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Suwanee day 2011 ( Suwanee Ga.) was the best year yet. This was my third year, and well worth it.

It a pain to get in & out, because you can not drive to your spot & unload. you have to be loaded onto these trailers being towed by these ATVs, and they take you to our spot. But they have tons of wonderful volunteers that make it go smoothly and quick. after the show you do the same procedure in reverse, except 150 artist are all trying to get out the same time. with a little patience you get out just fine. again they have tons of help. back to the show, it's on this huge park on the corner of two main streets. The festival is super well organized. Nice motor coaches bring customer from 3 off site parking. 

People come to shop, I think everyone around me did well. I have no idea how many people came buy, except it seemed non stop that people were in my booth.

When I applied for this show, I was looking for something close to the OKC 6-day show.  The Book & Art fair is held every year on Mother's Day weekend at the Century II exhibit hall in Wichita, Kansas as a fundraiser for the local art museum.  As the date of the show approached, my husband and I were faced with a couple of very unexpected and expensive events that had me questioning whether or not to do this one.  He talked me into going, but I chose to drive and set-up on the same day to keep my hotel costs down, something that I don't normally do.

Set-Up

Set-up is on Friday from 10 am 'til 8pm.  I arrived at 5pm and found easy parking at the loading dock.  I was able to unload quickly onto one of the provided flatbed carts and dolly my stuff to my booth space.  Set-up seemed to go smoothly for most people. Affordable electric ($35) was provided via an outlet on the floor right at your booth space, the floor was fairly level, and the aisles were wide.  I managed to finish setting up at 7:45, a respectable time when I'm by myself.

The artist's parking was an easy one block walk from Century II.  Because of my late arrival I didn't need to move my car to the artist's parking lot on Friday, just move it from the the dock space to another "loading" space.   Saturady and Sunday that short walk was much appreciated in the 100 degree heat.

The Show

The show opened Saturday morning at 10am, and there was a line of shoppers at the door.  Some of these folks went straight for the booths, others went right upstairs for the used book sale.  By 2pm the crowd had thinned out to a mere trickle and pretty much remained that way until the 6pm closing time.  Bargain shoppers abounded in the afternoon crowd, drwan in by the book sale.  The artists had plenty of time to walk around and visit in the afternoon.  I met many first-timers like myself, and one long-timer.  Several of the artists had been in OKC like myself.  All of the first-timers expressed that it would be nice to just make the booth fee for this one($200).

Sunday brought an 11am start time, and shoppers were once again lined up at the door.  Most folks managed to make early sales, but by 2 o'clock the crowd had shifted again.  The recycle metal worker across from me managed to keep the sales up for another hour or so, but most of the buying energy was gone.  At 3pm, an announcement was mad that all of the used books were on sale for $3 per paper grocery bag full, and that sucked some of the shoppers up to the balcony to look for bargains.  Several of the artists started a slow tear-down at 4:30 in preparation for the 5pm show close.  Those I spoke to didn't have great sales on either day and were gald when the show was over. 

Load Out

In anticipation of the forthcoming chaos of folks trying to leave a not-so-great show in a hurry, I brought in my own handtruck and packing materials when I arrived Sunday morning.  The flatbed carts provided by the site were in short supply at teardown and I was gald to have a place to stack my ProPanels off of the floor.  Everything was orderly and quick, and the hall was fairly empty when I departed at 6:30.

My Review

For some reason this show was very heavy on photography and jewelry.  The jewelry I get - Mother's Day and shiny, 3-D things to touch.  But photo?  I'm a photographer and this was totally not my crowd.  My stuff is higher-end, monochromatic, historic process work and this was a lower-end, 3-D, bargain-hunting crowd.  Unfortunately this show doesn't really have a website, and you're only given a list of participating artists at check-in (without a notation of medium), so reasearch can't be done prior to application or acceptance to see if your work is a good fit.  My hopes were that being sponsored by the local art museum the quality might be a little higher.

In terms of sales, under $100 seemed to be the hot price point.  A nearby jeweler sold a piece well above that mark but had give a significant discount just to make the sale.  In terms of 2-D, the hot item seemed to be the "print-in-a-bag" - no mat, just a flat print dropped in a clearbag.  Even notecards were a hard sell at this show.

