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  Kathleen Neff October 22, 2010 at 6:33pm

  I am SO sorry to hear this, Tahmi...It's hard enough to garner attendance for a first-time show but to destroy the hard work and investment of promoters and the attending artists is more than despicable. Who would benefit from misdirecting art show traffic?!
  
  I really think this show has a promising future if the artists can unite to back them. I like the time of year myself, and have wanted to be a part of it for several years.
  
  Kathleen Neff
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  Tahmi DeSchepper October 22, 2010 at 6:07pm

  I’ve done a number of Sue’s shows for the past 5-6 years, and the summer one has always been good to me. This show was also not quite what I had been expecting, but I did make enough money to consider doing it again next year. I did also have a local mailing list though from years of doing the summer show, and a number of people showed up because of my email invitations. Plus, I’m practically local (only 2 hour drive away!) so my expenses were pretty low for the show as well.
  
  But the lack of attendance on Sun might have had other reasons than the ones we usually think of. On Sat, I had a number of people stop in my booth to say that they had seen the signs on the main highway and decided to stop in, not realizing that there was a new festival in town that weekend. But there were no signs on Sun. Sometime on Sat night, someone stole all of the signage – even the large banners that she has used for years out at the fairgrounds to promote the show. She said she had over $1000 worth of banners and signs stolen. But that wasn’t all of it. Apparently, many of the missing signs had been placed in other areas, directing people down dead end cul-de-sacs, or generally just directing traffic away from the festival itself. Sue was really very discouraged when I spoke with her during tear down on Sun night. One might think kids might be to blame – except that political signage escaped unscathed. I’ve never heard of this kind of vandalism for an art show!
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  MICHAEL ALAN STIPEK October 14, 2010 at 6:43pm

  The weather was warm, but not too humid; no bad weather on the horizon. The Stookey's did advertise the heck out of the show - I came a day early and saw flyers in shop windows in a lot of places, including one in the Fine Art Museum (a real treasure -visit it if you are ever in Des Moines) and there were ads on TV. Unfortunately, all of those million $$ houses in the area generated few people. I estimate total attendance for the two days at maybe 2,000. I didn't make expenses with my photography, but a lot of yard art and trinkets did get sold. The show profile was roughly 60% beginners/newbies and 40% professional (there were a number of blue topped popup tents). If you had a mailing list from the June or other of her shows, that helped. Bebacks went missing, so Sunday was even worse than Saturday. The layout was good, with room for lots of backstock behind almost every booth. Most of the artists were from Iowa. I can't recommend traveling far to this show unless you live a few hours away or you're on the way to another show. It was such an easy show to do, but the bottom line spanked me on the bottom and I'm going to sit this one out in the future.
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  Kathleen Neff October 14, 2010 at 3:23pm

  Glad to see YOUR take on this, too, Munks...I have followed the Stookey shows for more than a few years from my SW MO spot but haven't been free to apply to the other shows. It won't be a problem for me to consider!
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  Kathleen Neff October 14, 2010 at 9:51am

  Thanks for the review, Mark. I appreciate all the points you covered and wish this one was one week later because I'd like to try for it myself next year. I think your plan to support again is also good. First time events need more than one year to make a real evaluation. The pluses on the part of the promoters speak greater to me...and make their other events of interest to me as well.
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  phillip hall October 12, 2010 at 3:13pm

  Good to see there are philanthropists among us.