This link was on Facebook today and I changed the title as it is appropriate to the art business as well:
I have been in business for 42 years and have been doing art shows for about half of that. What I am doing today is almost unrecognizable from what I was doing 30 years ago. Most recently I have been responding to requests for "dinky" little soft leather cases for credit cards, coins, passports, billfolds and the like. They are money makers once they are patterned as they use up the scrap from larger projects like fancy quilted trick saddles. I have learned that to make money, I often have to create what people want, not necessarily what I want to build. If you are not participating in the current economic recovery, maybe it is time to look inward as suggested in this article.
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Back to the Smoky Hill post after a long absence. As I mentioned upthread we nearly quit the art fair biz in spring 2012 after spreading our wings far and wide in 2011 and running into a bit of bad luck. But part of the bad luck that occurred was due to a new series of paintings we introduced that were based upon the US Civil War. Thinking they would make sense for the sesquecentennial, we did a series we called "War Portraits." They were a bit out of our wheelhouse and apparently too far out of it for the patrons. So we ditched the idea and I didn't frame the others despite them being fine paintings. We just need to keep them ourselves for future possibilities.
So I convinced my wife to do the summer show, Smoky Hill River Festival. Now I like Salina and have always spent a night or two there each year while passing through. It's a quaint little town, really. So we secured a house sitter who would keep the dogs for us at home since we expected temps to rise above 90 degrees in Salina. We normally travel with the dogs and care for them ourselves rather than board them. So we don't normally do summer shows.
One of the reasons we picked Smoky Hill is due to the awards package which included a $1,500 Best in Show. We've been particularly lucky winning awards 70 percent of the time. So awards have become a staple in our income. We just rarely ever do a show that doesn't offer awards, and usually the awards are significant. Smoky Hill's awards are a little on the low side, but they had them and the show is close to home at 800 miles distance.
When we rolled into Smoky Hill I immediately got a little disappointed since the craft festival apparently started earlier in the day on Friday. So those folks get three days of selling and start claiming patron bucks way before we do. I don't like that feature of the show at all. So the fine art exhibitors set up on the day the crafters start raking in the dough. I don't think the crafters are eligible for much award money if any, but so what.
We began braving the 94 degree heat in 90 percent humidity while a good crowd of folks came through the show. We didn't make many sales. I researched the program to find out what time we would learn about awards, and lo and behold I discovered the award ceremony would be held in the pavillion in 15 minutes. So I told my wife I would go check it out. She said, "Don't bother." Long story short, you want to hear your name at the ceremony--last. And that's what happened. They announced we won Best in Show, which brought us a little rush of interest from patrons. One of the patrons actually came to buy something, but gasped with sticker shock. She did purchase a small original, but it took some serious encouragement. We also sold a few prints there.
Smoky Hill River Festival was a landmark show for us. By winning the award, my wife and I realized we needed to be smarter and keep doing the right shows. Unfortunately, Smoky Hill would not be on our TO DO list, though. Great committee, and I mean great. One of the finest anywhere. But we had little confidence in the patrons. We have won Best in Show two years in a row, but counting on that is not a good idea. So we had to bow out. The director called us, but we had to say NO.
We got smarter and started doing fewer shows. Fall 2012 was dynamite since we did three shows, winning Best in Show ($3,000) at Ocala and sold a big painting ($3,200), and winning $1,400 in Pensacola and selling a good number of repros. 2013 was good, but 2014 was our best ever year.
That's it in a nutshell. We do fewer shows now. We're careful. We're also staying in our wheelhouse, but still doing the art we want to do. WOOHOO!
Peter G. mentions in the second paragraph of his first comment here that as an artist he has always practiced the "School of very hard knocks" approach wherein he does his art for himself with less concern, or none at all, for what buyers might think about it. That has always been my modus operandi. Selling art and making art are two altogether completely different animals.
He also mentions upthread what I've observed in our biz: ART FAIR ARTISTS ARE MOSTLY OLDER, OR THEY'RE OLD TIMERS. But don't just believe me. See the following links for more proof about this issue.
SEE THIS LINK TO A SURVEY ABOUT AGE IN ART FAIRS
SEE CARRIE JACOBSON'S "HOW OLD ARE YOU" THREAD
Barrie: I do remember seeing that Artist's survey some time ago and it sure is a slam dunk for making the point that there are no young people entering the street show scene: "18 to 34 year old exhibitors make up 0% of the respondents". WOW. I can certainly confirm that this was absolutely NOT always a field for old farts; my cadre was an '80s crowd and there were few people over 45 showing at the time. I, and my wife, remember doing the Baltimore ACC shows back then and, my gosh, the place was not only full of beautiful art and craft objects but the place was a veritable beauty contest of all these gorgeous and creative young people. My wife and I, at the time, made little money, lived on nothing, and had absolutely no problem affording the ACC shows (now they are ABSOLUTELY out of sight in price), could afford to expand our studio facilities, choose various outdoor venues, and still chronically screw up as artists, try new things, and stumble into occasional good luck. Today, people say "get over it,...things have changed",...where "change" is admittedly pejorative in this context and it's incumbent on us to adapt. I guess we should also "adapt" to food GMOs, lousy political leadership, crappy Fed policies that drain the middle class and enrich the already rich, overpriced college tuition for the young, and so on. Adapt. Maybe so. But it may be prudent to at least make the case it wasn't always this way and there is no rule that claims it MUST be this way. The street shows used to be that last redoubt for those who wanted to make art and stay free,......now it's no different than the corner merchant that must constantly read his customers and adapt to the social whims that drives most of society, a slave to fashion and the bottom line. There are probably a lot of reasons the shows have taken this turn, but cost and red tape is certainly at or near the top of the list.
