Earth Day.
I finished my self portrait with piano, Zippy horse and Jelly dog. Built a sales desk for my art festival booth. Went morel hunting with Mindy.
Started doing the video set up and monitoring for Del’s cooking show which is fun and so informative teaching me lots of vegan cooking tips and general techniques that I didn’t know like Mis en place.
May highlights include: Nice family birthday party for me and Ellie at Cole and Monica’s house. 2 trips to Lake Hope with Ben and Jelly. Roses in wonderful bloom at the Park of Roses and walking there and photographing them a lot. Cole bought me a Japanese Weeping Cherry Tree for my birthday and built me a rose trellis.
Delaware Arts Festival went well.
June: Art Festivals were Maple and Main, Worthington, Ben did Columbus Arts Festival and won best 3D, we shared a booth at Comfest.
Roses still in bloom all summer.
Gathering Stars played our friend’s daughters wedding which was really nice and fun. We also played Comfest which was a blast. Repo Pilots played Comfest as well and that was Ben’s debut singing gig- people loved his song!
July: The Ginger Lees played Rambling House with Sarah Asher.
Art Festivals were Westerville, Willoughby and Medina.
Gathering Stars played Natalies and it went great.
We got another baby praying mantis on our bonsai tree on the back porch! Maybe they lay their eggs somewhere nearby?
Summer storms make great cloud shows, I got some water in my basement, there are lots of rainbows.
Next week I'll finish August-December highlights...
This week I played a gig with The Repo Pilots at a really fun dive bar in Columbus called El Dorado's. I was surprised by the number of musicians that showed up. I guess between the four of us and my friend Lisa Gain who booked the night for her band The Rusty Silos, we know a lot of people and it was sweet that they would come out and listen. This was the second gig where Ben sang songs he's written and it went over great, he's very funny and got the crowd on his side. His lyrics to bass solo, "unh uh, oh no, no one wants to hear your bass solo." got the crowd laughing. His song about when he was a teenager in the 80's driving his mom's car dubbed "The deer slayer" to the school talent show, getting beat by a tap dancer, going to a bonfire, scoring some weed, driving the car into a ditch, having his friend's dad pull them out with the big chain and finally getting home also got some love and nice compliments after the show. I was really happy to have managed tracking a song for this band at home in Logic, having my son Cole mix it and then get it played on the local radio station too. That is the song "First Love" on the home page that you can download. We heard it on the way to the gig so that was nice timing.
