I Survived the Two Ravens Gallery NEW SHOW RECEPTION

I think I need that on a t-shirt or something...

Sooo the day job scheduled me for their huge memorial Day weekend to-do yesterday when I had requested it off to prepare for the opening reception of the new show and man the gallery for the "mothership"s (the main business/building that houses the gallery) grand opening bash, held the same day.

Since I saw the lack of advertising the mothership did and realized that a sale at the dayjob could float the gallery for the rest of the lease, I bit the bullet and went to the dayjob, lassoing someone else to sit the gallery for the day. My intuition was right, because the lack of advertising brought few people through the gallery doors during the day, while the dayjob was PACKED.

Now, the other problem was that my swanky caterer (those of you who read my other journal already know this) bailed on me last Friday since they had fired their new/old chef and had their own huge Memorial day stuff to deal with. At such short notice, finding a new caterer wasn't happening, so I stayed up Friday night until 1am working on the food, then flew home after work at 3pm yesterday to rush and spend another 2.5 hours almost finishing the rest of the food for the reception, which started at 6. I arrived at 5:57, and luckily had a few friends help me set it all up and do the Thai chicken rolls.

Here was the menu:

Gooey Mocha Brownie bites with espresso/dark chocolate glaze + double chocolate whole wheat brownie bites

Spiced melon + fruit skewers with local honey drizzle

Sweet onion and basil focaccia + onion and sundried tomato focaccia w/ olive oil and sea salt

Thai chicken rollups with peanut sauce, w/ or w/out onion (the onion ones were waaaay better)

cucumber rounds with herbed cheese and cracked pepper + same with smoked salmon ribbons

I wanted to do up a bunch of things that would be vegetarian friendly, for some ungodly reason--although to the best of my knowledge no vegetarians showed up.

Anyway, considering we were vying for traffic with several other art events and who knows what else that evening, we did very well. While there's still a boatload of food left (most of which I can't eat, since I don't do wheat, ironically), one local artist who attended both our event and another held by the largest local art group said ours had more people, and she was just basing that off of the traffic she saw at the time she walked it.

She also said our food was better, so I feel vindicated...But I REALLY appreciate caterers now, so I think I'll book one for the next opening in July as soon as everyone is back in regular business this Tuesday...

Now that THAT is over, methinks I will be primarily kicking back and recovering today. Watch this space for the new avatar (coming soon) and images of the new show (probably coming SOONER)--I'm really pleased with it and think it has some great presence.

HOPEFULLY since my web-person is expriencing a momentary lull I will finally be able to get the website up and running--you can bet your sweet bippy that I'll be posting that announcement when it's ready.

Take care, everyone--the Ravens are done squawking for now...