Craft Show Confidential
A Single Woman's View from the Booth & Beyond. Volume 1: The Typewriter Age
Biography & Memoir, Artists, Architects & Photographers, Nonfiction, Art & Architecture, Fiction & Literature, Humorous
| Author: | Valerie Hector | ISBN: | 9780990536239 |
| Publisher: | Tempest in a Teapot Press | Publication: | July 11, 2014 |
| Imprint: | Tempest in a Teapot Press | Language: | English |
| Author: | Valerie Hector |
| ISBN: | 9780990536239 |
| Publisher: | Tempest in a Teapot Press |
| Publication: | July 11, 2014 |
| Imprint: | Tempest in a Teapot Press |
| Language: | English |
Craft Show Confidential is a tongue-in-cheek send-up of the American craft show industry, delivered as the fictional memoir of Vanessa Nathaniel, a jeweler based in the Chicago area. Nathaniel is writing in the year 2036, when craft shows, like dinosaurs, have disappeared from the earth, victims of e-commerce and audience fatigue. Now 76, she recalls the 27 years she spent on the road as a show-going single woman. Nathaniel's life unfolds in three places: the studio, the booth, and the path to and from. In each she undergoes eye-opening experiences, which reveal human nature for better or worse. In Volume 1, "The Typewriter Age: 1988-1996," she tells her tale in 30 vignettes, most of them humorous, with titles such as "Living on Fumes," "Humping Wholesale," "My Little Mohawk," "Drive-by Ex-Boyfriend," "Problem in a Porta-Potty," and "Artistic Leech, Artistic License." Along the way, the larger world changes. Presidents morph from Reagan to Clinton. Technology races from typewriter to computer. E-mails and websites are new and strange things. America launches the Persian Gulf War, a short-term effort to evict Iraq from Kuwait. Global warming is not yet a pressing concern. We learn how artists relate to these things. But the tone is light; the reading is easy. Nathaniel champions civility and plain old hard work, while skewering pomposity and image-driven egos. Her "femoir" may ruffle some carefully-crafted feathers, but it depicts a distinctively American way of life, and places craft show artists within a cultural context. Volumes 2 and 3, which cover the years from 1997 to 2014, will be published in the Fall of 2014. Volume 4, containing stories written by Valerie Hector's real-life craft show colleagues, is tentatively scheduled to be published in February, 2015.
Craft Show Confidential is a tongue-in-cheek send-up of the American craft show industry, delivered as the fictional memoir of Vanessa Nathaniel, a jeweler based in the Chicago area. Nathaniel is writing in the year 2036, when craft shows, like dinosaurs, have disappeared from the earth, victims of e-commerce and audience fatigue. Now 76, she recalls the 27 years she spent on the road as a show-going single woman. Nathaniel's life unfolds in three places: the studio, the booth, and the path to and from. In each she undergoes eye-opening experiences, which reveal human nature for better or worse. In Volume 1, "The Typewriter Age: 1988-1996," she tells her tale in 30 vignettes, most of them humorous, with titles such as "Living on Fumes," "Humping Wholesale," "My Little Mohawk," "Drive-by Ex-Boyfriend," "Problem in a Porta-Potty," and "Artistic Leech, Artistic License." Along the way, the larger world changes. Presidents morph from Reagan to Clinton. Technology races from typewriter to computer. E-mails and websites are new and strange things. America launches the Persian Gulf War, a short-term effort to evict Iraq from Kuwait. Global warming is not yet a pressing concern. We learn how artists relate to these things. But the tone is light; the reading is easy. Nathaniel champions civility and plain old hard work, while skewering pomposity and image-driven egos. Her "femoir" may ruffle some carefully-crafted feathers, but it depicts a distinctively American way of life, and places craft show artists within a cultural context. Volumes 2 and 3, which cover the years from 1997 to 2014, will be published in the Fall of 2014. Volume 4, containing stories written by Valerie Hector's real-life craft show colleagues, is tentatively scheduled to be published in February, 2015.
