Jazz Fest!!!

Wow last weekend was the best of Ficus Ceramica history! I was an artist in the Louisiana Marketplace section at Jazz Fest - one of the biggest music festivals in the country, and one of New Orleans' main annual cultural events - and I won best in show!! 🥹 I can't put into words how proud and pleased and pumped I am. What an honor to get in, with my first application, and to win best in show for my section, my very first year... I feel so much confirmation that this little art biz really IS a perfect match for me and is a sustainable career. I even had a local news station interview me! 😆 If you visited my booth at Jazz Fest, it was lovely to meet you!! Thank you!

I debuted a professional display upgrade, with borrowed ProPanel display walls, blue velvet table cloths and curtains, and covered them with a huge variety of new mounted pieces, ready to hang on your wall. To see all my new art hung beautifully on gallery-like walls was incredible, and the public also really enjoyed! The majority of framed pieces I made were okras and oysters, which are crowd favorites, but also formed a nicely neutral environment for the occasional brightly colored figs or strawberries or crab claws to really pop. My planters, vases, and "hands for the wall" were on shelves below the frames in nice arrangements with flowers. This was the first time I was able to install the "hands for the wall" directly into a wall with the proper hardware, demonstrating how exactly to use them, and they sold out! I was so pleased that Jazz Fest was fine with paraphernalia, so I had my pipes front and center on a round table covered in velvet and silver, made to look like a super fancy buffet. Sadly, at least a couple pipes were stolen, and I think the solution is to make them more directly visible to me, rather than hidden below an amphitheater-type set up. Live and learn!

Even beyond winning an award, my favorite part of Jazz Fest was chatting with so many many people who were actively enjoying my art. The number of times I get to watch people drawn into my booth by bright shiny small things, become curious by the odd holes, then realize with joy what they truly are, and laugh, go tell their friends, or begin a fun conversation with me... I'm over the moon, it makes me so happy. I love talking to people about their food obsession/identification/history stories. Food is such a great subject to make art about because literally all humans have a very personal relationship to food, and it is one of the most basic aspects of all culture. They symbolize so many cultural short cuts that are fun to play with - 🍆 🦪 🥦🦞🍏 etc

Now, I'm super excited to travel with my art to art shows across the country, starting with Michigan this summer, and Porter Flea in Nashville next month. I hope to make this into a way to travel and get out of sweltering new orleans every summer, to expand my reach, and to make more of a profit in a concentrated period of time, rather than hustling all year, constantly. I can't wait to evolve my work - I have so many ideas for sculptures, much larger mounted pieces, and of course new food pipes. Stay tuned! Share my instagram profile with friends you know would love it!