UPDATE: With permission from the Director of the Lawton Art Festival, I am able to to skip Friday and show up on Saturday!For the past few years, you have been pretty much guaranteed to find me at these events in Oklahoma:
- Stillwater Art Festival
- Edmond Art Festival
- Lawton Art Festival
- Tulsa Mayfest
- Paseo Art Festival
Last year
I skipped the Lawton Art Festival for several reasons: The travel costs are high and sales are mediocre, but due to a reassignment at my day job in the summer of 2012, it puts a lot of pressure on my department if anybody requests a lot of consecutive Fridays off:
My department only has seven people, and when one of us leave, the others have to take up the slack. If one of us takes a Friday, the others are urged not to -- because it would leave only five of us to do the work of seven people, on a day when we all would prefer to leave early.
Edmond, Lawton, Tulsa, Paseo were the first four Fridays. The next two weeks were very joyfully spent on a trip with friends to Sorrento, Italy. (This was also why I did not attend the Mulvane Art Festival in Topeka, and was unable to apply for the Smoky Hill Festival in Salina.)
This year
My friends are planning another trip to Italy. We're heading to Tuscany (my favorite region of Italy), so it has the potential to be even more impressive than the already awesome trip last year. The schedule conflicts with my usual schedule: it takes place May 15-31 -- right over the top of both Mayfest and Paseo (two of my most profitable events). The good part: Photos from Tuscany have the potential to make my existing portfolio look very outdated.Since I requested to be out of work on seven consecutive Fridays:
- April 18 (Stillwater)
- April 25 (OKC)*
- May 2 (Edmond)
- May 9 (Lawton)**
- May 16-23-30 (Italy)
- (UPDATE: Mulvane and Smoky Hill tuned me down)
* I am on the waiting list for the (utterly gigantic) Oklahoma City Festival of the Arts. I will do what I can to get in that show. If it means I have to camp out the day before, so be it.** I can do Lawton if I arrive late on Friday... really late. like Midnight.