Doing Better With Less

It’s true. Sometimes, less is more, or less allows you to develop more in new directions. My shop output has dropped dramatically from a year ago. Most of the decrease is in small items like treen ( wooden kitchenware). Why? I decided to stop doing craft shows. And I discovered that it improved my life and work.

What’s up with this? Well, I used to do boat shows. In the three days of a boat show, I’d sell hundreds of dollars worth of spoons and such. I sold enough to cover my travel, food, and expenses. If the family was along, it fed four ravenous kids, too. Normally, in the weeks and months after the show, orders would come in for more expensive items like quarterboards, transom banners, eagles, and boat portraits. Each show was a profitable labor that yielded long-term results after the show dates.

My merry-go-round of boat shows ceased with Covid, and I began to age out of strenuous three-day shows, which were actually four-and-a-half-day commitments with travel, set up, and breakdown.

The craft shows yielded almost no after-show income. I am not really a spoon maker but a person who sells them at my booth to generate other sales like the ones I mentioned earlier. so after a few shows earlier this year I decided that it was too expensive in time and effort to do the shows. So, I decided to leave them to the mass-produced junk crafts, cosmetics, and beadwork.
As a result, my shop volume decreased.

To an extent, time is a vessel into which you pour your creative energy. And the increased time available made it possible for me to advance creatively. This has been one of the areas in which I have advanced positively this year. I’ve stumbled upon new ways to do boat portraits, and the smaller production of treen has allowed me to spend more time perfecting my techniques.

The other day, I was in an antiques shop in Newburyport. I got into a discussion with the owner about 19th-century ship portraits by seamen. I showed her a photo of my portrait of the schooner Ada Bailey, and the debate turned animated over how water can be modeled to look dramatic. She appreciated the techniques I had come up with to add depth and action to the waves in a limited depth of field.

In the shop, I’ve been working on the last batch of small items of the year—treen. Having the leisure to stop and think rather than work furiously to prepare for a show, I devised a few new ideas and tried some new techniques. The photo below shows the batch fresh from being tempered. Tempering involves putting the treen into boiling water to raise the grain before final sanding. Tomorrow, I’ll finish the sanding and apply USP Mineral oil as a finish.

The shop’s cold reminds me of why I shut the shop up at this time of year. January is spent studying, drawing, and developing ideas I’ll start working on in March. I already have some preliminary designs selected for portraits, wood laid by, and aspirations.

Less can result in more and better results.