Showing & Selling Our Sculptures

Some of our members are interested in showing and/or selling, as well as making. Our monthly meetings showcase the making aspect, as we visit fellow members’ studios and workshops nearly every meeting. However, we don’t always focus on the showing and selling aspects. Personally, I enjoy selling! I like the camaraderie with other artists and I enjoy speaking with potential clients. I don’t find online selling fun, as I don’t get to interact much with customers (unless they’re unhappy), and I never feel like I received fair value for the time I spent carefully packing and shipping ceramic art so it won’t break in-transit.

My favorite places to sell so far, seems to be guild shows. I belong to five guilds. (I like people.) Some of those guilds are more focused on selling opportunities, and some are not. Pacific Northwest Sculptors is a guild in my mind, and over the last few years several selling opportunities have sprung up, designed and executed by your fellow hard-working members.

For example, Bob Deasy & Jenny Poston recently hosted our Sculptors Hallway at Portland Home & Garden Show. I felt fortunate to have sold some small sculptures there. Each artist has to feel out which opportunities will match their target audience. It felt like $100-and-under sculptures were a hit there, but surprises happen, and thus larger sales happen too. I believe we are gaining an audience there, so eventually I believe larger and more expensive pieces will sell there. Currently, and with the economy as such, perhaps the sales target is a price point where potential customers can feel good buying something spontaneously, even on a limited budget. (Hopefully in a few years, art buyers will flock to the Home & Garden Show with clear intentions of bringing home a large and impressive sculpture!)

Our next opportunity is Gathering of the Guilds, which coincides with Oregon Potters Association’s massive Ceramic Showcase in late April. Our members had the opportunity to choose a booth, share a booth, enter a large piece into the Main Gallery, or smaller less expensive pieces into the Small Stuff Gallery. Since this is a well-established show, the potential for sales of large pieces is greater, however the competition is also greater. There’s a whole team of your fellow members focused on this event. Find their names at this link.

Coming up soon we have a Show opportunity at Vancouver, WA’s new The Hub/ArtsCentered space in Vancouver’s old library location. You’re allowed to post your own label card near your work, so if you create a QR code for each piece, or list your email, you might be able to sell something outside of the venue. If you teach, there may be an opportunity to offer a workshop. Russ Ford has been working with Christine Richardson there, and I believe we’ll see more information soon. 

We also had a light-up Show opportunity with Portland’s annual Light Festival in February. Our display at the Justice Center’s exterior gallery was so popular, I’m sure we’ll be invited to show there again in February 2027. 

We have three show/demo opportunities with our Raku firing each year. Cascadia Fine Arts Festival (May. Formerly Troutdale Arts Fest), Vancouver Arts & Music Festival (August) and Art In The Pearl (September). Maybe you’ll get lucky and sell your raku piece on the spot to a bystander? I won’t tell anyone if you do.

Our autumn opportunity will be hosting our very own PNWS show at Vancouver’s Art At The Cave gallery. The theme is Coalescing: Sculptural Collaborations, so start thinking about that! I don’t collaborate with other artists, but if you do, get your team together soon. Otherwise, perhaps the idea is that your various art media are coalescing together? All I know is, it’s art, and so it can be anything.

All these events occur from February through November, so our year is chock full of events. We are almost through the first quarter of 2026, so if you haven’t made a plan to take advantage of these PNWS opportunities, now is a good time!

Lastly, I want to leave you with three videos for inspiration. They show how some clever artists thought outside the box (truck), and created their own mobile art gallery and art show. Gallery real estate is expensive, but this idea isn’t. I’m busy teaching workshops so cannot manage this myself, but if a PNWS member wanted to pursue something like this with Portland’s downtown association or various neighborhood associations (like St Johns Boosters), maybe we could get some traction and we could be the first in Portland-Vancouver to host a pop-up U-Haul gallery event like this. Let me know if you decide to pursue this. The main thing would be wallboard to make the walls look like art galleries, and decent lighting. You can google for articles about this online, for example: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/market/uhaul-gallery-and-art-fair-new-york-1234748442/

4 Videos:

https://www.jenkemmag.com/home/2025/09/18/meet-u-haul-gallery-a-diy-art-gallery-run-out-of-the-back-of-a-box-truck/
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwE0h88Kd0A
and https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOPNzOgjUJq/
and one more: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DOWCSX2AM3y/

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