LATE BLOOM FEST
Late Bloom Fest was the test run. I pitched a multimedia first Fridays event to Chef Bradley Gilmore one night after a serving shift. The idea had been sprouting since I started at the restaurant a year prior because I fell in love with the event space above Lula Southern Cookhouse. The location was perfect for a First Fridays event; not too far from the crossroads with plenty of foot traffic on Main Street. Chef was down with the vision and helped me with some of the planning and funding. We had no idea if it would work, but decided that if it did, we would do another 2 that summer.
The goal was to do first Fridays justice: To put art and artists at the forefront of the event, to attract a younger generation of artists here in Kansas City, and to tie the Lula Southern Cookhouse brand to creativity and refreshing new ideas.
The first order of business was to find the artists that I would be hosting in the gallery. I created an instagram post to snag some attention from my following:
”Let your inner child hold the paintbrush. Let them grab the wrong lens and run with it. Guide them and let them guide you.
We want to show Kansas City the power of the young artist. All of these galleries have old money and routine ways of thinking. Lets break the mold and never go back.
Submit artwork to the Diggs Visual Gallery. This is a curated gallery, and we will be picky, but we know the power of the artist. Rise up to the challenge.”
I also spent a lot of time at various art events around the city, handing out little cards to artists and vendors that I thought would be a good fit for the event. This is where I met 2 of the 6 artists.
One day while serving a table of 10 or 12 people at Lula, I spotted a canvas with its back turned to the light next to a young woman. I poked at what it might be and if it was her work or a gift from someone else. After seeing the piece, I gave her the rundown of what I was trying to do, and got her email after she expressed interest. 3/6
The other 3 came from my instagram post, where they followed the link in my bio and filled out the submission form. The post says “we will be picky,” and when it comes to the people that I spoke to, I definitely was sparse where I showed interest. With that being said, I was lucky to have the 5 that I did with the way that I was going about it. I essentially was hoping that my idea was enough to attract people to my submission form, instead of being the one to send out emails and push for others to be part of my idea.
While on the hunt for artists and vendors, I was also working on the visual presentation of the event. The poster, flyers, Instagram posts, and even some merch that I would sell at the event. This was the part where I was in my zone. After years of designing for other people, I got to have full creative freedom with my own big project. I love the style that I came up with for Late Bloom Fest.
This idea really came together from nothing at all. I had never hosted an event, curated a gallery, dealt with the logistics, or sent so many emails in the span of 2 months.
Artists started to drop off the work that I accepted from their submissions and I began putting things on the ground to figure out where they would be in relation to each other. Some of the art didn’t have mounting hardware, so I had to get that situated. One of the collections in particular was painted on sheets of drywall. I couldn’t drill into it, so I had to get creative with the mounting setup. This ended up being a project that was not done until the night before the event. I made some frames out of wood with a pocket hole jig, and attached them to the drywall with a bunch of heavy duty command strips. I got back to Lula, put them on, got them on the wall, and headed back home for some much needed sleep.
The event ended up being amazing. The foot traffic was impressive and people seemed to have a good time being there. The vendors made sales, artists made connections, and I got to float around high on hard work and make sure that everything was running smoothly. I had help from friends and family that helped make everything run smoothly.
Lessons:
When seeking collaboration, giving out my contact information did not have as good of a turnover as writing down theirs. There are a lot of people that seemed genuinely interested in participating but I never got an email from them.
Require that art already has mounting hardware, or charge to have it put on.
Passers by that interacted with he vendor space did not know about the gallery inside. I needed a way to communicate that the event had 2 parts. The vendors were just a way to make money so that the art could be untouched by the gravity of the dollar.
This idea works, so I can put more energy into the details.
