Austin Night Market.Fun| First Art Sale was a success

It was a great pleasure being one of the 50 vendors for Austin NightMarket.fun in the Distribution Hall in Austin downtown. The experience in priceless and I am grateful for everyone who helped me and witnessed my growth along the way.

I learned about this opportunity from the event collaborator Andrew Lee in January. My husband and I thought it would be fun to be selling my art at a night market. I’ve always dreamed about having a booth at a Chinese New Year Flower Market in Guangzhou since I was little girl. Finally, my dream has come true.

Starting in January, I started to come up with ideas of what kind of art work I would sell at the market, i.e. oil paintings, prints, cyanotype prints or craft. My decision depends on my time, my skills on certain art works, and the content of the artwork.

In late April, I was getting very anxious about the show and making good artwork just like most the emerging artist. I stopped making big painting as I always did. I switched gear by painting on smaller canvas and my mood told me that I wanted to paint cats as my subject matter. Why cats? I was born in the year of Rats and cats have never been my best friends all these years although I kinda liked them. But at that moment, I think cats’ attitude and demeanor can truly represent my condition. So, cats there they are!!!

I painted seven cats and they are all from my friends or my cousin’s pictures with a little bit of my imagination or wittiness. By beginning of May, I suddenly realized that these 7 original oil paintings would not be enough for the booth. What am I going to do????

Ah-Ha!!! Cyanotype prints!!! I love this oldest photography method that produces blue prints that yields a nostalgic and vintage mood. I practiced and experimented ways to produce these prints. The exposure time, the intensity of the sun/UV lights, the type of water paper and even the rinsing time all makes a different on the final products. Even with the same negative, each batch would come out significantly different from each other. I think the beauty of cyanotype is the randomness, the accidental factor that contribute to each print, which makes them unique and non-repeatable.

On the day of the Market Night, I was very nervous. I could not resist the desire of learning how popular or acceptable my art works are, however, I felt like I was selling a part of my soul because I devoted myself on every piece of them. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the feeling that I was selling a part of my soul. Very silly, isn’t it. With this silly thought, I introduced my work and talked to all of collectors of the stories behind each work. Surprisingly, all of the cat paintings were sold out along with more than 20 pieces of cyanotype prints.

I am truly grateful for all the collectors who came to my booth!! Thank you for being my first collectors. Btw, one more surprise is we sold one of my son’s cyanotype print. This young lady did something that made a different in his life and I hope this event would make him understand that he can be whoever he wants to as long as he desires it.

Me and my mentor, Kyle Fu, origami master. His origami arts were very popular.

The painting behind me would be shown in the Austin Central Library next May. Stay tuned…