Mine is a little different from Lebens.
I just spent a hour and one half writing this and then lost it all before I could save it. That's life.
I am gonna give you pluses and minuses, you draw your own conclusions.
HERE ARE THE PLUSES:
Over 300,000 attend.
Held on a beautiful riverfront in downtown Columbus, OH. Well advertised.
Easy staggered setup, most can have their vehicles in front.
Three days to sell, Friday-Sunday.
If you have low-end price points, art/craft to sell, you can make a lot of moola.
They give you electricity.
Nice awards and breakfest
Nice break areas and restrooms.
The best Artist Market Director ever, Patty Matthews. She is available, she listens, she responds.
NOW THE DRAWBACKS, THERE ARE SOME SERIOUS ONES, MOST OF THEM WILL NEVER BE CORRECTED.
Overly long show hours. From before noon til 10 PM on both Friday and Saturday. That means you can eat dinner at 10:30 PM, yipee!
Most sales stopped at 6 pm or 8 at best. Both nites I did about $250 in sales after 6pm. Show needs to end earlier. The show will never do it, can you hear the concessionaires howl?
Trouble with show layout.
It runs across two bridges over WIDE SCIOTO RIVER, then along the river front on both sides. Then there are two dead-end spurs with a single rows of artists on them that go off this great circle that the herd follows.
Guess where I was? Second from the end of the show, or the beginning, depending on your direction of coming or going. People rush by ya to go see the show, forget sales. People on the spurs lost 40% of the crowds, yet paid the same high booth fee of $500.
Tried to tell overall Show Director, Scott Huntley, about this, but he doesn't want to hear it. He does not understand the concept of "show-flow" like we artists do. Anybody on a dead-end row knows what happens.
Booths on the bridges get blown all over, every which way by high winds. Good luck tying down tarps in the back, good luck trying to sit back there. It causes a lot of stress to the artist psyche.
Weather at Columbus will always be iffy. I have done the show more than 20 times since the 80's and can count on one hand when we had easy good weather. It is usually very warm and humid, or it is very windy and rainy. This year it rained most of Friday with chilling winds that went right thru you. It killed sales for most of us. I made a whopping $435 that day.
They tell ya you will have electricity and they tell ya you will have ample storage behind ALL BOOTHS. NOT!
If you are one of the lucky ones, say about every 14 booths, you get stuck with this giant metal cabinet which everybody plugs into for electric. It measures about 4-foot high, 18 inches wide, and three feet and a half wide. It doesn't move out of the way. It is right behind your booth. I hit the trifecta. I got the cabinet, I got a fire hydrant, and a metal sign post, all behind my booth. So much for ample booth storage. Curiously, nobody ahead of time at the show mentioned this situation about the boxes.
The show map is useless, it doesn't really show any booth configurations. Go to St. Louis Art Fair's site and look at how a professional show does a map layout.
Preshow communication with art show staff is very iffy. Forget about getting a return email or call from show coordinator Shana Scott. She doesn't return anything. Finally got a hold of Festival Director Scott Huntley right before show start. He was very helpful.
Show costs are dreadful for average return of sales. Realistically, it costs close to grand to do this show if you are traveling for eight hours or more. Some exhibitors did five figures or better there this year, they were the lucky ones. A number did in the $5K-$7K range, but most did under $4K like Leben. He was happy, I wasn't. It was my worst Columbus ever. Last year we could blame poor sales on the Sat. nite destructive storm. This year I will blame it on being on a dead-end spur.
It is mostly a low-end sales show. Not a lot of big sales going on. This is a very traditional crowd.. Good luck if you have contemporary work.
There, I will let you draw your own conclusions about this show. Personally, I think it is too big of an investment of time and money for the return, for the average exhibitor. We do not need to be there 28 long hours trying to sell to a beer-swilling crowd after 6pm. Guess what?, the show aint gonna change. They have their grand plan and tough luck if you don't buy into it.
NOW SOME DESERVED KUDOS TO THOSE WHO HELPED ME AND SAVED MY SHOW AND MADE LIFE QUITE BEARABLE UNDER TYING PHYSICAL CIRCUMSTANCES.
Just so you know, I have been diagnosed with a faulty heart valve which cause fluid backup into my lungs, feet, legs and a few places between my legs. I can't walk or lift anything. It is getting repaired. That said, show people helped me lot, I had booth helpers to set up and tear down. I made it thru, barely.
So Patty Matthews, the Artist Market Chairman, was a life-saving angel, I can never thank you enough. She is the best.
