Madness at Madison

So, on July 11, I loaded up my life and headed off to Madison, WI. This was the beginning of my big adventure. I headed off to Madison and wasn't coming home again for two weeks. In that time I would be doing three shows and staying with my brother and his family in Appleton, WI during the weeks in between. This was the first time I had ever done three (much less five) shows in a row. This was the first time I had been away from my husband for more than four days since we were married. And this was the first time I had lived with my "baby" brother since he was ten years old, and now he has a child of his own. It was going to be a big adventure.

After five hours of driving into a head wind (and a full tank of gas) I arrived in Madison. Just in time to drop my suitcase at the hotel and head to the square for set-up. After about a 15 minute wait I got in to set-up my tent and displays at about 8:00 pm that night. It is always nice to do the dirty, sweaty, hard labor of setting up a tent and display the night before a show so that we can be clean and fresh for customers in the morning. That night we set-up having been told that a big storm was coming through after midnight. I can only speak for myself, but I was willing to take my chances because I couldn't imagine getting completely set-up by the time the show opened the next day.

Now, there are several different types of tents artists use, mine being an EZ-Up and one of the lesser expensive brands. Over the years I had had several different displays, some good, some bad, some easy to work with, some not so easy. So, I had developed my system to both display my product but also hold down my tent. So, that night when the glass artist two doors down asked "So, is your EZ-Up going to survive the storm tonight?" I answered with confidence "yes, I think I have it pretty figured out."

So, the next morning when I arrived at the show at about 6:00 am, to hang my work, I wasn't too surprised when I walked about half the show and saw a tent or two down. But when I rounded the corner on to my street, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. First, I saw a couple of bent tent frames, but as I walked closer, I realized that there were more than a couple and that they weren't just bent, they were leveled. With my mouth wide open, I walked onto the scene of total destruction. By this time the show organizers had "cleared the street" and had piled all the bent, broken, destroyed tents, displays and stuff onto one side of the street, but from what we were told later it looked like a war zone, stuff strewn all over.

I then turned to look where my tent had been standing and there it was, still standing all by its lonesome almost as I had left it the night before. All totalled nine tent - seven across the street from me and two next to me, including the glass artist from the night before, were destroyed in that storm. The windward side of my tent was pushed back onto the curb about a foot, but it had survived. I was amazed.

Here are pictures of what I arrived to that morning.

These are the two tents next to mine, the one on the right is mine.

This is what was left of the five tents across from me.

Looking down my side of the street, my tent is in the middle.
The people behind me, with the green van, didn't set up until that morning.

Looking down the street at the destruction across from me.
The little dome in the front was filled with high end sculpture. Luckily they were all still packaged and nothing was lost.

This is how far the one side of my tent was blown back.

So, I survived two big storms this season - first the big hail storm at Edina and then Madison. I have to say it makes you think every time you see a rain cloud or the wind starts to blow.

In the end Madison was a good show. As always the crowds were endless and I met my goal. Sunday night I was one of the last dozen or so artists to get packed up. A homeless guy named Thomas helped me get my "3D Mosaic" put together and I headed off to Appleton. More stories later.