Queens birthday weekend art festival

The festival has gone from strength to strength.  It started about 10 years ago.   We had six weeks to get it sorted and we did a pretty good job.  For the time and money spend on it, it was a raving success.  All of us sold work.  All of us meet intersting people.  By all of us I mean all the art studio’s that participated.  And now its one of the major art events in the NZ calendar.  Helped hugely by the sculpture in the gulf exhibition.  They are now as popular and renown as each other.  The fullers boats are full every Queens birthday.  Accomodation gets booked out months in advance.  Rental cars become hot property.  All the vinyards have special ‘Art Festival’ deals.  The whole island becomes one big art festival.  I’ve always had great sales from the festival.  In fact I’ve known to empty my studio.  Its a great feeling having an empty studio.  Having a blank space from which to paint into.  Everything gone. While walls.  It allows me to start a whole new collection.  That first year G looked after Maddie the whole weekend.  He would see people come in and leave with paintings in their hands.  I could see him getting more and more excited about it.  As well as the art people could take with them, red dots started appearing on the pieces too big to carry with them.  The theme of the festival has always been the red dot.  We all had big red dots outside our studios.  they looked amazing!  That theme has continued since the begining.  Its worked for us.  I love sitting in my house in Waiheke, where it all started thinking back to those days.  The starting out days.  The letting go days.  The fun days. Not that these days are not as much fun, but they are the days when the fun really started.  The Winter Festival each years starts a routine for me that has continued on for years now.  I do the festival.  Then have a month in Wellington with Jane and Anne – we always have a show at the end of the month.  Then we have a warm holiday at the end of July early august, before heading down to Queenstown for the rest of the year.  We usually stay in Queenstown until January, when we come back to Waiheke for the summer – until the end of Queens birthday weekend.  I usually go to Europe for a trip sometime around March, April.  Sometimes G comes with me, but he’s not as big a fan of Europe as I am.  He likes the adventure trips.  Treking, climbing, Kayaking that sort of thing.  We also love being at home.   Queens birhday weekend is one of the family weekends.  I of course are working, but Maddie and g are always around.  Clients love meeting them.  They enjoy meeting clients and we always have our time in the eveings.  A mid winter swim sometimes.  A big roast dinner.  Bottles of wine.  Good times.