Visits with Josephine and Blake

I'm going to spend this and next week visiting some Portland Open Studios artists whose work I don't get to see because I'm open at the same time. So today was my first such visit. I went to Blake's glass beads studio. Blake and I met when she was program manager at the Chinese Garden. She organized the printmaking class I taught there. Soon after that, though, she decided to leave her regular job to do her own thing and started this glass beads studio. She now has a showroom, has a lot of commercial accounts, and even has a boutique in Taiwan carrying her jewelry. We chatted for quite a while as she worked on some necklaces. We decided to do a trade. Earlier in the afternoon, I delivered a framed print to the Chinese Garden office (someone working there bought a piece this last weekend), and took a long walk in the garden with Josephine. She did a lot of the PR for the event in various local papers. This was the first time I'd been in the garden when the Osmanthus was in bloom. Too bad my nose isn't that good, although I could smell it when I got really close. According to Josephine, you could smell it 4 blocks away!

As to whether my attendance was down due to lack of press coverage -- I don't know. It's true I got some press coverage 2 years ago, but according to my informal poll, NOBODY came due to the profile in The Asian Reporter. I got no press coverage last year, but my attendance was about the same. The weather this year is about the same as last year, drizzly and cold. It's true that my image in the tour guide was reproduced very poorly this year -- they printed it sideways and REALLY dark. I was really disappointed with the tour guide, actually. I haven't talked to anyone else who's done the event before, so I don't know if this was just me or if it was everyone.