Sheep Incognito Blog

As promised, here are some pix of the "during the storm" and "after the storm" phases in Virginia Beach at this year's Neptune Festival.

This was the sight when we first arrived - set-up time. Our booth space is the one immediately to the left of the blue sign by the railing.

  Fortunately, Neptune decided he likes sheep - so he took a chill pill, had a beer, and calmed down a bit - in the morning, this looked a LOT better:

It even stopped raining - we only had a 15 minute shower at some point on Friday, which only served to keep people in our booth just a tad longer, to give them more time to shop. The only thing missing were some chairs and a nice dinner - would have made it perfect.

The only grain of sand in the soup, so to speak, were the guys in the camouflage green pickup across from my booth - Navy recruiters, demonstrating their most wonderful weaponry to four year old kids and their parents, along with some sort of little camera endowed mini-tank. I'm not sure what disturbed me more about this - the weapons they had mounted on their little raft boat and laying on the table under the awning, or the fact that they were signing up new cannon fodder for who knows which new war... Very uncomfortable - seeing little kids jumping for joy when the little "bomb squad tank" opens the car door, and kicking and screaming as their moms carry them away...

War never was my favorite thing - and in my humble opinion, there is no such thing as a neccessary war. But then, what do I know...I only paint sheep. In my little peaceful corner of the world. (And please: nope, the country isn't just peaceful because we're somewhere else turning someone else's peaceful corner into our battleground...I do appreciate the troops doing their job and all that - but it still reeks of ungood things somehow). I dislike weapons, wars and anything that has to do with it. Sheep do, as well. Fortunately, looks can't kill - though I do hope they give people a headache (which might just be why those navy guys went to bed wearing their helmet that evening... )

So instead of focussing on that too much, I opted for a different viewpoint for a change - I decided to get down to the eye-level of the kids and the pets that were schlepped along the boardwalk all weekend long. Personally, I could very well understand why most of the kids were griping, screaming, or just passed out - there is a definite limit on how many rears one can stand to watch walking by...(Oh, just in case you were wondering - this was during my lunch break, so Peter was in the booth helping all my customers at the time).

All in all though, we had a great time at the Neptune Festival - our sales were up quite a bit, though many other artists said they had a hard time recouping their costs. Thanks to all the sheep incognito fans out there  for making our stay worthwhile!

Most certainly a show we'll be attending again if we can - no matter what Neptune throws at us...