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  phillip hall September 12, 2010 at 10:34pm

  I'm booked for this year also but will try to remember for next year. A lot of the smaller show seem to be a good value . My best shows this summer were both small venues. And were the easiest to do.
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  don crozier September 12, 2010 at 8:22pm

  Hi Phillip,
  No, we're open to anyone, but I think we just filled the last booth space. The venue has a center courtyard that will hold 20 artists. If we got more than that, we have the option of moving it out to a street, but that would only be feasible with more than 30 or so artists. I thought we might get 30 to 35 artists this year in the show, but we ended up with only about 25 applicants. A lot of that is because I really didn't start working on the show until late spring early summer. If we do as well as we did last year, plans are to start working on the show in January, and advertise on artfaircalendar.com, so you should see a lot more publicity. Thanks for asking.
  Don
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  phillip hall September 12, 2010 at 10:10am

  Don, is this for area artists only?
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  don crozier September 11, 2010 at 11:50pm

  Well, I'm not rubbing many elbows and I don't know the right people.... ;-)
  
  But things are coming along- we're up to 19 artists from 15 last year, got a very nice mix I think. I raised the booth fee to $150 from $125 last year since I lost a little money last year on the event. The budget was looking good enough to spend $500 on a paid ad, so that should help bring in more. Previously, we just relied on postcards. If the weather is not unkind to us, I think we'll have a nice show.
  http://artfaironthemeadows.com/
  Stay tuned!
  Don
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  Connie Mettler September 11, 2010 at 11:36pm

  She definitely rubbed elbows and knew all the right people.
  
  So, how's your new event coming along?
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  don crozier September 11, 2010 at 11:19pm

  Pretty impressive, I had no idea. I knew that she must have gotten the local business community together to support the fair. I guess I just figured that she was wealthy and rubbed elbows with the local power brokers.
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  Connie Mettler September 11, 2010 at 10:29pm

  She did a presentation last fall at the NAIA Director's Conference in Peoria. She works incredibly hard, recently retired (I believe) from being a 2nd grade teacher so knew many people in the community and had been their teacher! So with her smarts, organizing ability, girl friends and community contacts she was able pull that event together. Basically I think she said she called twenty friends and they just did it! They formed committees, called on their friends to be sponsors. They knew the mayor, city council, etc., and built the event.
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  don crozier September 11, 2010 at 7:48pm

  Wow, I didn't know that Patty Gregory worked for free.... she's done an incredible job in a few short years. Love to know her secret....
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  Connie Mettler September 11, 2010 at 2:17pm

  You know, Phil, I think a lot of it has to do with the enthusiasm of the volunteer base and whether or not the event is supporting staff with a living wage. Most artists are enthusiastic about the good things that are happening at the Belleville, IL, event in May -- fees, quality of the event, amenities, etc. Amazingly, the director Patty Gregory works for free and has pulled the community together for an all volunteer event. Once upon a time this was the rule throughout the art fair business, as I am sure you will remember. Very, very few events do this now. I have to say for myself that the events that I work with, I would not do that work for free, for one I could not afford to give my time away. That time must be used to earn income for us. So the professionalizing of the structure of art fairs has certainly contributed to the increase in fees.
  
  Just as artists have to gamble in this business, so do the events...what kind of a hit does a show take when weather takes a turn for the worse. Two years of bad weather at the formerly solid show in Birmingham, MI, in May caused the organizers to give it up. Luckily The Guild stepped in to take it on.
  
  I don't mean to be an apologist for the shows, and I believe there are some that have been ruthless in their quest for increased fees, but on the whole these are good people doing their best.
  
  I'm with you on the amenities thing -- I remember hearing from Carol Romine how much the artist lunches were costing the CGAF- an astronomical figure and thought to myself that it was unnecessary for them to feed us, we can easily take care of that ourselves.
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  phillip hall September 11, 2010 at 1:52pm

  Connie, In order to put this in perspective we would have to know how the very large budget was being spent. Like what percentage of overhead is going to saleries and how much those are? And for a fairly small city like Salem why does it take one million dollars to put on a show? This sounds like a top heavy ,bloated event. The town i live in (new smyrna beach) puts on a show without admission and gets probably twenty thousand people attendence and gives many thousands in awards. Something is wrong with the Salem show model. It is a fact that show fees and jury fees have almost doubled in the last few years and the income of the average artist has drasticly fallen. With inflation at such a low figure why is it that shows are becoming so much more exspensive to do? If a show has to drop some ammenities like bottled water,artist parties etc. that would be much preferable to paying such large booth and entry fees. When booth fees get so high that a natural event like rain can potentially put an artist out of business they are too high. Shows can set budgets and make adjustments but the artist has no assurance that they will make anything at a show. High booth and jury fees make a gamble into a lottery if an artist is traveling any distance to a show. Artists have had to downsize maybe it's time for some shows to do likewise.