Blog

Better than words:

If you are not acquainted with the www.Artshowreviews.com, you really need to spend a few minutes checking this site out.  You will find reviews of Art Shows from all around the country written by fellow artists just like yourself.  These reviews are intended to help artists by supplying show information from the artists view point.  Stop by and check this site out.  While you are there feel free to write a review or two yourself.

There is a very good review just added about the Hyde Park Art Fair in Tampa, Florida.  It was submitted by fellow artist John Leben.   You can check it out here - http://www.artshowreviews.com/2011/05/hyde-park-village-art-fair-reviews.html?cid=6a00e54fba8a73883301538e6d2c79970b#comment-6a00e54fba8a73883301538e6d2c79970b.

The other day when I stopped to buy some E-6000, the woman in the checkout line ahead of me was buying an armful of jewelry magazines.

As we were crawling by inches forward, she turned to me, admired my necklace and asked, "Which magazine did you find that one in?"

I was surprised at the height, breathe and depth of my indignation. I have been thinking about this moment and I have an epiphany to share with you:

People who copy from books, magazines, websites or classes are not artists!

They are copy-cats.

I have never used a book, magazine or the web for my work. Every design comes from my imagination. I have taken certification classes in a process but never a class on how to make a pair of earrings. I have a book on how to use the various PMCs which I received in my cert class, my kiln operating book, a book on the properties of natural gemstones, one on pearls and a general How To Bible of tools and techniques.

Aren't there clear instructions at Art Fairs that nothing can be made from a kit?

Well, following the step-by-step instructions (with pictures) is just like using a kit. You just go to the local bead shop and they will read your instruction set and give you everything that would have been in that kit.

Today I was back at the store and thought I would look through the lot. I could not believe the silliness, the trashiness, the lack of balance or color, the ART-LESS-NESS of the patterns in these ad filled mags. This is a business: NOT one set to build the next Artist.

I am sure Michaelangelo wasn't pausing on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, waiting for his monthy magazine for inspiration.

I had to withdraw from this Novi, MI show and have been watching to see if anyone who was there posted about it.

Have I missed the post?  Any comments?

Thanks!

Cassandra

The first event of the season is always hard to do. You wondering if you are ready after some time off. You load your van or car. You triple check your list. Closed your eyes and relax and you head to the grounds of the festival. You look forward to some sales but you always want the hit home run. At the end you are happy with any sales.

I saw and talked old friends, artist and new people. Enjoy the people that visit my tent.  The thing that make this show special was talking to my artist friends, my friends and feel the sun after a long winter in Chicago, IL.

We just received a juried acceptance letter for Piedmont Craftsmen. They want us to exhibit at their holiday show this Fall.

Do you know anything about their shows?

TIA!

Lisa

MAY 28 & 29 

                                                                  

July 16 & 17
Art at the Shops

Yorktown Shopping Center

Lombard

Approximately 75-100 artists

www.dwevents.org

More questions? Contact Debbie Netter at dwevents@comcast.net

I am painting my studio floor so my lovely outdoor studio is out of commission until the paint dries.  What Framer Dude and I had anticipated to be a 36 hour project looks like it may be turning into a nightmare, and I am facing the next week possibly painting at my dining room table where the light sucks.  I have a commission on my easel mocking me next to its ersatz place next to the TV.

Home improvements rarely ever go as scheduled.  What should have been an easy DIY task has already led me to an aggravated call to Valspar, the possibility now of grinding up the two coats of Porch and Floor paint we've applied, and another several days painting in the dining room, and eating over the sink (well, in front of the TV)

Grumpy, grumpy, grumpy.  So what's y'all's beefs today? 

"Close to Home"

Born in Illinois, Beth has lived in Colorado, California, Maryland, New York, Mexico, East Africa and India before settling in West Virginia in 1977. Art school and a passion for drawing were bedrocks in her life. Selling images of mermaids to classmates in grade school, pencil portraits in Larimer Square in Denver for $5, being a courtroom sketch artist for CBS TV and then spending 15 years doing portraits from life as a member of the Artists Touring Association, traveling to shows in malls throughout the mid-Atlantic region prepared her well for her years on the road traveling to the nation's art fairs. It also developed her skills and her eye for catching the moment and the fleeting light.  

In 1990 Beth left portraiture behind and now focuses on rural landscapes and animals, sheep and more sheep. She says, "portraits are all about expression and people react to my sheep as adorable, without being cartoonish. In a small booth, rather than showing up with Noah's ark, I decided to be the sheep-lady. The public, for some reason love sheep, and they were the perfect counterpart to my haystacks. The shape, the skinny legs.
 
