We spent another 5 days in the city of Guardia Sanframondi, after 8 days in the countryside and saying that our time in the city has been intense is an understatement.
The first 4 nights were pretty rough and last night we finally managed to catch up on sleep, a bit.
There was a festival going on here, that ended late Sunday night/early Monday morning and the sheer amount of people this attracted plus the amount of alcohol consumed by many of them intensified the already pretty crazy energy of this Italian city.
Add Summer heat to that, mosquitoes and gnats and loud music thumping away until 4am.
It seemed like the youth, kids that usually have very little to do, made the best the worst of the situation and showed their 'dark' side after midnight, peeing in the streets, vandalizing things and disturbing the peace in all kinds of ways, when others, us included, tried to sleep.
an age a point in our life where we can’t really deal with that kind of stuff any longer. We also didn’t (decide to) move to the countryside without a good reason.
Nevertheless, Clare had suggested to be in the city, during the weekend ( Friday to Sunday ), to open up our ‘cantina’ ( formerly known as the cat room ) and change it into a pop-up shop ( as she had done before ).
The idea was to hopefully sell some of her clothing and to see if I could maybe sell some of my (cat) drawings.
Showcasing the latter in what usually serves as the space where the cats eat and/or rest felt like a fun idea. It would also be the first time for me to expose my drawings to an audience.
I have only showed some of my films in the past
The first night, Friday, was a bit of a disappointment.
Clare didn’t sell a single piece of clothing. I sold one of my Hypersensitivosaurus books.
*I had decided to throw them into the mix too, as I felt more confident about them than my drawings. Having sold a bunch of them in the last two years, including to a number of Hive friends :^)
My cat drawings were mostly ignored. In all honesty, it seemed like most people just wanted to sneak a peak and or chat with us. Or, more likely, were coming to ‘Vinalia’ to drink and snack. Mostly to drink.
Night 2 was pretty disappointing too. I am not even sure if we sold anything at all.
Edit: Clare just read this and said she sold one piece of clothing on night 2
And then, on Sunday, the last day of the festival, we felt so drained and it was getting so hot that we decided to rest most of the day. We were even considering to not open our doors to the public that night but eventually decided to give it a last go to not feel like it had all been in vain.
Once again, the evening started slowly. We opened the doors to our exhibition space a little after 9PM. There wasn’t much happening in the first two hours or so and we were getting pretty tired but then... all of a sudden... things started to take off.
A group of people ( friends of a friend ) entered and showed actual interest in Clare’s clothing and bit by bit, we started gaining momentum.
This eventually led to Clare selling 5 pieces of clothing and earning a sizable amount of cash, when we least expected it/were almost throwing the towel.
And even though my cat drawings didn’t get much attention at all and I didn’t sell any more books, I also didn’t try that hard.
Clare was the one who deserved the spotlight and after two disappointing first nights, I was happy that she got paid back for all her hard work of the last two plus years.
It also made us think about/planted a seed on how to (not) sell our creative work in the future.
I am sure we will talk more about that in future posts.
We do know now, that this is not our favorite way ( and that is an understatement ) nor our favorite place to do so and can't wait to pack more of our things and drive back to our land in the countryside, hopefully tomorrow...
