Dharma Karma Art!!

We went down to First Thursday on Congress Ave yesterday. Karma brought all of her art with her to see if she could sell some before we leave on vacation. We walked around for awhile and found where they were offering booths to rent, but those were $30 and up, too rich for a 12 year old who hasn't sold anything yet. We found a gent sitting in front of what looked like an abandoned store front playing guitar and asked if he wouldn't mind us setting up across the doorway from him. He didn't, so we pulled out our little tray table and a couple of camp chairs. Karma set her art on display in a binder on the table and then set to drawing while Andrea sat next to her holding a little sign that said, "Dharma Karma Art, Look!!"

At first, people just stared at us, but eventually we worked up the courage to say hello to passersby and if someone looked long enough while still walking, Andrea would say, "Real Art by a Real 12 year old, have a look!" This got some attention and people would stop to question if Karma was really 12. The guitar player had earned a good bit of money, so he decided to bring Karma a $2 bill as a tip to encourage her. He didn't want anything in return.

Shortly thereafter a man stopped and queried Karma, "Do you just see all this in your head? How long have you been drawing? You did all this by yourself?" Karma was nervously stuttering answers which seemed to the guy's satisfaction. Finally, Mom stepped in with, "Yeah, we're very proud of her. She asked to come down today to sell her art. She's only asking $5 or best offer." The guy had been holding on to one page as he flipped through the rest of the binder and this was all he needed. He said, "Man, I'm down to my last dollars here, but I really like this one, so I'll give you half my money, here's $5." He collected Karma's piece titled, "Essence of Virtue," which featured an Angel, a dolphin, a bald eagle, a wolf, and a lion.

Karma was of course, thrilled. Not only had she received a $2 tip, but now she had sold an entire work of art for $5. Not long after that, a couple of women stopped, one was visiting from Atlanta. They both introduced themselves and chatted up Karma about drawing, art, etcetera. Mom tried to stay mostly out of it, letting Karma work up the courage to speak for herself. The visiting woman, Angela, came to one of Karma's drawings that involved the Texas flag, a horseshoe, Longhorn, and a star colored burnt orange. Karma had also written Texas on it, with the "s" stylized as a snake from the old flag, "Don't Tread on Me." Angela saw it and said, "I have to have it! I promised myself I would buy one print to frame while I was in Texas and this is perfect! Can I give you $10 for it?" Karma said, "Um, sure."

After the women left, Karma said, "I have to show Dad, oh my goodness, I can't believe I made $17!!" Mom ran to go get Dad and everyone else from the car (that was where they wanted to be). Dad, Aurora, and Caedmon came to see Karma's money and be excited for her. While we were all standing there, our friend Jenn happened by and stopped to say hello. She gave us great information about what else was in the area as we were completely unfamiliar with that part of town. She shared in Karma's excitement and happiness and then had to take-off but promised to be back soon.

Sadly, about 10 minutes after that, an adult artist happened by who was feeling angry that he couldn't sell any of his art. It turned out we were sitting outside what happened to be the tail-end of a store (with an unused storefront), so he went inside the store about a block away and told them that Karma was set-up out there. Of course, the manager/owner came out and asked us to move, because even though he didn't care, he said cops might. After we had packed everything up, Mom feeling quite angry with the bitter man for ruining Karma's prospects, a couple of men showed up who had been observing Karma and let her know that they usually stood there and played music. They told us they knew all the cops that patrolled during First Thursday and that so long as they vouched for Karma as a non-trouble maker, she would be fine. We told them Karma hadn't eaten in 7 hours, so we were going to go ahead and go but asked if it would be alright if we came back and joined them next month. They were fine with this, so we plan to do that.

After we put all the stuff back in the car, we decided to head down to Fran's to get something to eat (Jenn had told us it was a good place to go). Their food turned out to be pretty good for the price. During dinner, Aurora and Caed expressed some boredom and some desire to check out the park that Jenn had told us about, so we headed down there after dinner. Everyone got to running around and playing and we ended up staying until dark was falling. After that, Sam was past ready to head home, so sadly, we never did get to meet up with our friend Jenn and her family. The girls were pretty disappointed as they had wanted to see Jenn's girls and had e-mailed and called to see if they could make it. Next time, we won't head out so early (we got down there about 2 or 3 pm), because it seems nothing really starts going until about 5pm.

We're getting ready to head to DPS here in a bit to see if Sam's license is available to receive. If it is, we'll take off today. If not, we may not go for another 2 weeks or more.