Even in the 1990's, Peter, my wife and I would balance the check book after paying bills and discover we still needed $58 for car tags or the $35 for the water bill. We'd gather together some of our posters and a few packs of note cards, hop in the Subaru we purchased for $1,250 cash a few years earlier, and drive a few hundred miles or more selling in bars and quick marts and gift shops and grocery stores to whomever wanted them. Some sales were wholesale to stores and the others were retail to bar flies and passers by. We could do it because it was inexpensive to do so. Every now and then we'd hit pay dirt and one store would spend $250 wholesale for product that would cost me $20 to make and $5 to deliver.
Seriously, those days are long gone. Just last year gasoline was pushing $3.40 out here in Wyoming, so it cost us a bit more than that just to drive into town and back home since town is 25 miles. In 1995, gas was something like $1.10. We did juried western themed indoor shows sponsored by western enthusiasts back then, several of which charged us nothing upfront for fees. They charged 1/3 commission on sales of originals and nothing on sales of repros. They had big receptions and happy patrons. Some of the shows even held a "Pull from a hat" draw system on opening night, so when two or more patrons would speak for one piece, one of them became the lucky buyer when their name was drawn from the hat later in the evening!
And yes, there were plenty of young new artists breaking into the market. There were also plenty of old timers to mentor since western art had already seen its heyday in the 1970's and 1980's.
Oh, my. I digress. I'll get back to Smoky Hill in a bit. Back to 2012 and today.
There's a Thomas Hart Benton quote I love and have shared before in another AFI thread, and it relates directly to what you are talking about here, Peter. THB said, "The artist's life is the best life, if he can survive the first forty years of it." Now I've survived the first 25 consecutive years of my artist's life, and I still get a feeling at times that everything could spiral down the toilet.
Yes, Peter, I also see that shows are too expensive to allow for failure for very long. I lived that scenario in 2011 after having a most spectacular fall season and banner year in 2010. While so many were dropping like flies, we were soaring ever higher. Then I bit off more that I could chew, decided I could go anywhere and scheduled too much, and it bit me. After the last show of the year, Stockley Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia, about 2200 miles from our home, our transmission went out east of Richmond. 2011 was catastrophic. But it wasn't anyone's fault but mine.
The market is volatile. I've said that line before elsewhere on AFI as well. I got a little too big for my britches in 2011 simply because 2010 was so rosy. I abandoned too many of my established criteria and did too many shows I shouldn't have done. I did Florida (my normal showing place), Midwest (Illinois, Nebraska, and Wisconsin), and Norfolk, VA. 2011 was a bad time to spread my wings that much. So what happened caused me to cancel everything in spring 2012 and I very nearly decided to abandon the art fair market altogether.
Abandoning the art fair market would have been more of the same foolishness, so I opted to be conservative and decided to try a summer show close to home. The deadline was sometime in February for Smoky Hill River Festival, and I knew that I needed to try it since it is well established, gets decent reviews, and presents monetary awards.
I have to apologize now to you folks since I've got to quit writing. I have company in my home for two weeks and they are awake. My mom from Houston has brought my nephew (age 9) from New York City. So I've gotta get off of here. I'll be back to finish my comment as soon as I get the chance. Stay tuned for what happened next with Smoky Hill and our art biz. WOOHOO!
I've been away from the studio since Wednesday, so I'm a bit pressed for time right now. I'm coming back here soon to comment.
Not only that, Rich, but they just won't even read it.
I live in a small town not far from Ann Arbor (pretty much the granddaddy of the big art fairs and the model for many.) Now and then I run into a smart talented young woman with a BFA from U Michigan and an MFA from Cranbrook. She has tried adjunct professoring, and many other things (currently works for a small salary for an arts group here).
I think she could definitely make something that younger hipster folks would love and buy. There are people like that out there ... but she can't seem to get beyond the details and the overwhelmingness of it all.
You see a lot of business savvy shared here -- these folks need more business classes, they need their minds opened to what makes a life worth living, it isn't all bottom line --
IMO you have to put as much time, treasure and creativity into the business side to be able to do what you really want to do. I'm lucky in that I loved doing geology until the corporate crap got too deep, but I had my art work to go to.
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