Chapungu Sculpture Park Free Guided Tours

I got this information from my friends at the wonderful Chapungu Gallery...

They have the largest collection of Zimbabwean Sculpture in North America. An awesome collection. We are so fortunate to have it here in Loveland, Colorado.

Loveland is only 1 hour from Denver...if you are in the area, be sure to check it out. Take advantage of the wealth of knowledge that Roy Guthrie has to offer about the art and the people!

CHAPUNGU CONDUCTS SPECIAL SCULPTURE PARK TOUR ON VALENTINES DAY WITH ROY GUTHRIE

Chapungu is pleased to announce very special tours of Chapungu Sculpture Park every Saturday in February, March and April 2009. The exhibit of 82 monumental sculptures entitled, Chapungu: Stories In Stone-An African Perspective of Family is composed of eight sections displayed in 26 acres of natural and landscaped gardens. Two sections will be highlighted each Saturday.

The tours are FREE and start at 11:00am. All visitors to assemble at 10:45am on the east side of PF Changs and Biaggi's restaurants. Mr. Roy Guthrie will share his personal accounts of the individual artists; and their lives as well as their sculptures. Bottled water and hot chocolate will be provided to tour participants. Please note that Saturday February 14^th for Valentines Day the tour will include chocolate treats! Bring a loved one to tour the sections that weekend entitled The Family and The Children.

Chapungu Sculpture Park is adjacent to the Promenade Shops at Centerra, Sky Pond Drive, Loveland, CO 80538. Chapungu Warehouse and Gallery is now open on Saturdays from 10am-4pm at 1052 N. Boise Ave., Unit B, Loveland, CO. 80537 in addition to regular hours: Mon-Fri 9am-1.00pm.

For more information and directions please call 970-461-8020, or email kschroeder@chapungusculpturepark.com Also visit www.chapungusculpturepark.com

Sculpture From Zimbabwe

There was another nice article in the Loveland Reporter-Herald today on our local Zimbabwe sculpture park and gallery, and the curator Roy Guthrie.

Unfortunately, the section of the paper (The Valley Window) where the article ran is not available online.

If you have not yet checked out the Chapungu Gallery or the sculpture park, be sure to go to some past blog posts--Roy is a wonderfully knowledgeable and giving man and the art work his gallery carries is of the highest quality. You could become a collector--Prince Phillip of England is, so you would be in fine company!!!

Here is a link to a post about the Sculpture Park
And click here to read about the Gallery and Warehouse!

You can also go right to the Chapungu website by clicking the link in the sidebar to the right, in Sculpture Sites I recommend!

Art Still Selling

With all the folks bemoaning the economy it is easy to believe that no one is buying art these days. Well, that is just not true.

A painter recently told me, it is all about knowing your market. True in any business. He found where people are buying art and contacted galleries in those areas, and he is selling.

The Loveland Sculpture Invitational and Sculpture in the Park shows, which were held last weekend, are like huge, outdoor, temporary galleries. Sales happened there, too. Figures haven't been released yet for the Invitational, but the Park show has been holding steady at about $1 million in art sales for several years. Not bad for a 2 day show! 2 days of active showing and lots of months of preparation before that.

One of the reasons so much sculpture sells at these shows is the reputations of the shows. People come from around the world to both exhibit and to buy sculpture. Collectors know they will find a variety of quality art at these shows and they will be able to see it all in one place, in one weekend.

So if you want to sell your artwork, do a little homework. Getting into a gallery is good, but is the gallery selling? Are the staff members real sales people or are they just keeping the building open? Does your work fit in well with the gallery and the community? Is this your target market? If the answers to these questions are no, then it is time to find a different gallery--even if that gallery is in a different city or state!

Juried Shows

A friend of my was recently juried into a show that was at a Denver gallery. It was her first time in a Denver gallery, so of course we wanted to go and support her.

The show was excellent--an exhibition of Plein Aire paintings. The variety in styles was fantastic. I had two other friends with me, neither of them in the art field. It was really interesting to get their perspective as well.

One of them posed the question to me as to how the jurors decide which paintings win the ribbons. I confess to not really having an answer to that one. I know that a good juror can be more objective than some of us, but so much of art is personal taste. I've been to lots of shows where it is apparent that personal taste had more to do with assigning of ribbons than did mastery of the medium.

How do you decide between pieces of such wide variety of style and subject matter? Most of the pieces were very traditional in approach...and mostly that was what was rewarded. Did that make the more modern approaches any less good?

If you go back in art history, you will learn that many of the painters we view as plein aire masters today (think the Impressionists, for example) were not considered of value during their day. Mostly because they were "different".

So, if you are an artist, don't go for the ribbon. Go for what is in your heart. The market is big out there. I believe that if you paint what you love, and you continue to improve your skills, there is a market there for your work. Your heart will guide you and you will have great pleasure in what you do. That is worth more than a bunch of ribbons.