Like some other old timers, I've been doing shows for 30 years and after some breaking in, sales during the 90s and early 2000s were great!!! Sausalito, Ft. Worth, Sun Valley, about 17 per year and sales were booming. Then 9/11 and later the recession of 2008 I noticed my sales were HALF of the usual. I also noted that the booth fees did not dip, nor the hotels, or gas or food. So each show was a gamble after that time. Dave Piper may have had it right- Bayou City may be dead in a few years. How can a show in a city of 2+ million (+ surroundings) get a gate crowd of only 20,000. Yeah no parking. Well solve it!!! Bayou City should get at least 100,000 many with oil money. And after Harvey, people's walls will need clothing so to speak. If I'm right, I think most artists are hurting for great sales again. If I heard this once I heard it a zillion times, "My walls are full, I can't buy more art." Hey let me come to your home and take some of that awful shit you have and put mine up!" Needless to say the sale did not happen. So if the seniors are not buying wall art (art on a stick? give me a break), what are the millenials buying and from where. Well I hear the millenials are buying prints online for cheap with frames or at shows they buy cutting boards, bowls, hard stuff that is useful.
It is very discouraging to see a national trend go south like this. Is this true for you? And as art fairs do worse, other bright eyes start a new one to entice us but then the old adage, "Never, ever, never do a first year show (unless it is free)".
At Bayou City in Memorial Park, out of 20,000 attendees I see virtually 25% as teens and volunteers with no money just dorking around.
It makes me start to consider money laundering or campaign finance so I could retire.
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PS. I don't care what anyone says. I've known A LOT of people in the business and across the field, YES art shows are dying. Horribly. Almost everyone I know who did artshows in California, bailed from that State years ago. I've watched show take go down and art show fees skyrocket. They want a bigger and bigger piece of the pie every year. I got sick of it and am now strictly on line
I have done shows for 43 years. I have switched my business from street fairs, convention centers, renaissance festivals etc. to an online store. It took several years to build a base, but I can stay at home, don't have to travel all over the country so no entry fees, no travel fees, no trailer or hotel fees, no extra restaurant fees so, although I make less, when I back all the fees out, I can hone in on my work, there's a lot less spinning my wheels, I no longer feel like a chipmunk on a wheel and I get to stay home and enjoy my work. win win. By the way, if anyone is interested I have a great craft hut, they don't make them anymore, and a lot of pro panels for sale. I live in SC now, and bailed California a number of years ago. Anyway, if anyone is interested in some good prices, let me know
Jeff…… Are art shows dying? No, but making money at them may be. I have been doing outdoor since 1985 and have kept good sales records. I sell original acrylic paintings from $30 to $300. The old rule when I started was sales should be 10 times booth fee for a "decent" show. This was, invented by a "Sunshine Artist" writer named George Marion and he was right on. Shows like Ann Arbor, Sugarloafs, Carolina Craftsmans, Columbus, 3 Rivers and others were well above decent. Above $10,000 and "fantastic"for some shows was not unusual. Starting about 2006 this was no longer being true. For me and many friends there has been a steady decline ever since.
Over the years I have kept up with progress. Light Dome instead of the EZ up. Pro Panels replaced burlap covered screens. My booth display and personal appearance became more professional. My work got better. I won a few best of show awards. I did notice however that our market was changing.
Fees and Hotels went up much greater than inflation which became a consideration for the first time. There are hundreds of new shows and an artist sitting in a booth with their own work is no longer a unique treat. The internet developed and it's easy to buy a cheap picture with no shipping cost. Unheard of 15 years ago, my last few "Art" festivals had Candles, Dips, Spices, Soaps, Lip Balms, Fudge, Jellys, Vinegars , Hot Sause's, Beauty Products, Soups, Maple Syrup, Bullet Pens, and Salsa booths. Is this really art or even crafts. I can't give free samples of my art. Customers got older and younger people tend to look at little screens for entertainment now.
I was lucky to have lived thru the golden years of art festivals. Im certain they will never return. There will always be some new things for shows, especially in photography, that will sell great but for the most part it will be "sales were OK, not great but not awful and I made expenses"
Art shows and the customers I acquire from them are still my mainstay. Print sales fell off around 2008, but have recently picked back up a again. Original art sales got better after 2008, actually. I'm talking about big ticket original art priced from $1,250 to $3,200. And I'm finding half of my big sales in unexpected places from unexpected people.
I have always benefitted from doing smaller shows in out of the way places. I also do big shows and shows in resort areas, but my expenses are always double for these and my return is not usually proportional.
My advice is to keep upping your art game. Do better art. Study art and its principals again and again and over and over again. Try new things. Be extraordinary, but not complacent about it. Think less about the selling and more about the creating and doing. Do fewer shows. Be more exclusive. Lower expenses all around.
Facebook and cell phones have really impacted our world. That's where a lot of expendable incomes are spent now. I hate facebook for the most part. One industry leader said that I'm out of touch with my customers by not being on facebook or having a cell phone. Well, that may be. I also live a long way out of any art market out here in the Wyoming open range. We don't even do western art. I struggle at times, but always strive to keep my art fresh and exciting. I seldom if ever repeat the winners, because I have other winners inside me to suss, produce and show. Sure, I have duds, too. But I'm banking on making more winners and looking forward to it.
I'm on top of my game right now with money in the bank. Can you tell? But I know the rags to riches, but back to rags regimen is coming my way again.
I just read another great book: Steven Pressfield's The War of Art. Simply a masterpiece, folks. The main message in it is to honor your muse by showing up to work with her every day. Through thick and thin.
