I participate in the surveys sent out by The Art Festival Newsletter. I just received the latest survey results, studied them, and now post the link to the pdf here for AFI folks to see. It's a very telling survey since younger and newer artists have dropped out of sight while us old farts just keep on plugging away at it while continuing to push the age bracket of artists participating in art fairs up, up and away.
HERE'S THE LINK TO THE RESULTS.
My participation in art fairs doesn't jive with some of these findings, like the question about how far artists will travel to do shows. We go from Wyoming to Florida to do shows, so we're traveling over 2,000 miles in the fall and the spring just to do our shows. We do about a dozen outdoor art fairs each year now with half being in spring and half being in fall. We rarely do any art fairs close to home since there just aren't very many in the first place. Plus we don't like summer shows very much despite doing one every now and then. The southeast just has the highest concentration of shows that are close together in location and happening every weekend.
I hope the link works. I'll check it once I post the topic tread. Happy reading. WOOHOO!
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50-64 isn't THAT old. I also find the trend hard to believe due to all the physical labor required to put up and take down the tent and everything you are selling. Doesn't all that physical work get harder as you get older?
I wonder if this is less indicative of the current state of art festivals, and more indicative of the Art Fair Newsletter's readership. I mean, I think I'd be considered a younger artist, in that I'm in the 18-34 age bracket. There are a number of other factors too: Cost of starting up a business, college attendance (18-22 year old are typically in undergrad; if they go straight to grad school - something strongly encouraged as an art major - they may be in school till age 25-27), student loans that need to be repaid...more established artists can afford the "perks" of industry publication subscriptions.
That said, anecdotally, I have noticed that I am frequently the youngest (29 next month) artist at art festivals/fairs. And I've been both congratulated for it and sneered at for it (sometimes in the same fair!). However, at scifi/horror conventions, I'm actually usually one of the middle to older artists. So it's possible my immediate peers just don't perceive art fairs as a place they're welcome/can do business in.
Hey, I will be 43 by the next season starts!
I have definitely noticed this. I'll be 28 next month and I'm often the youngest person at a show who does it full time. I honestly don't even think the idea of doing outdoor shows has crossed the minds of my generation. Most of my peers are independent contractors, sell online and at fantasy/sci-fi/comic conventions, or work exclusively with galleries.
As a matter of fact, I've actually had another festival artist be rude and passive aggressive with me about my age and how I'm "too young to understand" how things used to be in the art fair circuit. As for me, I'm not dropping out because I've already spent too much on my booth set up!
Glad to have you aboard, A.L. Swartz. I like the younger generation coming on the scene. In fact we did a show in Winter Springs a few weeks ago and were positioned right across from several of the student emerging artists and really had a blast with them. They weren't full time beginning pros, but one of them has been in school so long that he nearly fit the mold. He's still timid about paying full booth fees and applying to the bigger shows, but I think part of the problem is the fact that he's not making enough money to afford the fees. I hope he'll get it together since we think he has a good brain and doing interesting work.
We've done plenty fantasy sci-fi cons ourselves and still do them. We might be at the Sasquan WorldCon in Spokane. We also used to be ComicCon International exhibitors.
Well, enough about that. While on the tour I haven't seen very many new younger generation artists. It's a shame.
I'm 25 and plan to spend the next couple of years building up a body of work (and getting good enough to sell it), and then doing a combination of sci-fi cons and art fairs. So the younger folks definitely do exist!
Glad to have you aboard, JG! We did Great Gulf Coast Art Fair in Pensacola in November and guess who also exhibited there? Ruth Thompson! We just don't see enough of that community crossing over into outdoor fairs. WOOHOO!
Fantasy art is the genre that I'm interested in, as well. It's good to see more and more people pushing for it to be included in the category of fine art! LoveCraft Gallery has definitely been a force for that locally here in Calgary.
I have a very good friend who lives in Edmonton. His name is Todd Bertsch. Do you know him? He's an avid sci-fi fantasy book reader collector fan. He dressed up as a Klingon and presented George Takei with a a birthday cake in front of a large audience during a huge convention there several years ago.
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