Blog

Last weekend's Kimball Arts Festival was visited by thieves who came in the night and burglarized several tents. 

Police say sometime between 1am and 6am Sunday a person, or group of people, burglarized seven booths. Two of the items stolen were hand-carved wooden chairs valued at $11,000. 
"I found out about it as I was walking down the street this morning 39 back to my booth someone had some chairs stolen," said Ron Benoit of Woodensound Fine Woodworking.

They weren't Benoit's chairs, but the artist in the booth next to his. Along with the two chairs, several art pieces and a handmade jacket were stolen. A sculpture was also vandalized.

This is a long running and highly respected festival.

Learn more here: http://www.good4utah.com/news/top-stories/over-20k-in-art-stolen-from-park-city-festival#.V7NuIkzpJzQ.facebook

What precautions do you take to prevent this from happening to you?

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/06/21/thieves-hit-gold-coast-art-fair-tents-overnight/

My husband and i have been doing art fairs for 4 years now, and always try to be carefully strategic as to where to put our check out counter and cash area to ensure it is accessible only to us.  And until yesterday it was a great strategy.  Neither of us are certain how, but believe that it was toward the last minutes of the show that someone got in and took all of our $20 bills from below the till.  i am certain this was while i was distracted to the front of the tent by one customer, and my husband was pulling the vehicle up behind to begin the load out.  I shared our story with some of my friends who are fellow artists, and have had a variety of responses for how they handle cash.  The majority have indicated either an apron, fanny pack or some sort of bag that fits snug to the body.  I would love to hear your thoughts on how you handle cash.  I feel like such an idiot that i must have left up my guard for just a moment or two.  The only other explanation is that my neighbor has light fingers... because i expected her to be at the back of her booth, and thought nothing of seeing her close by.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2 PM ET

Everything an Artist Needs to Know about Insurance - sponsored by ACTinspro.com

Art fairs can be a dangerous business fraught with problems of high winds, theft, traveling with artwork, liability issues, damages to equipment and accidents of all kinds. 

Valerie Bjarnson, Director of Online Programs for Veracity Insurance Solutions whose innovative insurance programs have made reasonably priced insurance available to artists, joins Connie Mettler to discuss why an artist needs liability insurance.

We'll discuss

• liability issues
• bodily injury and property damage
• weather related losses
• theft and the best way insurance can keep protect you and your livelihood

whether you only do a few shows a year or are a full time art fair traveler participating in more shows than you can remember. More shows are requiring artists to show proof of liability insurance. Learn how to satisfy this requirement.

Get definitive answers for all your insurance questions and learn more: www.ACTinspro.com.

Do you have questions about insurance or stories to share about your insurance? Put them in the comments and I'll be sure to include them in the discussion. We'll take phone calls in the last half hour call in: 805-243-1338. 

Listen here: www.ArtFairRadio.com

 Late night web-surfing is a bad habit of mine-I start looking at stuff around 9:45 pm, and the next thing I know it's after 2 am and I've signed up for membership in The Original Twinkie Fanciers Society! This past summer I found myself applying to the Funky Ferndale Art Show in Ferndale, Michigan, at five minutes to midnight just because it was The Deadline. Actually my thinking ran along the lines of "It sounds good, my art is funky, and I can stay at Mom's house to keep costs down." Bam! The application was sent!

Only later did I remember that I had applied for another show The Same Weekend! Argh! No problem, I figured, I wouldn't be accepted to Ferndale anyway. Wrong!! I was accepted. I talked it over with my business partner, and we came up with a plan that allowed us, through the abuse and coercion of one husband and one daughter, to be in both places. Hooray!

Now you know this not going to turn out well, right? Right. Funky Ferndale happens on the west side of Woodward Avenue on Nine Mile Road. I will say that Ferndale has metamorphosed since the misspent days of my youth and is now a pretty cool place with some great pizza and a library with a green roof (green with vegetation, no less!). The downside of this art fair is that on the east side of Woodward on Nine Mile Road the DIY Detroit Festival is running concurrently! Booo! DIY Detroit has, among other features, approximately one thousand beer tents, tens of dozens of crafters, at least two music stages, a sideshow, and . . . (wait for it) . . . .A Ferris Wheel! Yay! 

The Daughter and I persevered, and sold enough to buy a pizza, cover the booth costs, and bank a little bit, but the number of people who were Just Passing Through to get to DIY was depressing, and the number of drunks who were Just Passing Through to go home again was unpleasant. Then everything went to the dark side. 