Wow. I'm so impressed with the variety of these answers and all the people who have weighed in. Tracy, your comments
tell a good tale. We do want to stay in the business, we don't want to leave this lifestyle and especially I like your idea that we are all in this together. It is a partnership between the shows and the artists. We hope they are doing their best to help us, just as we bring our best selves to their events to make the events successful.
I feel a podcast coming on ... a great topic that will never go away. We could also say: art shopping malls dying? Is the publishing business dying? ...
I enjoy these conversations, having to do with living as an artist is our world today, because it confirms my understanding of how artists have made their way through life during the course of history,....at least European history, to which our age directly connects. Ours is an odd lot in today's culture but not unlike the the artist in, say, during the time of the Renaissance. Artists were expected to stay unmarried and untethered to weighty commitments, were mostly itinerant, and searched the towns and prefectures for patronage and succor. A mule was the equivalent of the "white Ford van" and eyes were fixed to the cobblestones looking for "good shoes" in the hopes of finding a sale, or in those days, a long term patron. So, the more things change the more they stay the same. Actually, at least for me, life on the "street" turned out better than I ever expected and allowed me to make a few "weighty commitments" and have a marriage that continues into it's 38th year. Inside this context, life isn't so bad, no? And the difficulties many of us are having is just the thickening of the plot. May we bitch and complain? Sure. Why not. And no doubt the artist walking behind his mule in Renaissance Italy had more than a few cuss words to throw at the rich bishop who has recently shown him the door.
Hi, Jeff, Read your post and it echoes what our fellow artists and even such as you and I, have been experiencing for the last...oh, say, 10 slow agonizing years of declining sales . At first , you say, "Hmm, is it my work? MY display? And you make some changes , a new look , change your subject matter, change your palette (I'm a painter) , freshen your booth, change your framing , and maybe, God Forbid, contemplate changing your work or your medium ENTIRELY!
Then you start doing MORE shows which have gotten ever more expensive even as we (at least I ) have inched our prices lower - OUCH! -and the major shows which used to welcome us with open arms now want "cutting edge" work , often meaning paintings resembling "road kills" as my friend Raleigh Kinney calls them. That's not to denigrate road kills, the vultures really like them. Nor does it denigrate good abstract work, after all that's what I did after I got out of school , and if anyone had told me I would start painting representational work I would have sneered "NEVER!" while kicking them in the shins. And then when I did switch to representational work, I found that I loved it , and still do. There is an endless variety of possible reasons for a decline: it's the economy, it's an election year (they're ALL election years now), too many shows on the same weekend in the same area, an over abundance of imagery in our daily lives (every possible electronic device imaginable in sizes from that of a watch to 5' to 6' across), and seemingly, just a general lack of interest in having art in the home that speaks to them.
Of course, just when you think, OK, that's it, the shows are dying and I wonder if I can get a job teaching, you have a fairly decent , not great, but OK show that raises your hopes, again, for are we not The Most Optimistic People On The Planet? We have to be - who else would lay out hundreds of dollars betting on a totally unknown prospect of income - IF it doesn't rain all day Sat and Sun, or your booth is located in some invisible part of a show which nobody attends anyway. Or maybe, like so many weekends recently , there's been a mass shooting and a pall of sorrow and gloom exists over the entire city.
So, what do we do? Well, as people to whom Art is Life, we keep on keeping on, because, to us there is no other life. So, Show Directors, please keep improving your shows both for the public and for us, the artists - make setup and teardown as easy as possible, make the public aware that there's really good, meaningful art available and they are WELCOME , and that there's a chance there could be good show food, too -it CAN be done!
My comments are for newcomers who might be turned off from doing shows by the negativity of this thread by us "old timers". First look at the geography of where the negative comments are coming from. Shows, like artists and art businesses, get stale after awhile, some may have run their courses, and others just suffer from bad management which tends to change from time to time. Research your show choices carefully (somewhere on this site are articles I wrote about researching shows). Big and big name are not always better. I.E. Cherry Creek is 45 minutes away from me but I won't waste my money to apply. I can still reach the wealthy stock brokers, real estate developers who like the western lifestyle through my web page and word of mouth. Besides its more fun to do a show in a mountain resort area than stand on hot asphalt in Denver. Look at your work. Does it appeal to the market you are going after? Look at your art work as a business, after you get through the creative fun of it all. I.E. I used to build fancy, full flower carved saddles that sold upwards of $4K. More wannabes got into that business and they struggle today with a few exceptions. I fell into a niche market of fancy white quilted trick saddles and there are only three of us in North America doing this work. Ah ha, job security. Develop those shows that will provide a consistent, steady return rather than going after the five figure jackpot. Bottom line, I have been doing shows since the early 1990's. My inventory has changed drastically, my booth no longer looks the same and I am not doing any of the shows I did way back then. Even today, I will rotate out a good show ($1.2K/day average) to go back to one that got stale and dropped below my minimum. Pay attention to your numbers after each show and listen to what people say in your booth. Why did it sell? Why didn't it sell? What did people ask for which I didn't have? Enough for this morning, I have a ton of work to get done in the studio.
The art shows, as with all of Main Street USA, is rotting from roots on up, while Wall Street booms. Same thing happened in the 1920s and I hope we all know how that turned out. We are at the end of a huge cycle, a "blow off top" of sorts. The future will be rough and this is as good as it gets for the foreseeable future. Today's "bad" is tomorrow's "good". It's just the way it is,...and this is coming from a hardcore idealist.
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