Knowle Art Group exhibition 2014

I have been very busy with my art groups exhibition over the past two weeks but it was all worth while. The exhibition was held over a very sunny holiday weekend and visitors were 30% up on our previous highest figure.

Unfortunately, it seems that money is as tight as ever despite the chancellor talking the economy up. We only sold one painting in the actual exhibition although several items which were on sale (unframed paintings and greeting cards) were sold.

We have discussed the purpose of our exhibtion many times and have always agreed, as a group, that the exhibtion is a chance to show off our work to family and friends and just to see it in a well-presented display. sales are nice but that is not the reason we spend so much time and effort setting up the exhibition. The effort is not worth the money. But let me show you a general shot of the hall after setting up the exhiubtion.

The display boards are the groups own design and made by members, they enable us to hold exhibitions in any locations but we have found the present venue to be a superb choice for our exhibitions.

The design of the boards allows us to display more paintings per foot. We have ten boards altogether which fold away after use.

The main entrance display, showing the Group Name. This year flanked by items for sale for the first time:-

Greeting cards/ post cards and unframed paintings and also a number of miniature canvas paintings which readers of the blog will know are a favourite of mine.

The cards sold well this year and from the discussions going on I can see more artists trying to make a little cash next year by copying this approach, despite the comments above!

Back with more paintings next time.

Have You Ever Felt Like Starting Your Own art Group?

Some 20-25 years ago, I took a short nightschool class in painting. Afterwards I wanted to continue in a less formalised group but found that local groups did not cater for what I required. A few other students from the class felt the same way and so we decided to start our own group. A momentous decision since none of us had any experience of thjis sort of thing.

This was to be called The Knowle Art Group, read our web page to find out about us

I have been involved in running that group for most of this time, and in fact also joined a second group for a few years where I was involved with committee work and so had my share of experiences from there. This was a learning experience, I had never done anything like this before but it has worked out very well and that first group has become a successful, not-for-profit undertaking. It has gone up and down in numbers ( 6 to 40 at various times) but has proved an ability to last the course. Only last month a similar, small art group requested to amalgamate with us as they could no longer finance themselves due to a fall off in numbers. This has improved our own situation and so we were glad to agree for them to join us.

How do you start such a group, and how do you manage it? With this experience I thought I could answer the main questions and so have written an article on Squidoo to explain how we did it and also how you could too. Read: How To Start And Run You Own Art Group. This covers deciding on the aims, the venue, financing, administration and building the membership.

I did it, you can too

Some of the members concentrating on their latest art work.

For us one of the biggest benefits is the ability to hire professional demonstrators three or four times a year to help with development of our skills. This supplements the support and encouragement we provide for each other. But there is nothing like hanging your art in an exhibition for the world to see and admire and maybe even buy the odd piece of art. In order to make it easier (and less expensive) to hold exhibitions the group designed and created  our own exhibition boards. I have also written a Squidoo article explaining how and why these have proved very useful and giving details if you find that you would like to make some for yourselves. Read: An Inexpensive Display Board For A Leisure Painter's Group.

 

The boards in use at an exhibtion:

 

 

Hope these articles help you to start your own group successfully.