Hello all! My first festival is next month in Evergreen CO. I have plenty of art ready to go, but wonder about the best way to get the layout of each wall ahead of time so the actual setup goes smoothly. I know I'll be moving things around a lot to get the most cohesive and appealing layout. Do people use an app... if so, can you recommend one? Or do you lay the paintings out on the floor of your studio?
I was juried in as an "emerging artist" and the festival is providing the tent, so I cannot do a dry run (I have no tent.) Also, do you feel 2-3" in-between each painting is enough space for the booth not to look crowded?
I'd love to show up to the festival setup day with three printouts showing exactly where each painting should go. Thanks for any help!
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The OP is old but I do have a great tip I will share since there are newer comments.
I use a free app called gallery wall. You can put your wall and art dimensions in amd move it around. I will screenshot and crop each wall. Then I will overlay those images on photograph in Procreate and distort to fit.
And, Leslie, I did a blog post years ago about cool booth set ups. Take a look at this. It may be inspirational: https://www.artfairinsiders.com/profiles/blogs/how-do-you-like-this...
Have fun at Evergreen! and how lucky you are they are providing the booth.
I'm assuming you know how you are going to attach the paintings to the walls ...
I've done Evergreen, CO shows in the past. Just arrange your work how it looks nice to you. The crowd is not that sophisticated. If it's not up on your wall, it is not going to sell IMHO. Have fun and hope it doen't rain.
If you happen to have some grid wall panels, you can expand your interior wall space to = 34 linear feet of display area inside your booth. Up to 44 linear feet if you get a corner booth. I started by mapping out my layout on graph paper. Then I built/ made 2 side walls using conduit pipe with the corner brackets like they sell at flourish. I bought 15 yards of black trunk liner,, it's similar to carpet, but much easier to cut..I made two separate 10ft long " curtians" / wall.panels that just sleeve onto the pipe. This takes care of the 2 side walls. Then for the back wall, I used 3 sections of grid wall to form an L shape in the left corner of my booth. The corner will start 8ft deep into the booth, and extend 4ft from the left side towards the center with the short end of the L returning to the back wall. I left a 2 ft gap in the center of the back wall as a place for my chair. Then repeat same process in the right corner. Next, drape more of the trunk liner material over the grid wall and attach with medium size binder clips. Cut your trunk fabric 70- 74" tall by about 74" wide. This gives you enough fabric to account for the space of grid wall connectors because they add a bit to the width when panels are connected. Having the 2 separate L shape rooms in the back provide secret storage space for canopy curtains, dolly, or packaging materials. It takes 6 grid wall for the 2 L rooms. Then I used 5 more grid wall and created a skinny V shape in the center of front entry to booth. Fabric for this area was one 50" wide, and one 72" wide section of trunk liner. The trunk liner cost $250 for both side walls, plus the 3 separate rooms. They way I calculated display space is as follows, left wall 8ft deep plus a 4ft turn to.the right = 12 liner feet. Right wall is 8ft deep, plus the 4ft return to the left = another 12 ft. The skinny center V =10 more feet. Total 34 ft. With 5ft reducing to 4ft walkways on each side, and a 4ft gap between the V and your chair. If you get a corner booth then just add 10 more feet to the total =44 linear feet of display because the entire outside wall would be exposed. I use curtain hooks to hang my paintings in the areas that have the trunk liner over grid wall, and I use chain with S hooks to hang paintings over the side walls. The chains are attached to the canopy with simple shower hook clips from Walmart. The trunk liner is also available in lighter gray or medium gray. My paintings vary in size from 16x20 to 30x40 or 36x36, so this system works for larger heavier pieces, not just small light weight. For corner weights, fill 5 gallon bucket with water and use strong tie down straps from Harbour freight. Made my pride tags on computer and then laminated them. Use sewing pins with the large head to pin to trunk fabric. Looks very professional.. Sorry don't have any photos to show complete set up. Did a mock up in my garage and was loving the new look, forgot to take photos. For lighting I bought several dozen of the blue led flashlights at harbour freight and hang them from broom handles from dollar store that attach to canopy frame by drilling a hole on 1 end of handle, extend with a bit of chain, and the attach chain to handle with a zip tie, attach to canopy with zip tie. Hope these ideas help. It was a lot of work, but saves a $$s compared to flourish panels.
For right now, the old-fashioned way of using graph paper will do the trick. Use 8.5x11 graph paper turned horizontal, and use 1/4" grids with one inch=1 foot. Assume that your display area is 6'x10' with three panels available. That way each division is 3". Measure the pieces you plan to hang and cut a scale-sized piece of graph paper for each one. Move the paper pieces around to get a decent layout that feels open and not too cluttered. personally, I would use 6 to 9 inches separation between pieces, as you want them to breathe. If the grid paper is too daunting, do the layout on the floor with tape outlining the 6x10 space.
For myself, I would be tempted to scale everything in Photoshop elements with a photo of everthing scaled properly. Then I would start dragging and dropping onto a larger image of the wall space. The advantage of that is that once you were done, you could print off a copy of each wall to take with you to the show as reference for setup. It's a lotof work to do that but it sure would simplify things later. Good luck!
Thank you! The grid paper makes my head hurt, lol... I suspect the floor is going to be the ticket!