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Columbus is my second art fair of the Spring season after returning from a tough Florida string of seven winter shows. My first show this spring was in East lansing. Both East Lansing and Columbus have been moderately successful for me, both grossing more for me than they did last year. This trend is encouraging, and I'm hoping it continues.

This show moved this year to its original location on the riverfront and from my perspective its a good move. There has been a lot of trepidation among artists about locating booths on the two bridges over the river, and rightly so. But, even though we are certainly more vulnerable to the wind on these bridges, the setting is dramatic and beautiful. The crowds love this location and they came out in droves to support this long-running show. I was on the Rich Street Bridge, which, I was told, had not even been open to vehicle traffic yet. Construction on the bridge was finished the day before the art fair opened.

Setup was on Thursday, and it seemed to go well with setup times staggered to avoid congestion. Friday was cold and rainy, and, as a result, crowds were meager. Fridays shows for me are seldom worthwhile, and this one was no exception. I was able to keep dry and warm with multiple layers as I watched the occasional person wander by.

Saturday was sunny and much warmer, but windy with gusts up to about 25mph. I heard of one tent on the Rich Street Bridge that blew over, but word-of-mouth was that no artwork was damaged. Sunday was also warm, and windy, but the wind didn't keep the crowds away. both days were busy, busy, busy. The people of Columbus certainly support their art fair... at least with their attendance.

From my limited perspective of the artists around me, the crowd was buying low-priced items. They seemed to admire, but take a pass at high-priced original paintings. I'm a 2-D artist and I'm curious about how 3-D artists did at this show. Two painters next to me were very disappointed in sales. I'm a digital artist, selling limited edition prints, and I seemed to have a price point this crowd was looking for. I grossed $3234 with 44 sales averaging $73.50 per sale. My biggest sale was $200. My smallest sale was $20. I have a feeling low priced items were the rule at this show with a lot of small sales at other artists booths as well. In fact, I use Square for processing credit cards as do many other artists these days.  I had trouble swiping cards on Saturday... maybe because of such a large volume of sales. I had to write down the credit card numbers and process those sales after hours in the evening.  

Hours at this show are long. Friday and Saturday hours were 11:30-10pm. Sunday was 11:30-6pm. Lights in your booth are a must for the evening hours but the show provides plentiful and safe electricity in big metal plug-in boxes spaced conveniently behind the booths. There was plenty of storage space behind booths as well. I was flying solo for this show, so I didn't get a chance to walk around much and see the artist's lounge of the other exhibitors. One odd thing though. The organizers did not have coffee in the artist's lounge on Friday or Saturday. I guess there was such an uproar from the artists, that they broke down and supplied coffee on Sunday morning.