Big, big, news today: I applied to be an Emerging Artist at this year’s East Lansing Art Festival, and I got in! This is a huge show and amazing opportunity to show-off my cartooning to a new audience.
Emerging Artist: What Is It?
The Emerging Artist portion of the East Lansing Art Festival is a chance for, yes, an emerging artist to get a booth. It is the ELAF’s way of getting new artists exhibiting at fine art shows. “Emerging” in terms of this festival means either a current or recently graduated art student, or an artist who has never appeared in a fine arts show (and might be self-taught).
I’m obviously in the latter category of “never done a fine art show and is self-taught.”
Here’s what the ELAF website says:
The East Lansing Art Festival’s Emerging Artist program encourages future art festival exhibitors by giving up-and-coming artists an opportunity to be awarded free space to exhibit among seasoned artists in a nationally renowned top 200 fine art festival setting.
So, yes, I got a free spot at a big Fine Arts festival! This is very different from a comic show, and that means I will have to rework the presentation of my art a bit.
More Good News (Everyone)
Before I forget, my wife Stephanie (aka Steph Joy Hogan) also got in as an Emerging Artist! Hooray! Stephanie pushed me to apply to this show in the first place, so this is all her fault.
When Is the East Lansing Art Festival?
The annual East Lansing Art Festival is on May 19 and 20 this year (Saturday and Sunday). More info is available at the ELAF website. This is an outdoor event, so there’s no cost to attend. May will be busy for me. There’s Free Comic Book Day, then this event, and then my return to Cherry Capital Comic Con the following weekend. Oof!
East Lansing Art Festival: What Am I Exhibiting?
As part of my application, I included samples of a watercolor cartoon series. This series focuses on portraits of goofy monsters of my imagination, and has the very original title of Monster Portraits. This means I’m leaning into the cartooning and painting side of things for this show. I will try to incorporate comics if I can, though.
Here’s one Monster Portrait which was part of my application (and promptly sold at last month’s Artisan Pop Up).
My getting into the East Lansing Art Festival means I have to paint a lot more of these Monster Portraits.
And that’s OK!
The first batch of my Monster Portraits were all 5×7, but I’m going to experiment with different sizes, and get some fun frames too.
Alright, enough blogging, time to celebrate!
