Art and Baseball

I have an art show this weekend in Omaha, Nebraska.

I’m finishing the main show piece in the next couple of hours and I have to put the finishing touches on a few show-related issues – nonetheless, it’s a doubleheader at Countryside Village Art Fair this weekend.

Actually, I have art shows scheduled for practically every weekend until the middle of October. The show season usually starts for me in March, but in my mind the show schedule doesn’t really shift out of pre-season mode until I’m juried in and I arrive at this particular show out in Nebraska.

I remember going to it years ago and I’ve been invited to the show every year since I started doing shows. It’s a kissing cousin show to another Omaha show in September. (Rockbrook Art Fair). The fall show is great, but by September one just does not have the energy and drive that the beginning of the season brings out in the art fair artists. Artists use their strengths harvested from the entire season to bring their game to the show in September if they want to succeed. Some run out of gas by that time.

The September show runs on inertia as well as the strengths gained from the season, but the June show runs pretty much on unmeasurable elements like raw passion and anticipation. Experimentation and and revision are what is gained from the Countryside show.

Baseball players also experience the emotion, drive, and optimism that the early season brings out in their passion and hopes for the year. Performance improves as the season wears on, but so does the realization that some goals have been met and some have to wait for next year. Experience and adjustments begin early in the season and are fine-tuned to victory or they are discarded with an eye-roll and a blast of tobacco juice by autumn.

As always, I am ready for the season and I’m grateful to be in the Omaha show this weekend. It’s not a major league show in the art fair circuit – but it is one of the best.

I’m just about ready and my work is better than ever before. I hope I don’t fall short of a perfect game because of a bad call or . . . have a baseball manager spit tobacco juice on my paintings.
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