Art Show!!!

Yesterday was a first for me:
I actually presented my artwork in a public show...

It was a strange and fairly positive experience for me, having only ever shown my work in school to instructors and classmates.

It was also fascinating watching/participating in a student art-show as an artist and not a viewer.
Before the first people arrived, I strolled around like I had in past classes, looking at everyone's work, comparing it against what I thought could do and what I had done, talking to my classmates about their work and my own, and so on.

But then the first visitors came, and the crowds began to grow, and I felt myself getting nervous.
Would they like what I and m partners had made?
Was it original enough to be interesting but not so different that the meaning would be lost?

In all honesty, I was expecting a less-enthusiastic reception for the public than what we received. Multimedia was a strong factor in our show and  in my experience at least, that sort of thing is rarely well received by the public where student work was concerned.
Things seem to have changed, however...
My group's piece which was one of several combined media of sculpture, projection and architectural models was well received. Perhaps society has become so used to multi-media extending through rapidly evolving technology into every facet of our lives that heavily "multi-media-centered" works are more palatable  - less alien and controversial than it might have been 10 or 20 years ago. It seemed to me that a number of the people attending weren't people that would customarily come out to a formal gallery - curiosity seemed to draw them in. So we found ourselves surrounded by "art-people" and "non-art-people"... and it didn't matter.
The ones that came in off the street out of curiosity mingled with the "academic" art people almost seamlessly... some paused to consider particular works for a while, others moved on with barely a glance. There seemed to be no difference between the reception of either crowd.
This experience has served to reaffirm my opinion that the days of the elitist art- crowd are fading - thanks to the web, art and appreciation of it is possible outside of traditional venues of "higher education" - one can educate themselves as much or as little as they like. The boundary between educated and not is rapidly shrinking, and it truly makes me happy to think that within a short time, people will begin to look at art in a more natural, less structured way, and likely, enjoy it all the more.