Hi guys!
I know it’s been a little while.
Writing this makes me feel the same way I did when I would walk into university final exams 15 minutes late. I still showed up and managed pull it all off, so I guess I will have to employ the same mentality to this process.
The good news is, my absence on tinyartprincess has not been in vein- your girl has been busy….which is exciting because there will be so many new fun things to look at and read.
Here is a Quick Look at some of the adventures I will be sharing:
Crazy journey to the Louvre Abu Dhabi & my overall insights about Art in the Middle East
My first Venice Biennale & being published in it as an art journalist (publishedfor the first time!)
The actual Art essay for biennale (for you academics)
The King Charles portrait & the vandals that came twenty minutes after my visit (was NOT me)
The show in Canada where I brought artwork on the plane with me
Going directly to the Wallace collections young patrons dinner from the plane, and arriving underdressed
My new workplace in London
It even overwhelms me to look at this list, but every single one of these experiences feature incredible art, great stories, and some seriously cool and inspiring people that I have met along the way (which is absolutely the best part) so I will really push to share it, and quickly, before art season starts full on again in mid September- October. Have fun on summer vacation for me please.
Changes
I also will be making some slight adjustments to my writing, and upgrading this blog so we can finally take tinyartprincess to the whole wide world.
I’ve noticed lately that in an effort to democratize art and attract a wider audience to the art world, more and more people are creating art-related content. I have spoken before about
’s art market report (now on Puck News) which is the first publication I have ever paid monthly for. Another one I love, is a fellow Canadian . These art writers, along with many Instagram accounts, writers and bloggers, are so amazing to see.This leaves me tons of space to start telling my own personal stories behind the art experiences that I have lived through (just barely at times), in addition to introducing artists and their work, discussing the factual art information and art news, and hopefully inspiring you and everyone to engage with art as a regular part of daily life. This is exciting, because it allows me to bring you on the art adventures, and we can laugh together, wherever you are in the world. I’m also writing some interviews and working on my “professional” art writing so I will share more of that as well.
Speaking of breaking…..
I was recently inspired by Mistake Day, which is a trend that I first saw on Linked In, where people share a professional mistake they made at some point in their career. The stories are hilarious, so I thought I would share one very large mistake I made early in my art career with you.
Back in one of my first internships while I attended University, I was working in a downtown Gallery in Calgary, AB, Canada. Within the first two weeks, I had managed to sell my first piece(!) which was a large, blue hand-blown glass piece that looked like a painting, made by the gallery owner/director himself.
This was perhaps the first time I entered the wild world of art shipping. The piece had to go to Kelowna, which is about 6 hours away, through the mountains, from the Gallery. The client was pushing and I wanted to get it to him ASAP. I distinctly remember my director saying to me that he thought it could break in transit and needed to be crated, but as I was young, eager and not experienced, I was insistent that it would be fine with Fed-Ex (which they promised it would be while simultaneously informing me that they did not insure any made of glass). I called Fed Ex, I packed it up really well and I made the call for delivery.
Two days later, I got a photo sent to me from the client featuring a pile of beautiful, large glass pieces. I sat in the car for twenty minutes thinking of how I was going to tell my director that I smashed his personal glass piece of art, that we had to return the clients money, and also could not make an insurance claim. I still remember making that call. So many lessons learned, and lucky for me, Gerry is a patient man. Little did I know this was just the beginning of my relationship with the shipping, packing and transportation of art.
Fed Ex Famous
Apparently I am not alone in this experience; I recently came across an artist called Walead Beshty, who between 2005-2014 made glass sculptures designed to break in transit (I broke mine in 2012). Coincidentally, they were each designed to fit perfectly into a Fed-Ex shipping box. He mailed them all over the USA to galleries. The sculptural objects were designed so that the cracks that occurred during the shipping actually become the defining feature of the art series.
You can read more about the thought and process behind the body of broken work here. The series is actually genius- I just wish I would have known the insider information of Fed-Ex’s ways before I entrusted them with glass work.
That’s all for now. Thanks for tapping into my tiny art world. If you would like to discuss anything art-related, would like to hear about a specific art topic or have feedback—send me an email by replying to this story.