Just me

Wow, haven't written since before the outdoor season!  I didn't mean to be gone that long, but life gets busy.  It was a crazy summer - Wendy and I have decided that our work is going in different directions, so for the first time in many years I was a solo artist.  My family did come and help out when they could - but I spent much of the summer with no backup other than "booth sitters". 

From a show perspective this meant that I couldn't walk around and visit (or purchase) during show hours without risking my own sales.  To get around that I developed the habit of arriving an hour earlier than necessary on Sundays so I could visit folks.  This works to a point, the problem is I'm not the only artist doing that so I just can't find some folks because they are wandering too.

Another change is lunch.  In the past I used lunch as a quick break - run to the washroom, get some food, and then back to the booth.  Now I can ask a booth sitter to watch my booth but I'm more likely to just hit the washroom and hurry back.  I've been more vigilant about bringing snacks and energy bars, and I rarely get lunch.  If you visit me at One of a Kind don't be surprised to see a PBJ sandwich hiding in my booth.

The biggest downside to being solo is how much I miss the company - Wendy and I remain great friends, but there is no built in (weekend long) lunch date all summer.  We still hang out and she is doing a great business selling her work in different channels.

The other big change that resulted from our shift is that I have dropped the business name "Heartfire Studios".  Most of the shows just put an artist name up even if you have a business name so I took the obvious path and have changed all of my social media and business cards to refer just to amyikenn.com or Amy Ikenn Glasswork.  Even the name of this blog has changed to drop Heartfire.  I also revamped the website - comments are welcome.   I will maintain the Heartfire link to my website indefinitely, but if you want to find me on Facebook, Google + or Twitter you should start by looking for "Amy Ikenn Glass".  or follow these links:

amyikenn.com
Facebook
Twitter
Google +

Changes for 2014

Closing out 2013

By the end of last years shows I had narrowed my fused work down to a few types:

Framed Landscapes:

Florals (framed and functional):

Auroras (framed and functional):

These groups made a really strong presentation at OOAK, but my sales were not what I was hoping for.  My florals sold fairly well, but the Auroras got a lot of attention and virtually no sales.  I am working on the theory that florals are a good gift, but Auroras are more of a purchase for self, and OOAK is primarily a gift show.  At least I have enough stock to start the new season to test my theory!

Changes for 2014:

New work

Over the winter I have been working on ideas that bring the Floral and Aurora Series together.  Right now these are all framed:

I am also working on some new shapes for wall pieces, larger than before with different proportions.

 

Dropping old lines

My current plan involves dropping

• all of the serving pieces except for cheese knives 
• the Quilt Series
• the Block Series

I have stock in all 3 and can bring them back if warranted, but sales on the Quilts and Blocks don't warrant the space in my car.  Margins on the serving pieces are low, so the big question is will that booth real estate be more valuable for higher margin items or will my overall sales drop so much that I miss those pieces.

Show Schedule

I'm keeping my top shows from last year, 57th Street, Spring Green, Northbrook, Geneva and Lakeview.  A special thanks to those organizers for wanting me back! I am hoping to go back to Riverssance but the jury is (literally) still out.  I'm also trying to add one show early, one show in August, and possibly one more in the fall.  I am also planning to go back to OOAK.


Without a magic Carnac the Magnificent hat to help me out I am gambling once again.  Stay tuned, I'll let you know how it goes!

2 weeks away from One of A Kind, year 2

I'm in full on planning panic mode, and I've realized that this feeds my inner adrenaline junkie.   I have 184 pieces ready to be signed and packed, 35 pieces in the kiln or in progress and another 70 in my plans (30 of that 70 are 5"x5" or smaller, so I can get a lot in the kiln). 

I have spreadsheets tracking the pieces and how much glass I have left to work with, checklists, display stands and frames en route to my house and platform pieces waiting to be assembled to raise up my shelves.

Here is the planned vision for my booth:

Now I am trying to figure out which pieces go on which shelving units, and how to group the framed pieces on the walls.  Last year we were winging it, and I think it took much longer than necessary.  This year I'd like to have a plan so that everything looks organized and polished.

The other lesson from last year that I've been able to make use of so far is to queue up my fusing work differently.  In order to make sure that I can stay caught up at my engineering job as well as in my fusing I have planned differently.  I try to get a weeks worth of pieces cut and queued up during the weekend so that it's just 15-30 minutes a night during the week.  Just enough time to pull the last batch out, clean out the kiln and put the next batch in.  

I'm also trying to take advantage of bulk cutting.  When I cut a piece and have less than 1/2 a sheet left over (a sheet is roughly 20"x30") I look at that sheet and the standard sizes that I use for bases.  I cut that sheet as efficiently as possible to create those bases and stack them out of the way.  That way, when I go to create the queue for the week a lot of the bases are already cut.

