Hi,
My name is Jason and after 3 years of only showing my work in Kansas, mostly Wichita, I am taking the plunge to take my Art on the road. I am still very much an emerging Artist, working in 3 different mediums, Photography, Digital Art, and Abstract Painting which just started this year. I've had some small recognition by local Art Councils but nothing outside of Kansas. I have family that who are really pushing me to do something more, but of course, money is always an issue. So I am looking for as much advice as possible before I make such a large investment. You can find my some of my work on Facebook or at my website. I look forward to hearing from the experts.
Replies
Hi Jason.
Let me introduce myself to you. I do shows/fairs for a living. 100% of my household income comes from doing shows, and living in New England allows me to fill a schedule within a 6 hour drive from my home. I absolutely love what I do for a living, and I figure I've done well over 1,200 shows/fairs in my career. That's a lot of weekends.
So I have a few things for you to think about before making the plunge.
Are you financially capable of doing this? I mean can you go for weeks at a time with no income at all? Because bills still have to be paid every month. This can happen even if you are doing a show because of unforeseen circumstances like weather, placement at the fair, the mood of the people, etc. Or it could be something that far too many exhibitors refuse to acknowledge, that particular fair just isn't your market.
How far are you willing to travel? Do you plan to do a circuit or stay within a certain radius of home? What kind of money are you expecting to make at the shows/fairs? Would you be happy walking out on Sunday with $1,200? Or less? Or are you expecting to make lots of money?
Just exactly what are you going to sell? Photography, digital art, or abstract paintings?
Now what I'm about to tell you is not meant to discourage you, but I want you to go in with your eyes open. These are the facts of life in this business.
You will be sitting at an outdoor event too many times in the rain with nobody walking past your booth. You will experience all types of weather. Heavy rain. Winds that have created pure havoc at shows resulting in destruction of canopies. Mud. Always be prepared.
Everybody wants that "Times Square" booth at the show. But only one exhibitor will get it. Likewise every exhibitor at one time or another will get that "horrible" spot at the end of the row that gets no traffic. Welcome to the club.
Booth fees. How much are you willing to spend? Is $250 too much, or are you willing to spend $500 and up for the "good" shows? Also too many promoters want all their money along with the application. Do you have enough money to lay out for a year's worth of applications? That is by far the biggest nut for exhibitors to crack open.
On to promoters. Always read every word of every application! Many will list all kinds of rules and regulations and in tiny print at the bottom will exempt themselves from everything that they wrote. All those applications say is you agree to not bring B/S or something like that, but they agree to nothing. Also don't believe what you read in those nice glossy pamphlets you might get along with the app. It may say the show was in SA's Top 100 but fail to say it was in 1998.
Now here's my advice to those starting out.
The very first thing you must commit to memory is this: There is nothing anybody needs at an art fair or craft fair. People have responded to me by saying people need art. Yes, but do they need your art? Your job is to convince them they do.
When you arrive at a show be respectful. That person sitting there is probably stressed out more than you can imagine just getting the whole thing ready. Take your packet, go to your assigned space and set up. Don't give them a hard time because you don't like where you are. (See "Times Square" above.) This also goes for your neighbors. Respect the fact they are setting up too and never pile everything in the middle of the aisle while setting up your booth! Others have to get by your stuff in order to get to their booth too.
Last but not least, always be a willow, never an oak. Always be flexible! Sometimes you may only get 9 3/4 feet at an indoor show. Don't throw a tantrum, deal with it.
Chris,
Thank you so much! The questions you asked are what I am currently trying to answer. Art is already my "job" but I have been struggling mightily, and relying on family far more than I should. My hope with the Festival route is that it will open more doors for me than Wichita, KS can. I don't expect riches. I know there will be weekends where I don't sell anything. But let me break your questions down and maybe that will give insight into the kind of help that I need.
1) Am I financially capable of doing this? Can I go weeks at a time without an income? Honestly no I am not capable, but I have already been going weeks, months, years without an income. I have a $15,000 loan in the works. I will generate another $4-$5k when I sell my camera gear. I already have a tent, I just need the Pro Walls and lights to complete it. The rest of the money will be used on Festivals and Travel Expenses. Hopefully each weekend will help me to fund another weekend. Its the total at the end of the year that I am looking to.
2) How far do I plan to travel? Will I stay within a circuitous route of home? Travel will only be constrained by my financial capability. Obviously I would prefer to stay as close to home as possible to keep costs down, but I will go where I have the best chances for success. Eventually I will establish a circuitous route. However, right now that isn't the best plan for me. A) My body of work, that's finished and prepared to show, isn't extensive and I will need to come home to create more before going back out. B) I need time to figure out which shows are the best for me. I will probably have to go to a show at least twice to discern its viability. C) I am renting a U-Haul trailer as opposed to buying one for now so that I have more money to do shows.
3) What kind of money are you expecting to make at the shows/fairs? Would you be happy walking out on Sunday with $1,200? Or less? Or are you expecting to make lots of money? I have no idea what to expect. I have been trying to come up with a reasonable expectation so that I can price my artwork accordingly. Based on the prices that I have right now, and what I feel the projected costs would be, I would have to sell three or four pieces to break even. I am not sure if that it is a reasonable expectation. I've thought about changing my pricing formula so that I only have to have one or two sales to break even. But I am concerned that raising my prices will hinder me in making sales and not help me. But part of my problem there is the bias created from trying to sell my Art in Wichita, Ks. Here, for most people, if something is over $200 it is a lavish expense that they don't need. I've had sales of course, my biggest being $1,300 for a Digital Art piece that was 3'x8'. I've been told that same piece would have gone for a minimum of $3,000 anywhere else. That was when I first realized that if I was going to survive I needed to get my Art out of Wichita, but it has taken me two years to get to this point. Of course I will happily take whatever I can make and I don't expect to get rich. My expectations are to barely break even every month, but my hope is to be able to pay my bills, take care of my family, and continue to do the one thing I have true passion for in my life, and that took me 20+ years to find.
