Still recovering from 8 days in Oklahoma City. This has always been a good show for me, and this year I was the poster artist. I had a good spot in the show, and it always gets good crowds.
A couple things were different this year, mostly because of construction beginning on Hudson Street, where the show has been held for years. The print tent was no longer, and we were able to sell prints in our own booths. While I always found the print tent an oddity, I actually sold more prints there than in my own booth. Go figure.
I did well. Not as well as other years, but the weather was strange. It wasn't really bad, but the weather people made it sound as if it was.
We had a great opening day, and it was my best day for sales. It is a long day - 14 hours, but it was a good one. The next day it rained all day. The following day it didn't, but it looked like it was going to rain all day. Friday, historically a great sales day, the weather prognosticators delivered doom and destruction forecasts, so people stayed away. Saturday was crazy busy, and Sunday pretty respectable.
This show isn't like any others. The festival has its own tents and you get a quarter slice of one. It includes hanging walls, so you only have to bring your work if you want. Most of us bring more. You need lights. They provide 2. I have a light system now and used all of it. The show is open until 9 every night except Sunday.
You do not need a Square or anything else: the show handles all sales and takes 20%.
Even so, most of us do quite well here. My buddy Jill Grau Tortorella and I have been neighbors for 3 years. We weren't jumping up and down, but we also didn't wish we'd skipped it.
Load in and load out is fairly straightforward, because there are only 144 people and no one is setting up tents. Also, you have two full days to choose from for set up and if you can, choose Sunday.
The quality of the artists is quite good. There is a system for requalifying which seems to involve how many years you have been there, so there are some issues with that, except for the local artists. Most people with a wide range of prices did fine. Some with only high priced original work, not so much.
Again, the biggest issue for most people is the duration of the show. They get out the people, and many of them have money.
Next year the event is moving because of the aforementioned construction, and no one really knows how that will affect attendance.