 In the photo above, the pieces on the far left standing on end are the bases that are waiting to be matched and used, the front center are pieces that are fused and waiting for slumping during the week, the back center are cut and waiting to be fused and the far right are pieces that need to be cut and put on the bases.

See, an old dog can learn new tricks.

Patience, no shortcuts

I'm not a particularly patient person.  I like to see results of my efforts immediately, an odd trait for someone who fuses glass.  Most sessions in my studio end with an 18-70 hour wait (thankfully way more 18 than 70) before I can find out if I created what I wanted to.  The final assembly for many pieces happens in the kiln so my kiln space limits how much work I can do in a studio session. 

This is my big kiln, I also have one smaller kiln that does a single piece at a time

People ask me if I know what I will get when I open the kiln.  When I started fusing that was a very real question.   My results were similar to what I hoped for 80% of the time and 20 % of the time I was surprised, and rarely in a good way.  After 8 years of fusing I can say that I am accurate (instead of similar) probably 95% of the time and when I get surprised it is almost always because I tried a shortcut.

So now I'm on a fusing marathon to get ready for One of a Kind.  Prepping for this show is stressful, I'm always afraid I won't have enough stock, or I will have the wrong stock.  I make spreadsheets to figure out how to maximize my fusing cycles and I plan to work at least a few hours EVERY DAY between now and the show.  44 fusing days until I load the car and it feels way too short.

So what is the most effective way to maximize my kilns?  Patience!  As I loaded the kilns tonight I considered putting one extra piece in.  It would make the fit a little tight, but I am fairly sure that the pieces wouldn't have ended up touching while they fired.  I put the extra piece on the kiln shelf, I started to walk away and I stopped.  If I misjudged this I would be reworking a 15" bowl, an 8" bowl and possibly scraping/refinishing a kiln shelf.  I considered the risk and decided to be patient.

Hopefully this new attitude actually nets more successful pieces in December.  I'll never know but that's my theory and I'm sticking to it!

Fall Transition

So I finally made it through the longest outdoor season I've ever taken on.   It started earlier, ended later and had more shows than anything I've done in the past.  I did 9 outdoor shows between early May and late September and traveled for the first time.  So, how did that work for me?

Of the nine shows I participated in I squeaked through without quite losing money on any of them, but there are 3 that I will not be returning to because I just covered my costs.  Two of them were out of town and had the lowest sales all year with the highest travel costs.  The local one was just too lackluster to spend the time and money at again. 

I sold more framed pieces than anything else, and my tie dyes were a hit!  Of course I've refined them a bit since I started making them:

  I like them so much they are the focus of both my new business cares and my updated website!  I've also updated my garden pieces,

the colors really pop now and that is something that I sold out of last year at One of a Kind...  oh wait, it's time to start getting ready for OOAK again!

So that is why this post has "transition" in the title... I'm not so much finished with outdoor, I'm beginning to get ready for OOAK!  I've got my booth assignment, much better than last year!  I'm planning how to handle the displays in this different layout, and I'm fusing like crazy!   If you take out the two quick trips I'm taking before December there 48 fusing days left... sounds like a lot but since many of pieces require 3 trips through the kiln, and each one takes a full day that means I can only product 16 kiln loads of pieces between now and then.  Oh panic!!!!!!!!!!

My Alter Ego

During the week I am an engineer for an enormous, multinational conglomerate.  My reputation is built on working on nearly every product that our company currently ships.  I spend a frightening number of hours sitting at my computer using spreadsheets and project planning software to figure out how to keep a line of building controls products on track.  I work with budgets, resource planning and company politics to keep everything moving along.  

As the weather starts to look hopeful, suddenly my schedule changes and I begin to take random Fridays off of work.  I am not the only one with such a schedule, many of the folks I work with are obsessed with golf, sailing, fishing, hunting and the like so people don't notice too much.  The only difference is that when I take a Friday off I do NOT check my voice mail and email periodically. At some point this becomes an issue, I miss some big event that crops up on a Friday and on Monday (while I yawn and try to recover from my weekend) I finally have to answer the question "what do you do with all those Fridays off?".  My answer (stated with a sneaky smile)  "I have an alter ego!"

Some folks get very perplexed about what I might mean and walk away.  This is a fair reaction given that we once had a very conservative employee (wore suits in a jeans environment) who came in on Monday mornings with traces of glitter all over his face.  Some people think I'm pretending to be a super hero, laugh and walk away.  Other people just get curious, which gives me the opportunity to talk about my favorite topic despite the fact that I am at work.  That's when I tell them "I am a glass artist".

The best part about my job is that my boss and most everyone who works directly with me knows about my alter ego, and they are all very supportive.  I have given countless gifts of my own artwork and have a few pieces scattered around my cube.  However, those outside of my immediate associates rarely have a clue.