I always love my latest piece the most! Sheep or landscapes,  its the practice of applying the contrasting colors, like a tapestry or embroidery. Edgar Degas was my greatest influence, for his bold outlines and draftsmanship."

Upcoming shows:  

May 13-15  Artisphere in Greenville, S. C.,  

May 20-22  Artsplosure in Raleigh, N.C.    

Learn more about Beth and her find work: www.artfaircalendar.com/art_fair/featured-artist 

Whoo hoo!  Breakout the tequila, we just hit 5,000 members.

That is a significant benchmark.  When I joined a little more than two years ago I was like number 350 or something.

That is a lot of blogging, discussing and photoing getting around all over the world.  Right, Annette Piper in Down Under land.

Munks cat Bill is buying free shots for everybody tonite.  he promised me.  Now if I can only fiqure out which bar he is hanging out at.  Any clues Munks?

Everybody should give Connie a big hug, or a big sloppy kiss on the side of her ears.

Aloha, Nels.

Anyone here ever attend this show?

http://www.bigwestartsfestival.com/

The deadline for applications has been extended to May 31st.

I would like to share with you all the term paper I submitted at the end of the English Factual Writing class I finished a few weeks ago.

I am also adding the comments that Mrs. Sargent, the mean witch that gave that class, added to my paper.

It is a dictionary and dream interpreter, and it may be of use to the populace that abounds here. 

As the files are quite large I will release a couple of pages a week if enough interest for knowledge arises. 

The first release will be larger as I will include the first 7 pages. 

Careful reading is quite necessary in order to understand the depth of thought involved.

I hope it will be of good use to the readers, and your comments will be greatly appreciated ( I think)

When I applied for this show, I was looking for something close to the OKC 6-day show.  The Book & Art fair is held every year on Mother's Day weekend at the Century II exhibit hall in Wichita, Kansas as a fundraiser for the local art museum.  As the date of the show approached, my husband and I were faced with a couple of very unexpected and expensive events that had me questioning whether or not to do this one.  He talked me into going, but I chose to drive and set-up on the same day to keep my hotel costs down, something that I don't normally do.

Set-Up

Set-up is on Friday from 10 am 'til 8pm.  I arrived at 5pm and found easy parking at the loading dock.  I was able to unload quickly onto one of the provided flatbed carts and dolly my stuff to my booth space.  Set-up seemed to go smoothly for most people. Affordable electric ($35) was provided via an outlet on the floor right at your booth space, the floor was fairly level, and the aisles were wide.  I managed to finish setting up at 7:45, a respectable time when I'm by myself.

The artist's parking was an easy one block walk from Century II.  Because of my late arrival I didn't need to move my car to the artist's parking lot on Friday, just move it from the the dock space to another "loading" space.   Saturady and Sunday that short walk was much appreciated in the 100 degree heat.

The Show

The show opened Saturday morning at 10am, and there was a line of shoppers at the door.  Some of these folks went straight for the booths, others went right upstairs for the used book sale.  By 2pm the crowd had thinned out to a mere trickle and pretty much remained that way until the 6pm closing time.  Bargain shoppers abounded in the afternoon crowd, drwan in by the book sale.  The artists had plenty of time to walk around and visit in the afternoon.  I met many first-timers like myself, and one long-timer.  Several of the artists had been in OKC like myself.  All of the first-timers expressed that it would be nice to just make the booth fee for this one($200).

Sunday brought an 11am start time, and shoppers were once again lined up at the door.  Most folks managed to make early sales, but by 2 o'clock the crowd had shifted again.  The recycle metal worker across from me managed to keep the sales up for another hour or so, but most of the buying energy was gone.  At 3pm, an announcement was mad that all of the used books were on sale for $3 per paper grocery bag full, and that sucked some of the shoppers up to the balcony to look for bargains.  Several of the artists started a slow tear-down at 4:30 in preparation for the 5pm show close.  Those I spoke to didn't have great sales on either day and were gald when the show was over. 

Load Out

In anticipation of the forthcoming chaos of folks trying to leave a not-so-great show in a hurry, I brought in my own handtruck and packing materials when I arrived Sunday morning.  The flatbed carts provided by the site were in short supply at teardown and I was gald to have a place to stack my ProPanels off of the floor.  Everything was orderly and quick, and the hall was fairly empty when I departed at 6:30.

My Review

For some reason this show was very heavy on photography and jewelry.  The jewelry I get - Mother's Day and shiny, 3-D things to touch.  But photo?  I'm a photographer and this was totally not my crowd.  My stuff is higher-end, monochromatic, historic process work and this was a lower-end, 3-D, bargain-hunting crowd.  Unfortunately this show doesn't really have a website, and you're only given a list of participating artists at check-in (without a notation of medium), so reasearch can't be done prior to application or acceptance to see if your work is a good fit.  My hopes were that being sponsored by the local art museum the quality might be a little higher.

