For the past 5 years I have been exhibiting as an artist at shows big and small, and I have found that one of the most common questions I get asked from fellow artists is “How do I know when I’m ready for an exhibitor booth?”

Hi! I'm excited to share that I've written a guest blog post for the One Fantastic Week blog, a business and art focused community that I am apart of.

Since I share frequently my resources in how I run my business I think you will find this educational, especially if you are thinking about going to any sort of show or convention further away.

This fall I took on a whole new type of art show, The Harvest Festival, and I wanted to share a little bit of my experience with you.

As an independent artist that is building an audience and making a fair portion of my income from shows like this I think it's important to share my own takeaways in the hopes that someone else can learn from my experiences. If you follow my YouTube channel you already know that I'm fairly candid with the information I share and I hope to be able to bring that same kind of candor here to my blog as well.

This year was my third year attending one of my favorite art events of the year, Illuxcon.

Illuxcon is it's own kind of show. It's hard to describe because there are few shows that I've found that are similar to it. The best that I can do is use their own words. Illuxcon is:

A ground-breaking art show, symposium, and celebration dedicated solely to imaginative realism—bringing artists, students, collectors, and art fans together for an annual gathering intended to inspire and create further awareness and zeal for imaginative realism and all that’s encompassed in the realm of the fantastic.

Growing up, we traveled and moved a lot as a family, packing our lives up into a handful of trunks to move between countries. This constant packing and unpacking has made me efficient at squeezing my life into a suitcase.

One of my early experiences traveling to a show was for an event while I was still living in Japan. At the time we didn't own a car, and my only option for getting there was public transportation.