The art-Gypsy Train rolled into Madison, Indiana a few weekends back for the annual Madison Chautauqua Art Festival. My wife Deborah, fine artist painter, had been accepted to participate along with about 300 other hopeful, creative sorts.
Madison is a small, bucolic, southern Indiana town, nestled into the meandering, sweeping arm of the Ohio River, connected to Kentuckians south by one narrow bridge, surely over-creaking with a colorful history of customer transport.
Downtown offered neat, tree-lined square blocks of restored circa 1800 carriage houses, tidy two-stories with porches, and the occasional stately manor with tall columns. Professionals and retirees with money move “up”, literally, to the bluff-top-with-view, north of town.
What a spectacle was Saturday morn…Autumn leaves teased with color, jazz quartet live on the green, tight-white artist tents sprouted everywhere, multi-country cuisine smoke wafting to tempt all, and a bonus discovery…a winery and garden celebration just two blocks away on the rivers mighty banks (who’d thunk vineyards here).
Smiling, happy, townsfolk began streaming in to the Festival, pockets stuffed with money… strolling up and down the angled streets, searching the tents and artists for…
just…
the…
perfect…
Yard art.
My hat is off to Madison Chautauqua Art Festival for certainly obliterating any previously held national record for Yard Art Sales per Fair attendee.
Yup, a smokin’ 1 out of every 9 people were carrying some form of an inspired landscape creation (er…yard art.)
I’m pretty left-brained so I know how to conduct statistically significant studies, (which is the key, I learned that in college), cause you can’t make statements like this without hard data, so I got it.
At randomly selected moments, during the two days, I perched on my assigned and trusty black art stool, and, well…counted. I tallied people with “yard art in-hands” divided by all the passerby’s and got 1 out of 9. Pretty much every time. The copper stick yard art with a dragon-fly on the top was most popular, followed closely by the steely gray stick with a bird in a nest. Uh, that part is observational and not really statistical.
These findings led me to posit some conclusions/questions:
- There are more Yards in Madison, therefore, higher sales are to be expected.
- Yard Artists KNOW this is THE hotbed destination of the nation for yard art sales (like purple Elvis’ in Memphis, or Cherry Blossom water-colors in D.C.)
- Customers were speculating the cost of copper commodities would skyrocket in future years, perhaps tripling the value of said yard art, to say…$27.
Egads! Am I missing a huge untapped market for Art of Yard Art? Maybe acrylic-on-canvas paintings of copper dragonflies, providing customers four-season enjoyment of Yard Art In Living Room. No, too expensive. Better to try 8″ x 60″ birds-nest-on-a-pole Giclee Prints…you could stick them up all over the house! Kind of a skinny version of those giant Fathead.com wall graphics used for sports heroes.
Speaking of sports, I might add the results of a corollary study from our good river town. There IS NO statistical relation between Yard Art Customers and their favorite Sports Team. In fact, on a broader scale, the greater Madison Festival crowd displayed no primary or dominant relation to ANY sports team. They may know their Yard Art, but appear quite confused as to where to place home-team loyalties.
An in-depth study of the peoples choice of jerseys and hats and sweatshirts confirmed random and scattered quantities of the following: Louisville Cardinals, Cincinnati Bengals, Chicago Cubs, Tennessee Volunteers, Indianapolis Colts, Indiana Hoosiers, Pittsburgh Steelers, Green Bay Packers, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Cincinnati Reds, Kentucky Wildcats, and on and on. I could stretch and say the local high school loyals skewed just a tad higher with the ever-fashionable red, short-sleeved T of the Madison Cubs.
However, the most telling observation from the weekend in Madison is that the entire town went “On Sale”.
I found the Chautauqua Art Festival was really just the banner event, the cover if you will, for the Every One Sell Everything You Can Festival. And they did a bang up job.
There were: Yard sales, garage sales, porch sales, street sales, bake sales, farmers markets, auctions, and church socials. Scattered around town, just beyond the boundaries of The Art Festival, pockets of little unregistered, art tent cities huddled together to scavenge off wayward, unsuspecting customers.
Restaurants, normally not open for lunch, did so (come on, a cup of chicken noodle for $8). Chili and hot dogs were hawked from church lawns. A young man sold airplane propeller art from his porch (uh, real propellers, not paintings of propellers). Kettle corn on every corner, front yard tables stacked with apples and honey, an old lady sat alone in her driveway, pitching her framed sketches from a card table.
