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Good Morning AFI,

Well I finally applied to my first ever Art Festival, the Downtown Naples in March and just received the results.  A resounding (((DECLINE))).  I probably shouldn’t have expected to make it in on my first ever try, I guess that’s the forever hopeful in me.  It’s time for me to put my thinking cap on, and try to figure out what went wrong.  Which brings me to the discussion forum here.  Being an autodidact, it’s sometimes difficult for me to put myself out there and ask for advice.  I realize that by doing so I may incur the sometimes unwarranted opinions of a few select individuals, but I’ll have take those in stride.  Haha, we shall see.  After reading about some of you who apply to many art fairs every year, it’s apparent that even the seasoned art fair artists don’t make it into all the shows they apply for. Being that there are so many variables at every jury session, anything truly is possible. The fact that I’ve only applied to one show and been declined is not indicative of the quality of my application per se. One would need to apply to several shows and be declined to most/all of them to establish a pattern that could be recognized.  However,  I don’t care to sit back and wait for that to happen. I want to make it into a show.  If there is a flaw in my thinking, it needs to be brought to light now, so that I can make the necessary corrections. Here goes.

I am a tondo artist. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it means round/circular shaped art.  I create my own work from the ground up.  The tondi are oil on hand-stretched linen over hardwood backing.  I have a few images on my page if you are curious.  I’ve been painting oils for years, but a while back decided that I much preferred to paint circular shaped paintings.  It was about the same time period that I started thinking about avenues to sell my work.  I attended a local art fair and was pleasantly surprised at the welcoming atmosphere and the opportunity for sales. I decided that it would be worthwhile to pursue trying to sell some of my work at one or several of these festivals. Fast forwarding to this year I am eagerly anticipating making a few sales of my work. However, due to “budget constraints” I don’t have the ability to buy a trimline and a set of propanels, as much as I’d love to.  Except for the paintings themselves, everything that I do is on a dime.  I have a Caravan Canopy tent and I’ve rigged my own carpeted interior walls from within to support my work. I’ve tested it outside numerous times in varying levels of wind and haven’t any problems yet. ( I realize that over 25mph though, everyone is trouble.)

 I’ve set my prices in varying amounts depending on the size of the work, from $500-$2000. As of this moment, I don’t have a reproduction “Bin” or Giclee or anything similar due to the fact that I haven’t figured out how to print up circles and present those to a customer in an effective manner that they can take home and hang up.  I’m wondering if this may be a factor in whether I was declined.  Even though I’m not currently selling anything in the $5000-$10000 range, my presentation may have seemed a little top-heavy, or in my case mid-heavy, if there is such a thing.  I seem to recall walking this same festival earlier this year and seeing several artists with only medium to large paintings in the $4000+ range, who did not have giclees or prints to sell either.  Yet somehow they made it in. 

I hope that this may spark a discussion that folks can find and possibly learn about how to fix what is wrong with their presentation as well as myself, if they were running into the same problems.  Here is my booth image that I used for the jurying process. ( I ran a fine line between too sparse and too cluttered.) Some of the images are photoshopped from other work of mine, due to my not having enough on hand where the booth set up was located (blunder on my part). But I felt the presentation was clean and uncluttered. Perhaps a little too much so? I have a couple of interesting circular frames to put some of the paintings in but I don't have enough to frame all of them in the display. I think it was somewhere on here I read that it is better to frame all or nothing than to confuse people by only framing a handful of the artwork. Is there truth to that or is it a load of "hogwash?"

All ideas, thoughts, and opinions are welcome. Nels, whatever “meat” you have is welcome on this one.  Larry, you’re probably going to savage my booth image, so let’s get it over with. Like pulling off a bandaid.  Geoff, are Naples festivals looking for anything in particular that you can think of?