NEW ULM - While others were shopping at traditional stores during New Ulm's shopping "opener" this weekend, those with a taste for a special, possibly more intimate type of gift were ringing artist Robyn Sand Anderson's door bell.
Anderson has been painting, mostly in watercolor, for 25 years, and over the years, it's turned into a home business for her, as well.
For much of the 25 years, she painted "most exclusively in watercolor, but I'm starting to do some acrylic. I'm finding that to be very fun."
She also over the years has been commissioned to do paintings. It started with being commissioned to doing a painting for a church when she lived in St. Cloud, "that opened a whole new world for me."
She also is getting involved with giclees (zhee-CLAYs) which are individually produced, high-resolution, high fidelity, high tech reproduction done on a special large format printer. The resulting print from the original painting almost takes on an aura of its own.
"But, they are expensive," she notes.
Although some may want to commission art done, like portraits and the like, visitors can find many prints in different forms, even on cards, that can fulfill a number of purposes.
It's another form of shopping offered by artists to enter into the shopping mix.
Around New Ulm Saturday, shoppers were hitting the stores as well as home businesses like Anderson's. The question was, however, how much effect the weather and the state of the economy had on shopping openers like New Ulm's.
A check of parking lots indicated that shoppers were out and about Saturday, but how many were buying and not just looking remains an unanswered question.
