4/25/07

I spent yesterday at an all day Vermont Crafts Council Conference, where I attended excellent workshops given by Vermont's one and only Bruce Baker, click here to see his website. If you're in the crafts field and have the chance, enroll in one of Bruce's workshops immediately. He's an expert in crafts salesmanship and marketing, booth design,  product development and trends in the craft field (and the world) . He is a most entertaining speaker, to boot. If you're not able to see him in person, buy his CD's, particularly the one on customer service and sale. They're available from him online and are well worth the money (and he did not ask me to say this!) I and many others I know play the customer service CD over and over before a show, just to make sure we're doing everything possible to make the show a success.

A speaker in the general meeting yesterday got up and addressed the relevance of what we do as craft artists given the horrific times we're living in...to paraphrase what he said, he feels that by doing our work with integrity, by studying and practicing crafts, we are making the world a better place in our own small way, and are passing on a bit of peace and integrity to the people who end up owning our objects.  Well, I hope so.

I've just been invited to be on the board of the Vermont Crafts Council. This is reassuring. When I quit my day job three years ago, I  worried at first that no one would know I was alive anymore, as I worked at home and only popped out now and then to sell my work at shows. Since then, I've become a board member of our local business association, of our local Farmers' Market, and now the Crafts Council. When you take a plunge like dropping out of a perfectly good career, it turns out that there's a whole host people waiting there on the other side, happy to receive you in your new incarnation.