Today I visited the lovely shop of Chicago jeweler Sara Lenart (1924 W. Byron) with another wonderful copper enamel artist and friend Mary Laskey. We all belong to "Art Girls" a group of women that has grown to an evite list of almost 20 over the last few years. Most of us met doing art fairs and decided it would be fun to get together outside of the shows and more often than once a year at the annual Bucktown Art Fest's Patron's Party. We started out meeting once a month at restaurants and have moved more towards rotating potlucks at eachother's homes which is great because there is nothing more interesting than seeing the living space of other artists. On Thursday we met at the home of amazing jeweler Kathy Frey - she just had her first book published! Our talk on thursday was of blogs...and art business and a cook book that we'd like to put together. These art girls are some fabulous cooks...we have quite the tasty pot lucks and you will often find a spouse or partner sticking around to fill a plate - in spite of the sometimes deafening sound of a dozen women joyously conversing around a few bottles of wine...!
So back to my field trip to Sara's store...I am dreaming of getting a store front in Chicago, one where I can be more accessible to my customers and have more space and ceiling height(!) to work in. It's a very big move to make so it was great to hear nothing but positives from Sara who has had her space for over 2 years...very inspiring.