Gig Harbor is a charming small town on the west side of the Tacoma Narrows bridge that connects the Kitsap Peninsula with Tacoma. It’s a town with some fairly wealthy people, lots of golf course homes and while the town of Gig Harbor only has about 7500 residents, there are several thousand in the outlying areas who use Gig Harbor as their main shopping destination. Gig Harbor and the surrounding area also attracts a lot of retirees and is influenced by tourists in the summer. The Summer Art festival has historically been a good show for us, this was our 5th year at the show and in the past 4 years it has been in the top 5 shows we’ve done each year. This is the same weekend as 2 “big” Pacific NW show, the Salem Art festival and the Sequim Lavendar Festival, both of which we’ve been waitlisted for and have found this to be a good alternative show when we don’t get called off the waitlist.
Booth fee is relatively low for a show in this region, $260 for a corner booth this year and the rates just went up this year. So, from a profit perspective it’s been a good, steady show for us and we love the fact that it is a 2 day vs. 3 day show, 25 minutes from home when it’s not rush hour traffic. Hours are very reasonable, 10-6 on Saturday, 10-5 on Sunday, which again is unusual as so many of the summer shows in this region stay open until 7, 8 or even 9 PM. The show takes place on one long street, Judson Street with a few booths in the parking lot leading up to the food area. Judson Street has to be one of the most unlevel streets we’ve ever done a show on, be prepared with shims, many of them. If you are on the north side of the street be prepared that you may not be able to sit in your chair without feeling like you are in the danger of tipping over backwards.
This show underwent a change in directors a couple of years ago and it was barely noticeable other than the fact that the jury process became a little more automated and electronic submissions were now accepted. I also think the new Directors are a little more visible during the show than the old director, even heard Christy singing “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow”! They’ve also made a change to the Friday night load in process that other artists told me was a huge improvement. They had set times for artists on each side of the street to load in which sounds like it really eased the old traffic congestion. When we first started doing this show we had been warned about a horrible load in so elected to load in on Saturday mornings which has always been very simple, until this year, more on that later. Everyone we talked to who loaded in Friday night said it was easy, the hardest part was dealing with all the traffic trying to escape Seattle/Tacoma for the weekend and the normal Friday night traffic jams we experience all summer long in this region. They provide donuts and hot coffee for the artists in the mornings, volunteers are pretty easy to find in the bright yellow shirts and were fairly visible throughout the day, booth sitters are available upon request.
We live in the Puget Sound region, we are very used to doing shows in the rain, but NOT in July. We’ve been doing fine art shows for 5 years and I don’t remember ever having a July show where it rained, or if it rained, it was very short lived. Every other month of the year, yes, we’ve had rain at shows, but not in July, this is normally our “summer month”. Not to say we can’t have some nice weekends in May, June, August or September, but historically July is our best month up here for sunshine. NOT in 2011, we had 3 days of summer around the 4th of July weekend and then the rain came back. Since then rain has been off and on, and this weekend was a wet, miserable weather pattern that felt like May instead of July.
So that being said, the weekend turned out to be a washout, all week they’ve been forecasting a soggy Saturday with better weather on Sunday so we were a little concerned about rain at a summer show and what that might do to the normal crowds at this show.
We still decided to load in Saturday morning due to the traffic from our house to the show site, we knew it would take us at least 1 ½ hours to get to the show and just didn’t want to deal with that. Saturday morning we drove there in the rain, got to our spot and found that another artist was not following directions from the show staff and caused a bit of an issue with where we could park to unload. She claimed she couldn’t carry her stuff very far and didn’t bring her hand truck. A bit frustrating, especially when we pointed out that her issues were going to cause us more difficulty in just unloading our truck and she quite frankly said that was our problem, she was there first and because she was a single woman she shouldn’t be expected to carry anything very far. Needless to say, that caused me to be a bit grumpy. She did apologize later for her words, but she also then proceeded to set her booth up about a foot out further in the walkway due to the “river” running behind her booth on that side. Other artists tried to tell her to move her booth back, she refused and the show director was not around at the time. Meanwhile, we were on the side of the street that didn’t have a “river” but we did have quite the pond from the curb to about 2 feet into our booth. However, we set up where we were supposed to because we weren’t wanting to annoy the artists on our side of the street. What a start! We were both soaked by the time we were unloaded and the tent was set up. My hat came out and stayed on all day, the hair style was too far gone to even attempt a “normal” look, good thing I had a new “artsy” looking hat from one of my favorite fiber artists!