In the past this show was held in conjunction with RiverFest (now held in June), which apparently brought in bigger crowds on Saturday.  This was the first year the the Book and Art show was on its own and despite a good advertising campaign the shoppers just weren't there.  And this is first and foremost a used book sale.  The art fair feels like a sideline - a few boothsitters, cookies at check-in, but that's it.  Everyone was very nice, but that doesn't put gas in the car to get you home.  If you live close by and need a filler show, this could be OK if you have lots of stuff in the $30 - $50 range.

I am painting my studio floor so my lovely outdoor studio is out of commission until the paint dries.  What Framer Dude and I had anticipated to be a 36 hour project looks like it may be turning into a nightmare, and I am facing the next week possibly painting at my dining room table where the light sucks.  I have a commission on my easel mocking me next to its ersatz place next to the TV.

Home improvements rarely ever go as scheduled.  What should have been an easy DIY task has already led me to an aggravated call to Valspar, the possibility now of grinding up the two coats of Porch and Floor paint we've applied, and another several days painting in the dining room, and eating over the sink (well, in front of the TV)

Grumpy, grumpy, grumpy.  So what's y'all's beefs today? 

Re: Palm Springs show. I also did one of the three "Palm Springs" shows, the one in February which was billed as the "Classic" suggesting that it has been around for a while and is well received and sought after. Not so, Although Amado Pena (a well known artist in the southwest) was at the show as a favor to the show promoter the show did not deliver. First, it was not IN Palm Springs but rather in or on the border with Cathedral City near the corner with the Palm Springs Airport. The "venue" was an old drive-in theatre that had been paved over and was variously used as a flea market at times and before we (the artists) arrived was just being cleaned up from the Circus and camel poop which was supposed to have been gone by Tuesday, this being Thursday, we had to wait for them to haul out the Semi's. The show staff, as previously reported in another Blog post, were very gracious and tried to be helpful for various reasons. Thursday night it rained as well as Friday night so there was some standing water on the festival grounds. Brooms came out and the water was swept from the tents to other regions. (As an aside, one artist with beautiful glass pieces had her plastic covered cardboard pedestals out over night and when they put their work back out the next morning...leaning towers and broken glass, it was heartbreaking for her and to see it as well.) the staff quickly helped out with the cleanup. Second, although the show was well advertised in several venues, we found out later, when someone we had met at our hotel tried to find us he was directed to another show that WAS happening in downtown Palm Springs! Obviously, this other show having been well established for many years by another promoter on the very same Presidents Day Weekend. What were they thinking? Artists do talk and there were various rumors about the clash. The show promoter said that this other show had, at the last minute, rescheduled for the President's weekend. Who to believe? Out of curiosity we went downtown to try to catch this other "rogue" show, it had closed an hour earlier but there were still some artists hanging around that we talked to. The most gracious of the two, a ceramic artist, said that this Downtown show had been around for a long time and that the promoter was very easy to get along with, etc., etc. and that we should look into it. Judging from some other written reviews I've read about it, I'm not so sure...but that is another story. Third, visitation?  The show ran from Friday-Sunday, who does a holiday weekend show and begins it on a Friday when the holiday goes into Monday? The "crowds" did not show up on Friday, okay, that can be written off as a work day...the crowds did not show up en masse on Saturday or Sunday...by the end of it I was ready to have T-shirts made up with "I survived the Palm Springs "Classic"" and sell them to the other artists, I could've cleaned up, or at least made more than the sales from art that I was expecting! At least one "artist" (another story) left by the end of Friday, goodby! The rest of us stuck it out till the bitter end as our values suggest "you put your money down, you takes your chances".

The set up for the show really was well considered. As the space was big the tents were in quads so everyone had a corner booth for no extra money! Plenty of nearby parking. For the most part the artists chosen for the show were of really good quality so it wasn't as if there were just "rubber reptiles" there ( my euphemism for a really bad show). Although I could count 35 empty spaces which gave the place a feeling of an art show ghost town. A few were reportedly held hostage by a big snow storm in Tahoe. The rest I suspect had participated in the other two shows and cut their losses. There was plenty of water and snacks all weekend long, for the most part the weather cooperated, they did the right things but might reconsider where and when they have their shows. All in all, an experience I will remember but unfortunately not for the best of reasons, except for maybe the beauty of the snow topping the nearby mountains Saturday morning!