This is getting to be an exciting winter ... art fairs throughout Florida and other sunny places. In general I'm hearing happy sounds from artists. Such a relief after the long quiet months of hiding out in studios and refiguring out how this business really works.
Next up: this weekend March 18-20, the last of the really BIG Florida art festivals, the Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival. Great art, excited shoppers and anxious artists and generous prize money. Norm and I did this show for many years, good sales and excellent camaraderie ... I believe Glass blower Andrew Shea even hosts a bowling tournament the night before the show opens!
Here is an older post from this site, with excellent images, from back when sales were nearly guaranteed.
CLICK HERE:https://www.artfairinsiders.com/profiles/blogs/winter-park-sidewalk-art
Anything else going on this upcoming weekend? And/or are you going to be at Winter Park?
Comments
Good to hear from you, Mark. You surely entered the art for business at a tricky time, but it looks like you're going full steam ahead. We lived in Detroit (1700 miles) and would travel twice a year to Florida, go down for the February shows come home and go back for Winter Park. Those days on the road were our vacation. No complaints about that. You swung for the fences, one trip, makes sense I hope you get a great pay off. Have you done this in the past?
Your comment about Ukrainian dealers is stunning, you are doing sales with Ukrainian art dealers? That is an interesting story and I'd love to hear more about it.
I hope you have great weather and great customers and lots of fun in beautiful Winter Park this weekend.
Hi Connie, hope to do business with the Ukranians, more that they need a helping hand, if anything useful comes of it is secondary, we will see. First time to Winter Park, looks like a great venue, but yes I've done a long trip for just one show: La Quinta, Sausalito, Belevue Wa, even Old Town Chicago and Ann Arbor were originally 'one off' shows, head from home to the show and back. Maybe next year I'll have to go for february shows, then back for winter park. Hopefully there is enough coffee and gasoline for that
Yes, I'll be there, booth 160 so stop by if you woudl like to see latest work. I actually declined La Quinta this year to leave time and energy to do Winter Park. Hope the weather cooperates. Have some gallery owners from Ukraine that are supposed to stop in, I think they need a helping hand at the moment so I am going to see if we can work out a commision deal. Couple of high end shows I want in on, annd I am not getting younger. Also passed on Coconut Grove and Artigras, I will make the drive from Denver once (1,900 miles each way) but not twice in the year. Was able to stop in west texas on the way and do some gemstone collecting, found some outstanding gem agates
We rarely did one shot drives of that length, Mark. The good thing about going to Florida was Norm's work was welcome at the Howard Alan Events, so we'd apply for and schedule one of the HAE events the weekend before the "biggie" ... it always paid off for us and we considered that the HAE show would pay for the trip, leaving the bigger show for the profit. Most of the time that worked out and it gave us Michiganders a week in the sun and took some of the pressure off.