Saturday morning crowds were almost non-existent due to the rain. About 11:30 the rain stopped for a while and between 11:30 and 3:00 the crowd started building, there were a couple of times when it was starting to resemble the crowds & sales we are used to seeing at this show and then around 3:00 a squall moved through, very gusty winds, hard rain, etc. The drenching was short lived but the crowd just seemed to die after that. Almost all of our Saturday sales were to repeat customers and we finished the day with our lowest ever Saturday sales for this show, 30-40% lower than any other Saturday we’ve had here in the past. About 5:30 it quit raining, show closed at 6:00 and as we left Gig Harbor, crossed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge we found ourselves in sunshine for the rest of the drive home. Gave us hope that Sunday might be a little better.
We did have one concern driving home Saturday and that was due to the large number of booths that either seemed to have no weights or very inadequate weights (10 LBS or less on each corner). We expressed our concern to the show director and as booths were being closed down, show volunteers were making the rounds, checking on booth weights. It didn’t make any sense to us, doing a show in a coastal town and not having adequate weights. One artist we know, with good weights, was between 2 booths without any weights. At one point I saw the pottery booth beside her being held down by 2 volunteers while the artist made a trip to the hardware store in the parking lot beside the show. Some of the artists showed a real lack of common sense and we left there a little concerned that we could find someone else’s booth in our space Sunday morning if another squall came through overnight. Luckily that didn’t happen.
Sunday morning was cloudy, but no rain when we arrived. We had just got the tent opened, jewelry out, set up the tripod to try again to take a new booth shot when the sprinkles started. Sunday turned out to be mostly wet with drizzle, mist, rain, showers, (only in the Puget Sound do you hear weather forecasters with so many different names for rain), a few breaks between the moisture and then it would start again. Not much wind, but enough moisture to keep the crowds consistently small. Just a few sales on Sunday and lots to time to visit with artist friends. Overall, our worst ever Gig Harbor Summer Art Fest due to the weather and lack of attendance that resulted. This still is a show we’ll continue to do unless we finally get accepted into one of the big shows in the region this weekend.
One positive note out of all of this, we may have picked up a new gallery to add to our list of galleries carrying our work. The Gallery Director invited us to join their gallery in one of the main tourist towns on the Kitsap Peninsula, we need to do a little more research and explained that due to 5 more shows in a row, we wouldn’t have any inventory for them until September and she was happy to have us consider their option. Hopefully this is our “silver cloud” for this weekend’s washout in Gig Harbor!
Thanks Ruth, that was a great review. Sorry the weather didn't cooperate.
The weather is not helping with attendance, which is already down because of the economy. Attendance was way down at Edmonds in June and also Art by the Bay on Camano Island last weekend. Whew, I'll be glad to see better weather. I hope it will get better for Bellevue, we're certainly due!
I agree that we're definitely due some better weather, wouldn't you just know it that the sun has made a partial appearance today, 24 hours behind schedule. I'm hoping for this next weekend when we're on the pier in Port Angeles for Arts in Action. I've done shows on piers before when it's rainy and chilly and standing there with the water below you makes it even worse. One way or another we (Dale and I) are having a "real" summer. We're skipping Bellevue this year to head east for 4 back to back shows in Eastern WA / Northern ID. Can't wait to see the sun!!!
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Thanks Ruth, that was a great review. Sorry the weather didn't cooperate.
The weather is not helping with attendance, which is already down because of the economy. Attendance was way down at Edmonds in June and also Art by the Bay on Camano Island last weekend. Whew, I'll be glad to see better weather. I hope it will get better for Bellevue, we're certainly due!