Moss Street Paint In.

Saturday, July 19th, 2008 was the date for the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria's 21st Annual Moss Street Paint In. This free event attracts more than 30k visitors over the course of the 6 or so hours it lasts, that's a lot of exposure! Linda had not planned to attend and thus her participation was unofficial. Usually, for July weekends we hope to be going camping but circumstances prevented this, so when Val (her agent) suggested setting up on a friends lawn she decided to go for it. (Most residences have unofficial attendees using their yards, driveways etc).

The street is closed to traffic at 9am for artists to be able to get set up, so we got there far too early and put the display up. I left shortly afterwards and returned with our daughter at about 11am just as the first visitors were arriving. Still fairly quiet as the pics show. Sarah and I toured about a half of the event and on returning to Lindas' site we noticed 2 sold stickers already attached to pieces. Hmmm, not a bad start. I took Sarah home and got on with replacing our front porch deck for a few hours awaiting a phone call to help dismantle everything for Linda.

So around 4pm I went back. Still a lot of people on the street, making it awkward to drive to the site. I can't tell you just how surprised I was to find there was practically no product left to take away. They'd run out of everything twice and had to get more product from Vals' gallery along with more credit card slips!! People had queued to purchase, anything from art cards to posters and limited editions to giclees, then queued again to have them signed personally. Not that Linda's unknown around here but the quality of work by other artists is extremely high, so she felt very honoured by the public response to her work.

Some advice for anyone attending in the future..... get there early. The event becomes very busy by midday and so it's more difficult to take everything in with the crowds milling around the displays. You can also park somewhat closer by and you'll be thankful for that when the long slow plod up and down Moss St is finished.