Last weekend, I participated in my first outdoor art fair (I have, before, only participated in the inside, small art fair at my church in Madison, WI, First Unitarian Society, called Art in the Wright Place). It was an experience. Before hand, I had purchased a brand new Trimline canopy with mesh walls, French door--the whole shooting match. It arrived a couple of weeks ago with a shipping note indicating altogether it weighed around 200 pounds. My wife and practiced assembling it by watching a video they supplied. We would watch one step, turn off the video, go outside and complete that step. Then we returned for the next step until we had the whole thing up.
Also, before, the fair, I printed many new pictures (I am a photographer--www.photographybyjohnwoods.com). I got them matted, purchased frames and glass, and did that as well. I also purchased some new canvas prints of my work. I also created sets of note cards of my pictures. My work, by the way, is somewhat eclectic, with a lot of pictures from Europe as well as Wisconsin and other places we have traveled to. The night before the fair, which was last Saturday, August 10, 2013, we set up our booth. Though my vehicle for doing is a Prius, I got it all the back of the car, with the backseats down. The venue for the fair is a small town south of Madison on the Sugar River, and there is a park along with river, and that is where the fair took place. It is an attractive and tranquil place. It took us about 2-3 hours to do this as it was our first time and we were trying to figure out everything. We set our prices quite reasonably.
The next morning we arrived early, put up our pictures, organized the booth, and waited for customers, who started arriving a little after 9 AM. Paoli is in the midst of many farms with vast fields of corn. To make a long story short, we did not sell one framed piece nor any of the canvas pictures. We did sell most of our cards ($16 for 8) and we did sell some 11x14 ($30) and 16x20 double-matted prints ($60). At the end of the day, we had sold about $430 worth of stuff. I guess you could say I was disappointed. I thought we could do at least $1,000. However, this is a small fair, and the amount of people who came, while steady throughout the day, was probably around 1,500. In seeking to understand what was going on, we have attributed the small sales to both the number of people attending and the demographic, which I am not sure is taken with nice European prints.
Tomorrow we will participate in the Agora Art Fair in Fitchburg. We will take to heart the lessons we learned last week. We have even more cards. We have more matted but unframed prints. We will also have a good selection of framed works and some very nice canvas prints, including one 30x40 print of a restaurant on a bridge in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Provence. This fair is much better attended, and is situated in a town with many high-income residents. So I think the demographic will be more favorable to what we have. This fair has been well reviewed here in the past. I am hoping for better results, and I will continue to learn from this experience. I will give a report on my continuing adventures after the dust settles on this one.
