Beinvenue 2009

Dear Friends and Family, and All who are Interested:

We Wish you a Beautiful New Year!

You can stop here, or continue to part two:

This is a short letter to summarize our gallery's joys and sorrows and fill you all in our our plans for the new year. For the past year and a half, Blue Fig Art has been growing and taking its first steps. So far things are going pretty well, I mean we are right in line as a new business - it's a complete economic failure. We sold only one painting last year, and that was in Summer (the only time Porto Heli is busy). The shop didn't even officially open until mid-June so the best selling period came and went without taking much advantage of it. On the other side, a lot of learning has been taking place. The first project was to get the empty box with windows to look like a nice full box with windows. We made it pretty much from scratch with a little help from IKEA and Praktiker; and of course, the artists and their paintings slowly made the gallery come to life.

At the end of Summer, we had our Big Opening Night. My mom and I had a big joint party for her new spa too it went really well! I met a lot of artists and potential clients, and it was the night my painting got sold too. I'm finding that one of the best ways to get artists to come to you is by having a Vernissage (gallery lingo for Opening). This year we have a few in the making, one in February, one in April, and one in August.

February's show is all about celebrating the Human Form and I have a couple good artists so far I need just a few more to get the complete picture (haha). One of my artists is Ibrahim BinOmar, who is Saudi. He draws his inspiration from African styles, which is far from the Islamic cultural norm. We met through Sameera Ibrahim, another great person who has been helping either by giving business wisdom, or introducing me to the Arabian art world through her art center. Right now we're working on getting about 9 Saudi artists to Blue Fig Art this summer ( I'm keeping my fingers crossed ) !

Also, this year we will be making improvements to the box. We're going to hopefully get better lighting and internet. We also want to make better ads for the shop and the artists, for instance right now I'm working on postcards with paintings from some of our artists - so look out for one soon!

We wish everyone the warmest holiday season, and I hope that your New Year is filled with miracles and rewarding days!!

Lots of Love,

Blue Fig Art:

Christine Smith and Co.