KIDS NEED NOT APPLY
Eight-year-old turned away from event because she isn’t ‘professional’ artist
Ginger Kacy-palmer, pictured with mom beata at octopus studios on powell street, was planning to sell her handmade jewelry at this weekend’s eastside culture crawl. but organizers shut her down when they found out she was only eight years old.
Ginger Kacy-Palmer spent hours designing her display booth for the Eastside Culture Crawl.
First she painted a big table she found in her mother’s art studio at 393 Powell St.
“It was really dirty,” she said. Then she claimed a bolt of fabric from her father’s closet and scattered piles of white sand so she could display her handmade jewelry in shells.
“I wanted it to look like the beach,” said the eight-year-old artist as she put the final touches on her booth on Thursday. Other pieces, like her handcrafted silver Origami pendants, are laid out neatly next to the shells.
Ginger’s mother, Beata Kacy, is a jewelry maker, ceramic artist and designer who has participated in the Culture Crawl for the past nine years at Octopus Studios on Powell St.
Fifteen artists will be showing and selling their work at Octopus Studios during the Crawl — and Ginger has taken lessons from many of them in pottery, visual art and jewelry making.
So Beata encouraged her daughter to apply for her own booth at the Crawl this year.
“She’s been creating so much, I thought, why not have her own booth?”
Ginger, who has studied everything from pottery to silversmithing, and is as comfortable with a power tool as she processing a Visa payment on an iPhone, applied online. She soon was notified she had been accepted to show at the Crawl.
The Grade 3 student was thrilled when her “About the Artist” bio went up on the Eastside Culture Crawl website. But when organizers were tipped off to her age, they told Ginger she wouldn’t be able to participate and her bio came down from the website.
“There was no box (on the application) asking for her age,” said her mother, “so we didn’t think it would be a problem.”
Executive director Esther Rausenberg said it wasn’t Ginger’s agethatmatteredsomuchasher qualifications.
“Participants have to be professional, working artists,” said Rausenberg. “We’re a professional arts organization working with artists, from emerging to established, and we receive funding from many sources. Anyone who participates has to be a professional.”
Ginger said she was disappointed, but she’s not letting this hiccup stop her. She’ll have a booth at Octopus Studios during the Crawl, even though she won’t officially be part of the event.
By the way, she has already made her first sale: one cat pendant, to me.