Decision Time

I need to make a decision on the Florida shows. You may remember back a few months when I was entering the shows; it seemed like such a great idea - travel and see the world, spend the cold St. Louis winter in Florida, ahhhh, what could be better. I am being facetious but you get the point.

So I looked at a four week window of time, basically Febuary-early March. And I entered a bunch of high end, overlapping shows, hoping that I would get in enough of them to make the trip worthwhile from a financial standpoint. I was thinking that either 2 or 3 back to back shows and I would head down to Florida no problem.

I got rejected (that's "not accepted" here in the trade but it feels more like rejected) from Coconut Grove and Naples National. I did get in to 2 shows(Artigras & Boca), and am waitlisted for a 3rd(Gasparilla). But I pulled out of Boca already based on the bad artist rap that was so pervasive (and persuasive) when I was at the Plaza show(in retrospect, I maybe pulled the trigger a little too quickly, but everything I heard was so unappealing I simply regretted having sent the application). This situation leaves me with one for sure show and another waitlist. With a 2 week down time in between.....basically the worst case scenario. Now what do to do?

The money man (that would be John) figured it all out and came up with a $2000 price tag to do Artigras. That is pretty much the same figure I came up with(doing it in my head of course). It is kind of funny as he and all nearly always come to the same place but we seldom do it the same way. Needless to say this is an expensive show and would make for a tight profit picture. And I think it would be crazy to stay 3 weeks to maybe do 2 shows, cause I might not even get into the Gasparilla. It's not so much the money as the downtime in between that I can't afford. Collage is simply too complicated to try and travel with supplies - I use so much stuff in my work I cannot imagine trying to create them "on the road." So that's not an option.

I'm leaning toward trying Artigras. It will be like sticking my toe into the Florida season.