4) How much are you willing to spend? Is $250 too much, or are you willing to spend $500 and up for the "good" shows? I will spend what I need to spend. Right now I figure that I can't really afford to take the risk of the smaller shows, but that is based on my uninformed opinion. I have no idea really if a big show is better than a smaller show. I can see how a smaller show might bring more people who are there to buy and not just "shop", and I wouldn't get lost in the crowd. But how many people would I have the opportunity to impress? A bigger show would allow me to have more people seeing my Art, 1,000 people to make one sale theory. But a bigger show isn't necessarily the better show. I am probably not able to pay for a years worth of shows right now. I can maybe afford to do 10. But I do have the money for 20-30 applications, and won't I be rejected 50% or more of the time? My hope is to apply, get accepted, and then earn the booth fee from a previous show, and earn the travel expenses from previous shows.
5)Just exactly what are you going to sell? Photography, digital art, or abstract paintings? I put this at the end so I could add one photo of each Medium. Based on my research, I have to do separate applications for each Medium that I have, including doing a booth shot for each. While I have some pieces finished for my Photography and Digital Art, I never intended to fill a whole booth with them, at least now. Primarily I wanted to bring some limited edition prints to put in a bin to create another revenue stream. And I also wanted to put in my booth my two time award winner (its just Kansas art councils but I'm still proud), which is the tree. No my plan was to sell my paintings. They are vastly more cost efficient than my other mediums, and they don't take me long to produce, so when I get home I can easily crank out another 10 or so. That isn't the type of Artist I wanted to be, but I can be discerning when I'm better established. Right now I need to pay the bills.
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First off, the photos are great. They are the type of work I could see in many homes. The art isn't my taste, but that's just me.
I was very happy to see where you said you needed to find shows that are right for you. That's a big thing because although there are plenty of great shows out there, are they your particular market, and only you can find the answer to that question.
I do a lot of shows with photographers and artists and around here every one has bins with prints that the average schmoo can afford, and to a person they say those prints pay the bills. But that's a discussion for you and the other photographers and 2D people here.
I want to wish you all the luck in the world. It's not an easy life, but it can be a rewarding one.
I hope you are as successful as I have been, both financially and emotionally, as I found my passion many, many years ago and wouldn't change the path I took in life. I've met some absolutely wonderful people in this business, both fellow exhibitors and promoters.
Actually I have one more question if you don't mind. I found this little tidbit in the Cherry Creek Application;
Evolving Artwork: The CCAF allows for a small portion (no more than 15%) of ‘new work’ as a gesture to allow artists to keep evolving into other bodies of work. In order to respect the decisions of the jury, here are the rules for an artist that would like to participate: new work may only make up 15% of the exhibit space; the work must be within the same discipline as the work juried into the show; and the ‘new work’ must be original, handcrafted work. The goal of this new program is to allow artists to continue to grow and change while maintaining the high artistic standards of the show jury process.
Does this mean that the work I bring to the show must be exactly the same work in my booth shot to 85%? If so why would anyone ever go to this show? Their deadline is in December for a show that's in July. Isn't that quite a long time to hang on to specific artwork? Or is it more common to break down each show and decide which specific pieces you're going to take to each show and only do booth shots with those pieces?
Thank you for all your help!
Defining "exactly" is that the 85% of the work in your booth at the show should be within the same style as the work in the booth picture, not the exact same artwork you might have photographed a year prior to the show when you did a booth picture.
Larry Berman
http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100
Regarding Cherry Creek show... (Again, I urge you to see if you can apply as an emerging artist ... if you qualify.)
But once you are accepted into the show, they are saying "okay, you showed us four images that we liked a lot. But if you are working in a slightly different style or format or even medium, you may bring some of that along."
They are not saying that the work at the show must be all the same, but that generally, if you painted kittens and dolphins using pieces of straw, they would not expect a series of black and white hand-tinted photos of old farm tractors. There should be a sense that the work you sell at the show has the same "feel" and look as what was submitted. Certainly you can have different subjects and sizes and techniques, but it should be in the same vein, so that the judges who accepted you aren't completely surprised by seeing a 180 turn.
Ok thank you! I understand better now. I am currently working with 4 different painting techniques so it should be easy to show a representation of that and take what I have when the time comes.
To get juried into a show like Cherry Creek, I would suggest showing them one style and growth within that style, not one each of four styles. That will never get you past the first round where they eliminate about 1200 artists.
Larry Berman
http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100
There is no such thing as shows that are the best for beginners. What you want are shows that are the best for everyone. The other questions you're asking are answered through trial and error, like everyone else does. You do a show and it either works or it doesn't. If it's a reasonable distance from home you might give it a second try.
Doing shows is starting a new business and it requires a certain amount of research and investment. Unfortunately the research might be limited to what kind of display equipment and what vehicle to carry it all in. But as for researching shows, unless you're networking with artists that have the exact same kind of work which appeals to the same audience, nothing anyone tells you can be counted on until you experience it yourself.
Larry Berman
http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100
Thank you both for your help and insights. And I've been doing Galleries for 3 years. For me that is the brutal lifestyle.
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