In terms of sales, under $100 seemed to be the hot price point.  A nearby jeweler sold a piece well above that mark but had give a significant discount just to make the sale.  In terms of 2-D, the hot item seemed to be the "print-in-a-bag" - no mat, just a flat print dropped in a clearbag.  Even notecards were a hard sell at this show.

In the past this show was held in conjunction with RiverFest (now held in June), which apparently brought in bigger crowds on Saturday.  This was the first year the the Book and Art show was on its own and despite a good advertising campaign the shoppers just weren't there.  And this is first and foremost a used book sale.  The art fair feels like a sideline - a few boothsitters, cookies at check-in, but that's it.  Everyone was very nice, but that doesn't put gas in the car to get you home.  If you live close by and need a filler show, this could be OK if you have lots of stuff in the $30 - $50 range.

Well, any show that starts with a fellow artist, stressed about having to set up all by herself, driving her Volvo, kaTHUMPkaTHUMP, right over your tent poles at daybreak, doesn't figure to go well. 

She hopped out of the van and started unpacking as though nothing unusual had happened, while I picked up my jaw from the asphalt and checked for damage.  Miraculously, there wasn't any (though there is surely a Trimline testimonial in my future).  I spoke to the artist a bit later and she hadn't seen the poles or noticed the lurching as she passed over them, and apologized profusely.  Turned out, in fact, to be a really cool lady (though not one I think I'd ever drive with willingly) .  And, in perhaps the biggest good news of all, this small (69-booth) show in tony Ponte Vedra Beach turned out to be a reasonable money-maker for me. 

The show has been around about 17 years--run for a time by Howard Alan Events, but more recently by Venues Event Planning.  Robin Conte and her partner Susan are young, personable, and really work hard to produce an artist-friendly show.  If you like artist amenities, this is the place for you: Volunteers wheeled cold water around twice each day, and provided brown-bag lunch (chicken wraps, orange, chips--not at all bad), and booth-sat if you needed one.  (No awards, though.)

The event site is just off A1A (which runs right along the Atlantic Ocean).  It's a fairly small shopping center, with a Publix, big-box pharmacy and an ABC Liquors (which was right behind my booth, how cool is that?).  Kinda upscale, but with an odd design: it's surrounded by swales, kinda like a sandtrap (this IS the home of the Professional Golfers Association; in fact, their offices are in the center).  It's odd, in that you can't see the Publix or the big-box pharmacy from the show site, even though they're technically in the same center.

So visibility is a problem. Nary a white-topped tent could  be seen from A1A, and zoning allowed only a couple of banners to promote the show.  Accordingly, attendance was (my guess) in the 2500-5000 range, at best, despite moderate temps and low humidity--probably the best show weather I've seen all season, and certainly far better than you'd expect in Florida by this time of year. And there were a fair proportion of BUYERS in the crowd.  My sales were higher than I expected, given the attendance.  My neighbor, a high-end jeweler, was happy with her sales, and a nearby acrylic artist sold a piece in the five-figure range.  Others didn't fare quite so well, but no one grumbled about the artist treatment or the load-in/out, which was a cinch (tent poles notwithstanding). 

Most of the artists were local (Jacksonville, St. Augustine), but some came from further south on Florida's east coast or from southern Georgia (the state border is only a few miles away). 

By next year, if public hearings go well, the center parking lot may be redesigned to "open up" traffic flow and visibility from the high-volume grocery, which might help attendance a bit.  Although Robin and Susan aren't intending to ever make this a huge event, they are working hard to make it successful.    They've got a companion show in the fall (October 15-16, 2011), and they'll be moving the Spring, 2012 event to sometime in April to capitalize on northern and midwestern artists who are migrating back from the winter circuit. 

As for me, this was a nice "paycheck show" to do as I photographed spring nesting season at St. Augustine's Alligator Farm.  As a bonus, there was even an Osprey family nesting in the corner of the artist parking lot!  So it's quite likely I'll return, and if you are going to be passing through the area--or if you're lucky enough to live in the vicinity--this is a show you might want to follow.

Today WAS supposed to be the big day, the premier of the Art History Channel's "The 21st Century Artists" show.  I cancelled all my plans so I could watch it, but when I went to their web site, I read....

Update To Our Viewers! "The 21st Century Artists" Show has been rescheduled to premier on Sunday June 5th, 2011.

As of yesterday, they were still saying May 10th.  Now I have to wait another month.  Bummer.  Still no word on where I can actually see this show, however.

I bet I'm not as dissappointed as the 191 'selected artists' they list on their web site for the now delayed premier.