The most interesting scenarios occur when someone I work with who doesn't know my alter ego strolls through my booth at an art fair.  Reactions vary but usually fall into one of two categories: "wow I didn't know that about you!" and "um, do I have to buy something?".  Usually when I see the individual later at work they at least acknowledge that they saw me and ask how the show went.

At One of A Kind I ran into a co-worker with fascinating results.  This woman is a very high level manager type who I interact with on a regular basis.  Many of our interactions are conflict based, always respectful but by design we are usually on opposing sides of an issue.  I have known her for roughly 20 years, but we have never really interacted at all outside of work.  During the last day of OOAK, when Wendy and I were so tired that we might have been described as "slap happy", this woman wandered into my booth with a group of friends.  I watched her pick up some pieces with apparent interest and then I said hello.  She recognized me, realized I was the artist, was shocked, asked a few polite questions and then couldn't get out of my booth fast enough.  

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I have seen this response before, I think these people are afraid that knowing the artist obligates them to buy something and they want to leave before they feel trapped.  The most fascinating part of running into this particular individual is how she has completely ignored the fact that she saw me in the weeks since the show. I have seen her in the hall, been in meetings with her and been on several calls with her.  I have no desire to make her uncomfortable so I haven't brought it up, but I am somewhat amused.

I wonder what the reaction would be if my alter ego was something more shocking?  Or is the artist life shocking enough?

a One of a Kind learning experience

Last weekend Wendy and I had a booth at One of A Kind (OOAK) in Chicago for the first time.  It is quite an event.  It takes up the entire 8th floor of the Merchandise Mart which is roughly an entire city block.  It runs 4 days, with  over 600 artists and by many estimates more than 70,000 potential customers.  It is also more than 5x what I usually spend on a booth.

Here is a quick summary of the weekend:

Wednesday 

10 hour setup, everyone at the show is super helpful and things look so promising!  For details see my last post.

Thursday

Arrived at 9 to add some finishing touches, show opened at 11.  Slow sales, slow enough to create a very real panic. If this is our pace we won't even cover parking for the 5 days we need it!!!  As we observe we realize we are in "newbie land".  This is the area that people are put in when they don't know enough to ask for a better spot.  While the rows that run from one of the building to the other are full, our row of 4 booths on either side gets a cursory glance from the end and only the people most devoted to seeing EVERY SINGLE BOOTH get to us.  Lesson 1:  Understand location and flow before agreeing to booth location.  We stepped back  to figure out what will make our booth more appealing to the cursory glance.  Given all of the white background that leads up to the ceiling we decided to create a line at the top to stop the eye and to decorate the large post that sits in the middle of our booth to make it more festive.  We closed down at 8 with a plan to do yet more finishing touches in the morning.  Biggest lesson of the day for me... Lesson 2: Standing shoes are not the same as walking shoes - my feet hurt!

Friday

Wendy went for supplies and we had 30 minutes to redecorate before the show opened at 11.  Black duct tape and silver wrapping paper did the trick.  Booth looked much better and the sales really began to rock.  We will never know if there was a correlation to our redecorating, but by the end of Friday we knew we would be at least ok by the end of the weekend.  Panic gone, we relaxed and enjoyed the crowd.  During a run to the supply room all the way on the other side of the building I made friends with another glass artist and got to visit several other other glass friends.  Sold both of my "winter scenes" 
 so I decided to see if I could somehow have more available by Sunday.  When I got home at 10 I put 5 pieces in the kiln for a single firing process.  These pieces normally take two firings - I was hoping to get one or two successes.

Saturday 

Crowds and sales made for a near exact replica of Friday. Still on track to have acceptable results but it was becoming apparent that some of the pieces I had hoped would fly out were not selling at all.  Time to rethink my tie dyes...

Sunday

Checked the kiln for my new winter scenes - cutting corners doesn't work.  Look for a new scrap melt that has a lot of white and green soon.

While we hoped to have a 3rd good day in a row Sunday was odd.  Most of the shoppers seemed to be more interested in the event than in the purchase.  Fewer people leaving with shopping bags but we had acceptable sales, signed a contract for next year (indicating that we need to be in a different space)  and prepared to tear down.  The rules say that you need to get proof that you are paid up, then tear down, then get a work order to have your boxes loaded out.  The line of people for work orders at 5:05 was long, hard to believe all those booths came down in 5 minutes but I decided to play by the rules.  Lesson 3:  Turn in your work order form immediately!  We turned the work order in at 7:00 and they came for our boxes at 10:30.  We were not the last ones out but it was pretty lonely by the time we were done.


This was a great learning experience and it should set us up for an incredible show next year.  And the best part is... I don't have to create stock for the first summer shows, which means I can spend the next 5 months doing the creative stuff that I love without concern for "will it sell"!