Well, I just got back from the beach and read all the wonderful reviews of last weekend. Everybody has risen in their writing to incredibly new levels. I can't blame paucity of sales on gnats, lovebugs or tornado damage, wish I could, but here's my report.
First weekend of May, the fragrance of jasmine weighs heavily in the air, pirates are everywhere whirling their swords and beads, the smell of cooking shrimp permeates your inner cores, the crowds come roaring and jabbering wildly down centre street--yep, its Shrimpfest time in Fernandina Beach.
To give you a little background, Fernandina Beach (hereafter known as FB) is the first town in Florida on the ocean when you cross the St. Mary River south of Georgia.
History is everywhere in this town. Old antebellum mansions are as common as horsehoe crabs on the beach. They have a charming historical district downtown and run the show six blocks down Centre Street with additional booths, some antiques, others B/S, down side streets. Probably close to 350-plus booths.
No shortage of crowds, they come by the thousands for the three-dollar strawberry fruit smoothies (the stand next to me closed out early on Sunday, they used more than four-thousand pounds of ice and sold out on smoothies), they come for the shrimp-pies, heck they come for anything that has a resemblance to a shrimp including plastic ones on a stick. They come to drink copious amounts of beer, they leave after-effects around most visibly. They come for the Friday night fireworks which happen when many of us are still setting up. Some even come to buy original art, and not so original art.
I have done this show for more than 20 years. Some years it is real winner, other years like this, it is not so great. I made money, but it was way off the mark.
Part of the charm of this show is because I stay with a number of other good artists at Aileen Moore's historic house which is two blocks from the show. Aileen puts up with all of us, very gracefully, puts on a great feed on Saturday night with most of us contributing something to the cause. I can set up my booth stash my van across the street from it for the whole show, have "Position A" for teardown (Someday we will talk about the importance of "Position A", but not now) and stumble home to her house two blocks away. It doesn't get any easier than that.
You are talking northern limits of Jacksonville, utter-southern limits of South Georgia here which spells for sales in art--very,very traditional, mostly conservative picks of art. Hey that is what sells best here. They love to get you down on the price if they can.
The committee is the local Art Association, very parochial, which means they don't get out and about to check out how other shows are run. You do it their way or the highway. Some years, long-standing exhibitors find themselves stuck on the side-streets between B/S and dubious antigue dealers. Reason being, if you don't get a high enough jury score than you lose your Centre Street position, and it is off to the netherlands.
This year they had one exhibitor on the sides who was selling B/S of a surfboard with the words "Margaritiaville" and some funny saying on it for $21. He didn't make it. He supposedly sold more than $15K of it on Saturday alone. Artists complained (yeah, they didn't know which warehouse where they could pick up some of those boards) about the guy. The committee came and basically said, "Naughty, naughty, don't be selling those anymore." Rebuffed, he put them away for a while and then continued selling to his litlle old heart's content. What ya gonna do?
So that is some of the buying atmosphere you have to contend with.
For the most part, spaces are generous for stock storage and display. You can pull right up in front of your booth for setup and teardown. They have booth-sitters, nice awards (I got second in photo and RC Fulwiler got third) and even some free food for the artists.
It seemed that the crowds were down this year, sales were off by 40 per cent for a lot of us. There were still lots of success stories. Serious money was being made, just not a lot of it was going around like years past.
I won't give up on this show, especially since I have a reinvite because of the award, but if it continues to down-spiral I may look for other pastures--but it is hard to give up on Aileen's place and the good times with old friends who come there. It is a reunion. It is one of the many beloved perks of this business, being able to reconnect with artist friends over decades of experience. Oh the stories we have to tell about each other. I seem to star prominently in many of them for better or worse.
That has always been why I have loved this business for more than 36 years, because of all the like-minded creative personalities I have met and shared good times with. No money could replace those times, and that is why I keep merrily plugging along at this biz.
Extra little high today. Got my acceptance to Lexington, which just about sets my summer. Now, if I could get either AB&E or the Plaza, I would be in hog heaven.
No show this coming weekend, but then I go next for Artisphere in Greeneville SC. You will get a full report about it. Only 125 invited artists--it is a good feed and an extremely great opportunity to make mucho moola at. Aloha, Nels.