Saturday night, as we began to pack up for the night, the Daughter discovered that someone Just Passing Through had reached under the back of the tent and purloined her bag and her laptop. I will leave the ensuing tumult and clamor to your imaginations, but I will say that the show management was most sympathetic as were the kindly officers of Ferndale 's Finest who came to take the report.

The next morning found us still susceptible to sudden outbursts of weeping, and that is when we were overwhelmed by the kindness of our fellow funky artists! On one side of our booth were Jason Thomas and Jennifer Teeter with their hysterically dark Cartoons For Total Strangers, who give the greatest hugs (Jason and Jennifer do the hugging, no hugs from the cartoons!), and on the other was another AFIer, Linda, who has great and funky paintings, prints, and jewelry. I cannot say enough about how welcome their sympathy, outrage, and support was to The Daughter and me! We finished the fair in reasonably good humor, although the sales were not responsible for much of that, and headed home to Ohio, sadder but wiser.

From this experience I have drawn several conclusions. First, don't let your guard down! Second, artists are really good people to have around you in a crisis. Third, don't apply for Funky Ferndale unless the DIY show's dates don't coincide with it. Fourth, never apply for a show five minutes before The Deadline!

As a footnote, and to end with a semblance of Joy and Rapture, the following week we got calls from two people up in Michigan. One had found The Daughter's laptop, the other had found her purse with all its contents intact! Good people do rule the universe after all!

The past few months I've become more aware of a disturbing trend that seems to be on the rise-breaking into artists' booths at night.  I'm dwelling on this now by the cozy light of a campfire in nowhere, Rhode Island and a cold one in hand, and I'm...puzzled? vicariously violated? utterly astounded? all of the above? -by the fact that people are desperate enough to steal from the starving.  OK, most of us here debunk the myth of the starving artist (I hope) but, let's face it, society in general does not view us as the movers and shakers.  Our work doesn't command that much on the resale market, if you can call it that.  So what are these lowlives looking for when they invade booths at night?

I was in Setauket, Long Island last weekend- a nice little village on the North Shore of stately historical registry homes, estates- your typical upper middle class neighborhood.  This was a show in its 46th year, no fly-by-night venue.  Out of all the cities I've been in over the past 3 months, this was the last place I would have expected to encounter such an egregious violation of one's hard work.  Hell, when I grew up here, we didn't lock our doors at night.  Call me naive, but I never thought of artwork as inherently stealable unless it's a Thomas Crowne Affair.  Let me clarify, I know I'm walking a thin line here.  I know jewelers who have been stalked and robbed at gunpoint, but what I'm talking about is non-precious metal/jewel art that can't be melted down or resold to a pawn shop.  My paintings really don't have much value to the average scumbag, and I'm ok with that.  I'm really disturbed that this happened in an upscale village to the extent that it did.

Many artists arrived Saturday morning to find that, at the very least, their booths had been violated and work had been moved around.  The worst was a painter who had $4000 worth of work stolen.  What was appalling was the show's response to her, which was to brush her off and refuse her request to pack up and leave.  Show security?  I didn't give it much thought before this show, but Framer Dude (who missed his calling as a detective or bounty hunter) has always done a late night walk through to test security and deemed this patrol as lacking, along with several others we have done.  I realize that shows have only a certain amount of dollars to divide up, and perhaps they too are guilty of the same naivety and complacency that I am-that art shows are not big on the hit list.  But this show's layout was a prankster's or a thief's field day- one older gent for security, a dark street, and a row of booths that twisted around through the woods, with a bar in the middle.

My point here is not to lament the evils of the world.  I'm not that much of a rube or a whiner.

I want to pass on a tip that may thwart would-be thieves- who are probably low tech and seeking easy, unsecured targets.  Framer Dude and I take out stock in zipties, also known as cable ties at Home Depot, for setting up the booth.  These have a multitude of uses and we discovered a new one when we sat down and thought about how to make the booth less accessible at night.  When we close the zippers down, we now use a zipties in the four corners and four side zippers, through the holes in the zipper toggles, and attach them to the legs and bottom poles.  I think most thieves are counting on easy access, quick in and out and won't waste the extra time or thought (if they have any after letting off their crackpipes) to tackle a booth that requires a pair of wire cutters to get into.  

Not a fail-safe, but at least it makes it a bit more difficult, rather than just unzippering the tent.  Of course, if they're crackheads, they might carry razor blades and slash their way through the sides, but I haven't thought of a way around that.  Perhaps I should leave my huge German shepherd in the booth at night?