I just got some good news. My daughter and I are both participating in the SOWA Art Walk in Boston on May 16 and 17 (she's a photographer). It will be our first art show, and they told us we could share space, so we'll be able to keep each other company and provide each other with moral support. We first heard about the show last year from an online artist friend, J.J. Long, who lives in the Boston area and is an amazing painter. If you get a chance, you should check out his work! Jen and I drove down last year to see J.J. and check out all the amazing art. The Art Walk is held in Boston's South End. SOWA stands for South of Washington Street, a growing arts district where a number of old mill buildings (and a few new buildings) have been converted to artist studios. The artists open their studios to the public, and other artists from all around New England are given space in the public area to display and sell their work. There are of course, visual arts (paintings, photos, etc.), as well as glass art, jewelry, textiles, ceramics, leather work, and pretty much any kind of art you can imagine. The only downside I can see to participating is that we won't get to spend hours going through all those studios, looking at the art! But I'm really excited about it.
This will involve spending two nights in Boston. I went online to look for hotel reservations and discovered that the average prices for that weekend were in the $350-400-a-night range. Even for Boston, that's ridiculously high. Then I realized it was because this must be college graduation weekend, when a deluge of parents and friends flood the city to attend all those commencements (the greater Boston area has a trillion colleges and universities). So the hotels jack up the prices because they know they can get it. What a racket! Even the dumpy place we stayed a couple of years ago (for $99, I might add) when we went to see Bon Jovi (the bathroom didn't have a real door, and the headboard was falling off the wall) is asking $255 a night for that particular weekend! So I booked us a room at a Hampton Inn north of the city for $129 a night. Quite a difference! I had hoped to be in the city, but I suppose we don't have to spend time at the hotel except when we're sleeping. And it's a decent place for the price; we stayed there last summer for another Bon Jovi concert, and the hotel had a gym and an indoor pool and wifi and a buffet breakfast, all of them free. Now I have three months to paint like crazy so I'll actually have something to take with me. And I'm hoping to sell enough paintings between now and May to cover the cost of the hotel, as my credit card balance is already higher than I'd like.
Can't wait for May!
Here's a link to the Art Walk site: http://www.sowaartwalk.com/
2 comments:
Laurie, Congratulations on the Art Walk, that is exciting and definitely something to look forward to! So you have about 3 months to get ready, that is a good time frame. Enough time to inspire you to get things done, but not so far away that you can ignore it. :) And that is really nice that you can share space with your daughter.
I know what you mean about hotel prices...when you go on vacation off-season, they are so much cheaper. But I guess it's like a giant auction, and they only sell to the top bidders...
Hey, Debra, thanks! I'm really looking forward to the show, and I think three months is a good time frame. It will keep me working, but not killing myself to get things done quickly.
As for the hotels, it's crazy, isn't it? Boston has a wide variety of hotels, from ultra-expensive to fleabag, but I've always been able to get pretty good deals. I stayed a few years ago at the Parker House, a beautiful old-fashioned, elegant downtown hotel. I went in mid-summer, and actually got a $100-a-night deal, which for Boston is pretty sweet. But of course, the prices fluctuate constantly, and I guess the Art Walk people just picked a bad weekend for hotels. But maybe it will be a good weekend for tourists who want to buy art. Fingers crossed!
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