Poster Of A Girl: SunnyGrrrl Art Show 2017
Let me tell you about one of the best nights of my life, but let’s start at the beginning.
In July of 2017 when Blake and I were driving around, we noticed a new cafe had opened up on the waterfront in Barrie. It was called Green Sprouts and it was a little more than just an independent coffee shop, it was also a vapor lounge, presumably the kind you vape weed in. We had been in one in Toronto, called Vapor Central, many times in the past so we were familiar with the set up.
A few days later, my friend and I decided to check the place out. The set up was simple, you brought your own cannabis and paid a cover to use their Volcano vaporizers or you could vape or smoke weed using your own device. You could also rent bongs and dab rigs. Their menu was every coffee drink imaginable and some baked goods. What I immediately noticed though, was that aside from a print of a bicycle on a bridge in Amsterdam, there was no art on the walls. My brain wheels started grinding. I could have an art show here. A really really cool art show.
I have generalized anxiety disorder and have a hard time talking to strangers, but for some reason, this seemed so “meant to be” that I walked right up to the lady behind the counter and introduced myself. Her name was Gillian and she was the owner, along with her husband Chris, and when I brought up the idea of the art show, her eyes brightened. We both knew this could be super fun.
After a million e-mails and ironing out details, we decided that on Friday, September 22nd, 2017, I was gonna have an art show, hosted by Green Sprouts, and there was going to be a surprise dessert provided by our friend and antique dealer, Jim. The only clues we had were that the dessert was gluten free and nut free, and whatever it was, was gonna be 8 feet tall once completed and needed to be set up at 10am the day of the show.
I chose 12 of my colouring pages and had the colourized versions of them blown up into posters and I was going to display the original, hand-drawn black & white colouring page beside its poster-sized coloured version. Then beneath the black & white original, we’d have blurbs about each piece.
I’d been filming myself drawing these colouring pages for months, for time lapsed videos uploaded to YouTube, and Green Sprouts had two, large TVs on either end of the cafe. I made a playlist of all the time lapsed art videos I had on YouTube and Chris played them on the TVs the night of the show.
The final piece of the puzzle was music. My colouring pages are all about women, so an all female playlist seemed appropriate and I had a lot of fun making this one, which was the backdrop to the evening.
I made 200 flyers and 30 posters for the show and Blake & I spent weeks asking local businesses if we could leave some on their counters. The businesses we approached – mostly coffee, comic, and skate shops – seemed very enthusiastic about the show, so we didn’t get a lot of “no”s.
The morning of the show was also when we hung the show and when I was finally allowed to know what this mystery dessert was gonna be. Jim was going to create a 6 foot tall display of chocolate dipped strawberries filled with different cheesecake flavours. When it was finished, it looked like this:
After hanging the show, Blake and I came home to get ready and I think I cleaned up pretty well. Blake had bought me a new pair of boots to wear to the show and I was eager to wear them out. I’d bought new earrings to match my outfit from Etsy and even though they turned my ears green a few days later, they looked great at the time. I felt like a million bucks.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”39″ gal_title=”Art Show Ensemble”]When we arrived at Green Sprouts there weren’t many people there yet, but it filled in pretty well over the course of the night. My friends Lexi, Ronny and Deanna all came and we made our own little area in the corner.
There was a lady at the show named Leslie, who used a wheelie walker, and I sat with her for about 20 minutes talking about my art and her art and how hard it is to make money as an artist and she told me she really enjoyed the show. As she was leaving, after she viewed the show for a 2nd time, she came to me, took my hands in hers and said, “I wanted to tell you something because I see this in your work: you need to stop being a survivor and embrace being a creator. That period of your life is over, you’re a creator now, not a survivor.”
Later on in the night, there was a girl viewing “Light Snack” and on the big, coloured, poster version, I watched her trace her finger from the pom poms to the cheerleader’s legs and she just started CRACKING UP, like total belly laughing. I loved it.
Women were definitely enjoying the show. I even had one girl come up to me and compliment me on the music, which of course, was all female artists.
The highlight of the night was when my friend Ryland arrived with a surprise for me. She made me close my eyes and when I opened them, she was showing me her new tattoo which was of one of my girls. I was flabbergasted and honoured and I cried a little, I mean, to have your art tattoo’d on someone’s body is like, mega big time crazy. That was the cherry on top of the night.
Like I said in the beginning, it was one of the best nights of my life. I was surrounded by my girls, both figuratively and literally, and the atmosphere was energizing. I like sharing my art with the world and this was on a whole other level. I can’t wait to one day do it again.
The show eventually became my first book, The SunnyGrrrl Colouring Book, which is available on Amazon!
