other artists stayed with a friend who was also exhibiting at Christmas Showcase. We usually all ride together on Friday and Saturday. I greatly prefer getting down to the show a little early as opposed to having to drive down and find a parking place for the van, especially on Friday. Of course, arriving at 8 AM made for a long day since the show was open until 8 PM on Friday.► There's really no point in providing a blow by blow description of our sales over the the three days of Christmas Showcase. In general, our sales were mediocre -- a little bit ahead of last year, but last year was way down. The show followed a typical pattern: Saturday was our best day, Friday was second and sales on Sunday were the lowest. There were periods of time during the middle of the afternoon and late in the day when most of the folk one saw wandering the hall were wearing name tags, artists with nothing to do except visit with other artists.
► I suppose the big event occuring on Friday was the visit by Ginger Beebe, first lady of Arkansas. She and her entourage spent quite a bit of time going through the show. Ms. Beebe, her personal assistant and a couple of security guys were in our booth for a while. (A good thing Jo and I had a double booth and could accomodate the crowd.) Decorations at the governor's mansion this year included a "potter's tree", a tree decorated with ornaments made by Arkansas potters. Jo received a letter from the first lady's office several mouths ago explaining the potter's tree and asking her to submit an ornament. Jo worked on designing an ornament for a while, but the demands of needing to produce inventory for our shows eventually shoved this one-of-a-kind project onto the back burner and, eventually, completely off the stove. The gist of the conversation between Jo and Ms. Beebe was that the potter's tree contribution did not necessarily have to be a conventional ornament. Other potters had just sent small pottery items. Jo ended up donating a small creamer to the cause.
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