A few weeks ago, my job at the church got a temporary boost in hours. I’ve been asked to spearhead an art show and sale, to revive an event that the church used to put on years ago. The offer meant double my weekly hours for three months, and, despite never having put on an art show in the past, I jumped at the opportunity.
It was a steep learning curve, but God has been incredibly gracious. I was given the authority to remake the show however we saw fit. We were encouraged to use whatever was helpful from prior incarnations of the show and leave behind whatever we did not fit our vision for the show. A co-worker of mine, Melinda, offered her wealth of knowledge and experience to help us make this show the best it can be. Between her help and a stack of forms, letters, and feedback from prior shows, we were able to set everything in motion.
We wanted to create a show that helped us reach out to artists and serve them with no “churchy” strings attached. We wanted to allow local artists to sell their work with minimal overhead and commission. In short, we wanted to love on them, and let them be artists.
Thus was born the illuminArt Show.
I have been working furiously over the past few weeks getting our show to the place where we can start inviting artists to apply to join us. Yesterday, that day finally came. Our website is up, the Facebook page is set, and the Event page is locked and loaded. We have all the forms we need, and now we just need artists.
Are you an artist? Are you located in or around Calgary (or willing to come stay with us for a day or so)? If so, I want to hear from you. Head over to www.illuminartshow.com and click on the Apply link. There, you will find a brief rundown of the show info and an application form. Download the form, fill it out, and send it back to info@illuminartshow.com.
From there, our illustrious jury will comb through the applications and put together a show that is bound to be all sorts of awesome.
For those of you who have heard all about this already, thank you for your patience. This is an exciting adventure for me, and I just can’t wait to fill the show with awesome talent.
In a few weeks, I will write down the process we went through. Maybe our journey can help you do something similar in your town or neighbourhood. I want to see more art, and I want to see artists able to feed themselves. Projects like these help both.
Blessings
Epic Theology 
March 30, 2016 at 1:10 PM
How did you come up with the name?
March 30, 2016 at 1:19 PM
Oy. You can delete the comment above. :o) And from moi:
How did you come up with the name?
March 31, 2016 at 9:01 AM
To begin, it was suggested to us that we should have a professional branding to appeal to a wider range of artists. So, Jeff and I sat down and began thinking about words that captured what we thought about the show. We went through words like “wonder,” and “majesty,” and finally settled on illumine/illuminate. Looking at it, we thought we could throw in the Art to make it a snappy little title. It was originally IlluminArte, but we got too many people pronouncing the “e” on the end, so we dropped it. The lower case “i” at the beginning came out of the font. I liked the candle-looking i’s and wanted another in the branding.
And that’s how the illuminArt Show and Sale came about!