The whole town had the fever to sell the whole town.
Oh, and there was the real Chautauqua Art Festival…
…and we did have a ton of traffic coming through our tent…
…asking how to get past us to the sidewalk behind…so they could see the House For Sale By Owner, who in the spirit of the day had set up easels bearing huge, color posters of their remodeled interior and amenities…
…so they could sell it, and then buy a new house with a bluff-top-view, and a bigger yard…
…for more…art.
:)
Comments
OK, it's time for a little bit of a different perspective on this show. I've done it happily for 3 years now, and I've signed up again for next year. I don't sell yard art. Never have, never will.
The show is beautifully managed, and the volunteers are some of the best you'll ever find. The town is lovely, and they are most welcoming to the artists.
The rain on Saturday was pretty bad, but somehow I managed to have the best single day of sales I've ever had. I sell pottery, but not "dishes." It's more artistic than that. But having been there a few times, I have kind of figured out what I can make that sells well, and I stock up on it for this show. This plan worked beautifully for me... on Saturday.
Sunday was a whole different world though. A lady who'd bought a nice piece came bright and early to buy another for her daughter, and I thought it boded well for another great day. The sun was out, and the day was lovely. What could go wrong?
It turns out, everything could go wrong. I think I only made one or two small sales after that nice one, making it one of the worst single days of sales I've ever had. I was still on a high from the day before though, and fortunately that probably kept me from snapping at a few RUDE customers that day. It was a weird, weird experience. Things that were "clever, beautiful or fun" the day before were now overpriced and unnecessary. What were these people all doing at an art fair anyway with attitudes like that?? One woman grasped one of my raku pieces and exclaimed that she LOVED it and HAD to have it, and her sister actually said, "Ugh. It looks like an urn." Considering it's only 5" tall, I wonder who she thought would fit into it. Anyway, that was par for Sunday. And naturally the skies opened up while we were all tearing down. I drove home in soaking wet clothes.
But... Pollyanna that I am, I will be back next year. I have a primo booth location and people who come to find me there, so I'll be back. I just won't have great expectations for the second day. I still won't bring any yard art.
There is only one form of yard art I would have in my garden, and that is a really nice obelisk for vines to climb on. That and a trellis. Something classical and refined, no bugs or butterflies on it, that would look right in my English style perennial garden. Yet I have never seen these offered. Either I have entirely missed them, or there is no market for this. The garden centers have them, but the wires are thin and cheesy, and I’d rather buy one from an artist. I bought some copper tubing to make my own trellis a few years back (copper because I can just solder that, not have to weld steel), but of course that project remains undone.
I think yard art styles come and go. I have seen bending over figures in people’s yards, never at a show. They must be passé. I have not seen wooden ones offered at a show in years. Or maybe it’s just the shows I do. Overwhelmingly in the last few years, they are mostly metal. Themes are (in order of prevalence): copper hanging spinner with a glass ball in the middle; Glass ball on a stick, wrapped in copper wire; dragonfly on a stick; and bird with forged iron twisted wire body on a stick. I have seen so many of the latter as components this year, that I think even the yard art people are buying them to weld into their designs.
Are we counting birdhouses? Most I’ve seen would be unsuitable for birds to actually live in (metal roofs, etc.)
Okay, how about a poll, which would you prefer to have in your backyard?
This was a great review, Rick. Thanks so much. Made me want to be there.
We did this show twice and did well enough the first time to come back for #2. Honestly, if you are in the area and you have an open weekend it is a really sweet town and a fun place to spend a few days. We toured the historic homes and I pretended it was a hundred years ago. It is a time of homecoming for local people so we did have customers from Chicago and Cleveland, etc. It is a beautiful setting along the Ohio River and I'm glad we did the show. I think it is one of those shows you could do once or twice to test out, but probably for fine art not likely to find a clientele to sustain decent sales.
But honestly, isn't the ratio of SOS about the same at St. James?
Linnea;
Be happy you were turned down. I've never applied to Madison, and have been told repeatedly over the years to don't try as it is a crafts show, not an art show. The original Chatauqua was organized by the late Dixie McDonogh (sp?), and she had a falling out with the co-sponsors in Madison and moved the show to Columbus, IN. The folks back in Madison decided they would do it on their own, CofC types and all that. So what you got was a show organized by the local business folks and geared toward the lowest common denominator. I've not heard anything good except that low end $5 crafts sell like hot-cakes.
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