My setup angel Karen Holtkamp who came all the way from Cincinnatti with buddy "weatherman" Joe and completely setup and stocked my booth on Thursday in under three hours. They were true life-savers.
Kudos to Nicole Vanover, an emerging artist there, who was slated to help me tear down and pack up. Ended up, I did not need her, but she was there for the calling. Mahalo plenty--that is Hawaiian for "Thanks a lot."
My hat goes to artist Patty DeMaria who sent her son Tristan to help my wife Ellen Marshall set up and tear down her booth. Then he came over helped me pack up my booth on Sunday nite. We were out of there in two hours. Tristan you are a life-saver, and a quick learner.
Thanks to "Uncle Dick" Cunningham, stalwart South Florida photographer who came over to help on Sunday after packing his own cube truck. He killed them at the show, I am so happy for him.
Well, health prevents me from doing Hinsdale, just cancelled. I see the Pulmonary Specialist next Wednesday and get a diagnosis and a course of action. I am ready.
Let's hear your comments about Columbus. If I lose this post, I am going to shoot myself. No alcohol for two weeks now, cold turkey, it is no fun. Aloha, Nels.
Comments
Nels, I've been out of touch for awhile. How's it going now? I hope you are the way to a complete recovery.
Thanks Nels! It was a pleasure meeting you and Ellen, and I'm glad Tristan could help out! You are 100% right about the lousy positions on the "spurs," they almost seemed like they were not really part of the festival. Bad planning. I'd like to see the festival back on Civic Center Drive along the river, rather than across the bridges, or put the food vendors on the bridges and the artists along both sides of the river.
Nels, Good luck with your procedure. We all wish the best for you. Take care of yourself and get well.
Thanks for the honest and down to earth report, too.
Glad to hear you're going OK Nels and you survived the show. Bummer about the bad position, the weather and the beer swilling crowd though.
Nels, I'll miss you this weekend in Hinsdale. Hope you are feeling better and that the doctors get you fixed up real soon.
From what I have heard, the new director could care less about the art end of the festival and would probably prefer not to have artists except he probably likes the money received from app fees and booth fees. Just think, no artist booths on the bridges means he could hold a parade across them and feel like he is back in Pasadena. Those pesky artists, the nerve of them to complain after paying for the 'privilege' of appearing there. Roses, tulips, begonias and wheat grasses don't cause any problems.
The last time I did this show was 5 years ago too, and it's good to see a current report. I really had no idea this show had gone downhill so quickly. I had done really, really well there in 06 and 07, so I thought I would try it again. But I think I'm happy I was rejected this year. I know I'll be saving myself some jury fees next year!
Nels, best of luck with your repairs!!
Nels,
Good luck with your procedure, get back to us soon to let us know how you are doing. We'll all hoist a brew or glass to ya, while you recover!
Columbus used to be a great show for us. We stopped doing it 5 years ago. The last time we were there our sales were way down; we could not attract new customers and our collectors just stopped buying from us. It was not worth the long hours, drunks and bad weather. A friend of ours just told me she did great at the show...that is the only positive comment I have heard.
Nel's accurately sums up Columbus.
I would add that maybe the people responsible for the Columbus Art Fair should, in the interest of accuracy, delete "Art" from their name and just call it the Columbus Riverfront Beer Festival or something. I have done this show several times and it used to be possible to make great sales here in the mid price ranges. Those days are apparently gone.
This show is not about the art. It's about bringing 300k bodies down to the riverfront to celebrate Columbus by spending a bunch of money with the beer and food venders.
As an exhibitor in this show, you have a lot, and I mean A LOT, of time to sit around and think about things. The last time I was there I began to realize that our purpose as artists at the Columbus Art Fair was 1) to draw the hordes down to the riverfront for the Sponsors and the enrichment of the Beer and Food vendors and 2) to entertain the hordes , like exotics in an Art Zoo, again for the Sponsors and the enrichment of the Beer and Food vendors. We, in the Art Zoo, are there in the earnest hope that among the hordes there will be a few kindly art buyers who will toss some $$'s our way.
I'd like to suggest, again, that a conceptual change take place at mega shows like Columbus. That is, that the Artists in the Art Zoo should evolve from being Unpaid entertainment to being Paid entertainment. Put a gate on the Zoo, and charge admission. Pay the artists a percentage of admission for services rendered. Is this really such a radical idea? Or would Columbus just as soon have a low end flea market as their draw?
Get better soon Nels...we are wishing you a speedy recovery!
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