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This 30 year old festival has gone through many positive changes in the last 9 years. It moved from a donated ( very windswept space) to the current location approximately 8 years ago. It is a magnificent location in the Civic Center Park of La Quinta, Ca. .This park has incredible water elements with a lake and beautifully landscaped grounds with shade trees and Palms interspersed through the grassy manicured space inhabited by a  small local population of Ducks, Turtles and Koi.

The show is a commission show and the 20% scares off many Artists who feel this is too expensive.  Yes and No - How many shows cost a huge amount of up front money to participate in and then leave you with dismal sales which were actually a far higher cost? Here the staff truly does what it takes to bring in the QUALIFIED, ENTHUSIASTIC, EDUCATED ART BUYERS. Publicity precedes the event for several weeks including a major insert in the newspaper the preceding Sunday chock full of Photographs of a diverse group of incredibly interesting work which be at the show.The current weekend ( March 8 -11, 2012) which the show occurs on is the first weekend of the Major Tennis Tournament just down the road from the show with a shuttle running from the Tennis Tournament to the show so do both without the difficulty of having to repark which  can be difficult at the Tennis Tournament. This weekend also has historically the best weather in March as a bonus. Most of the residents here are very affluent as evidenced by the housing you see in the area and many are Snowbirds with  second homes here for the winter. This combination of factors results in event sales of approximately 2.6 million dollars to date for the 230 artists at the festival. This is an average of $11,304 per artist. Now as in any show there are people who for some reason or another do not sell well. Usually a small percentage who either don't interact well with the public, don't change their work with new interesting pieces, don't realize the importance of positive energy as a magnet for buyers, are new and don't have a booth display that is on a par with more experienced professional artists, don't take advantage of advertizing opportunities or any combination of the above. The people I talked with ranged between $10K and $48K with that occurring in both higher end and lower priced work. Please understand this is a sophisticated audience and even with lower priced work it must be  extremely creative and excellently executed. Denise Robertson ( a featured artist for the show) is a perfect example of this combination ( She had a great show). She is a mixed media/jewelry artist from New Mexico who designed the "GOT ART" pin used to create the embroidery model for a version of the Festival T Shirts.   I actually haven"t included the Sales for the Glass Featured Artist because it would signifgantly skew the results. 

This is a professional show designed for full time professional artist to sell exceptional work to an enthusiastic audience. There are no children's activities at this show. That is not its purpose. This is not a show for beginners or people new to Art Fairs. They just don't have the booth display and presence to compete here. One new artist to the show, a young sculptor who I helped mentor after meeting him during setup, found it challenging with this being his second show and even with beautiful stone carvings, his display and people skills for closing needed work. Unfortunately he sold nothing at the show, however He did have a great positive attitude and instead of racing home (easy to do), He went down down to El Paseo Drive( Gallery Row for the Desert) and went Gallery to Gallery and ended up with a prestigious Gallery taking his work for a successful trip. (He has primarily been a gallery artist to this point.)

SetUp is very easy as it occurs over 2 days with cargo golf carts staffed by volunteers available to move your work to your space. You can also contract available labor on a 1/2 hour or hourly basis to assist you for a fee.On Tuesday there were signigant winds so the show did everything possible to help secure work and opened earlier on Wednesday set up 7AM and allowed artists to stay as late as necessary on Wednesday and come in earlier Thursday (opening day) to allow ample set up time. To protect everyone Booth Canopies must be secured by 36" rebar driven into the ground approx. 30" and clamped to the poles securely as a precaution. They remove it at the end of the show for you.

Lunch is on a preorder basis ( Bristol Farms - upscale food store provides them) and delivered to each artist every day for free as well as waters and snacks and coffee in the AM.  The food at the show is not your typical show food - Ruth's Chris Steakhouse was making excellent steak sandwiches and The Fisherman's Grill ( another  excellent restaurant) was there with quality food as well. There were several rest areas for patrons serving quality wine, beers, water, ice creams etc. There is an Artist Awards Party Thursday evening with beer, wine and an incredible array of food from numerous Area High Quality restaurants and everyone seemed to leave very satisfied.

Admission for patrons is $12 and literally I don't think anyone could realistically see it all in one day. They sell a multi day pass for $15 however all you had to do was ask to upgrade on the way way and they would do that for the $3 so you could visit as often as you want. Online the multi day passes were $12. Valet parking is available and many people chose this option. They do charge for self parking, $7, I believe. Attendance was 25,000 which is total tickets sold with many of this 25,000 coming all 4 days(multi day pass). On Thursday opening there was a blocks long line waiting to get in and buy and this was even longer and more populated on Saturday as these are the 2 busiest days although as we saw it every day was exceptionally busy with patrons.

All sales are done on their sales forms with either a speedy  check out (you provide credit card for commission up front) or you go to accounting upon close of show and pay by check, cash or credit card then. Most artists seemed happy with sales.

Awards for the show are Best of Category and Awards of Merit with A Best of Show which went to Mona and Alex Szabados for their beautiful Enamelled High Karat Gold Jewelry. The jurors for these awards engage the artist and very enthusiastic and enjoyable compared to many shows. This is a highly competitive juried art show with applications on Zapp. There are 5 different qualified jurors for entry for each category. Usually this is 3 Artists and 2 others ( Gallery Owners, Educators or Museum directors or other consummate Professionals) for each category. This show is for Working Artists who personally produce the work for sale, not production studios or factory operations. The artists on the jury help to keep this show a level playing field of working professional artists with incredibly diverse , highly skilled execution and beautiful presentation. The photos of your work need to be very high quality, cohesive body of work as it doesn't matter how great you think your work is , it is HOW IT COMPARES TO THE OTHER HIGHLY PROFESSIONAL ENTRIES. Most Important, I cannot overly stress how important your booth shot is. It needs to be as much a replication of a gallery experience as possible. Extra attention on this will result in better sales everywhere. A white canopy with tables is not going to cut it. You are in competition with everyone else's booth display and many are quite extraordinarily beautiful. The Flea market look isn't cutting it. ?? Would you like to be next to this booth is a question asked of jurors??

More Photos of the site are coming later.