The Candy Cult exhibition I’ve been posting about for a while now finally opened!

When I dropped by on Saturday afternoon before the opening, I was really impressed with the setup. The curator, Karen, and her helpers had all the cutout pieces hung on the white walls with small blocks of wood to make them seem to pop out at you. The variety of work is fantastic - besides the artists being from all over the world, the different styles from cutesy to creepy to downright strange meant there was something for everybody. Karen told me at the opening that she really wanted it to be something different, something people can relate to better than fine art as well as promoting pop-art as an artform. Judging by the huge crowd that showed up and how impressed they seem to be I think she did an amazing job!

In the end I had two pieces exhibiting - the Chisa and Mojo illustration that I posted earlier, and the yellow mushroom seen here, who I decided to name ‘Mooshy’ for lack of better ideas. ‘Chisa and Mojo’ sold within the first hour or so! I was honestly expecting to buy them myself (not that I’d mind having awesome big cutouts of my characters on my walls), especially when my work was surrounded by that of really incredible artists. It feels fantastic to know that someone liked my work enough to buy it. As far as I know Mooshy is still available for sale, if anyone is interested. Most of the pieces seemed to be snapped up during the opening, so everyone did really well!

Chisa and Mojo (the girl with the paintbrush and monkey) by me!

Mooshy the Mushroom, by me

I also sold some of my crafts (which I will put in another post) and bought an adorable button badge by Studio Aiko and pranced around talking to my friends and family who showed up to support me (thankyou!). I’m going to pick up the bits that didn’t sell this weekend, so you may see an online store appearing on ChiGarden soon.

Overall this was an incredibly positive experience - possibly because all I had to do was provide my artwork, make the website and some crafty things, roles which I’m quite comfortable in. I don’t think there’s anyway I’d be able to have s solo exhibition, but I definitely want to attend more exhibitions by other artists and maybe look out for group exhibition callouts in future. This exhibition wouldn’t have been possible without the work of Karen, Lisa and all their helpers who made it easy for an amateur artist like me to participate in their first exhibition.

More photos from the event can be seen on my Flickr page, and Lisa has some really good photos too.

Candy Cult will be open until the 2nd November at the Breadbox gallery (details here) if you haven’t had a chance to check it out already. I’ll be there from 3:30 - 5pm this Saturday if you’d like to come keep me company!

To be honest, I’m somewhat ignorant of the origins or tradtions of Oktoberfest besides drinking large amounts of beer and saying ‘Prost!’ with much gusto and eye contact. But I’m always up for an excuse to eat and drink with friends, and so today we went to Sherene and Jared’s place for another of their themed parties.

I had intended to bring Corica’s famous apple strudel as my contribution, but by the time I got there they had run out. We had to settle for a still very delicious (and sort of German!) black forest cake. Much sausages, sauerkraut, black forest cake and beer was consumed. As always, good friends and good times.

(more…)

Due to Western Australia having the Queen’s Birthday long weekend on an arbitrary day in September so public holidays are spread around evenly, I found myself with a nice long weekend. I had planned to make some little craft thingies to sell at the opening night of the Candy Cult Character Art Exhibition, so thought I’d use the time off to get started on some small clay things.

I still have to finish most of them, but here’s a few progress shots.

The only ones I did finish are these cute strawberry earrings! I only made these two pairs but I’m quite happy with them so might make a few more. Do you think anyone would buy them?