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Now that I have your attention , I'll mention that other artists' results varied: some of the 2-D artists I spoke with who sold only original works, with no reproductions at lower price points, suffered. But there's no question about the uniformly high quality of the art, the nice balance of the mix (not too heavy on any one category), and the fine treatment of the artists. Promoter Patty Narozny and her Hotworks LLC staff know how to run a show, and this one was as seamless as could be.
Miromar Outlets, the host venue, is an upscale outlet mall (there's an oxymoron for you) with a strong identity in this well-to-do community between Fort Myers and Naples. The show takes place in a cordoned-off section of the parking lot in one corner of the mall. Setup was available all day Friday, as well as early Saturday morning. This was handy, given that a strong cold front--the first of the season in SW Florida--had ushered in storms on Thursday night and stiff breezes and near-record lows on Friday morning. So it was nice to be able to watch the skies and plan my arrival accordingly. The load-in was a snap, as you could drive right up to your booth location.
Saturday dawned crisp, clear, and still a bit breezy, but that didn't deter the crowds. I had early arrivals perusing my photos as soon as I lifted the front flap, and crowds were steady and enthusiastic all day (and, except for a lull early on Sunday afternoon) stayed that way. My last sale, at 4:15 on Sunday, was my biggest of the weekend. As mentioned earlier, though, not everyone I spoke with was praising their sales totals...so it will be interesting to hear from other artists in attendance.
Artist amenities are prominent at a Hot Works show, and although I personally don't use them as a factor in deciding which shows I apply for, I will confess they're nice to have when I stumble onto them. Patty and her staff provided coffee and water during Friday setup, roving water deliveries during show hours, and an artist award breakfast at 9 AM Sunday (which I didn't attend). No booth-sitters that I know of, though, in case you're keeping score.
We Florida artists, like most traditional retailers in the Sunshine State, are always eager for the arrival of "snowbirds" (seasonal visitors from the north and from Europe). And there's no question that they've arrived: I had a number of customers from Minnesota, Canada, Germany and the UK, in particular over the weekend. Many of them come down in October or early November, then return home to see the grandkids for the holidays, and return for the duration of the winter in the first days of the New Year. So if you're selling 2-D, it's smart to have, and make known, a user-friendly shipping policy--and even better, small sizes that will fit inside a suitcase. I've started making my own packing bags from aluminum insulation, and they're cheap enough that I can provide them at no extra charge to customers who buy my large Gallery Wraps to help protect them in transit.
It was a treat, too, to be able to drive only 20 minutes to my home each night. No hotels, for the first time since May! But it was too good to last--I'm off to the East Coast this coming week, before returning to Estero for a Howard Alan show at nearby Coconut Point mid-month. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that the weather, and the snowbird luck, holds through Christmas.
Well I was in the red-headed step child section. The show runs for three blocks, two on one side of a busy road and my section on the other side. Apparently a few artists decided not to show up or the show didn’t get enough qualified applicants or something because there were quite a few empty booth spots in my section. There were two empty booth spaces between me and my neighbor on the right and then three of us together and at least two empty booth spaces to the left of them. This became really important when the wind started to blow… We did get reasonably good traffic in the area mostly due to some entertainment and the pony rides. Saturday was an okay day and if I had done as well on Sunday as on Saturday it would have been an okay show for me but alas, I did not.
The good things:
I am slightly biased because I did win an award but I think the judging was good and the judging “experience” was well done. Both judges entered my booth and asked insightful questions. A lot of shows are trying to enforce this (judges handing you a card to prove that they spoke to you, spending an enforced amount of time in each booth, etc) but I can tell when they are just going through the motions and when they are actually interested in the work. These judges seemed interested. Photographs were taken of the work chosen for judging (and they asked permission to do it) and a photograph of the award winning piece was displayed when the award was announced. I like it when shows do that because I can see what was chosen. I didn’t get any chance to walk the show (being in the red-headed stepchild section) but all of the awards seemed well-deserved.
Minor artist support was good. I never lacked for someone to watch my booth so I could run to the bathroom.
The bad things:
My friends all told me “the weather is going to be perfect” Perfect my but! Saturday was not too bad although it was 45 degrees when I got to the show. At least the sun was shining and as long as I sat in the sun I wasn’t freezing. Sunday was cloudy, windy, and cold. The wind was especially devastating to the person on my left who had the two empty booth spaces beside her. She ended up parking her vehicle in the two empty booth spaces and tying her tent to the vehicle to hold it down. Sponsor booths across from us were horribly unprepared with non-weighted EZ-ups. To their credit, once the first one went flying they took them all down. The food vendor directly across from me never showed up on Sunday leaving a poorly prepared EZ-up with billowing sides which threatened to take off toward my booth all day. Sunday was not a fun day.
I guess I would call this part – enforcement support. During setup no one was enforcing the street closure and every once in a while some civilian would fail to read the huge street closed sign and sneak in the tiny space left for us to get our vans in. Some of them became quite irate that they couldn’t get through. A person at each street closure (4) would have saved everyone a lot of grief. I was at check-in when the police told the check-in person that they needed to do that. Several vendor vehicles were parked in the street until 1PM (show opened at 9AM) until show personnel came and got them to move. The food vendor across from me was especially aggravating. They were partially set up and didn’t even show up until 9AM to complete setup. They were completely brazen, driving in and out of the show while it was open to bring stuff in and then left their vehicle parked until they were made to move it.
I was not too close to the music but a friend who was across from it said it was too loud for doing business.
Hopefully I will be moved to Virginia before this show comes around again. IF I can manage to again line up the next 3 shows on my schedule this year and IF I can procure an RV for the trip I may spend November in Florida and I would do this one again because – well what else am I doing that weekend. I would not, in a million years, travel 600 miles to do this show alone.
Back in May they were just graduating from college so weren't sure at that time if they'd hold another show. But they did - and yesterday's was held on the second floor of The Village Gate, a former factory in Neighborhood of the Arts section of the city. It's an atrium filled with sculpture, artwork and plants, lit by center skylights and not enough electric lights.
I know they had way more applications than they had room for but they narrowed it down to a diverse 50+ vendors. When they started billing their shows as "indie", I was skeptical, I admit. But there really is stuff at their shows you don't see elsewhere. I'm definitely one of the older vendors - old enough to be the mother of most of them. But that doesn't bother me a bit - because I only feel 30 in my head, which would make me more like, um, the older sister. :-)
As I wrote in my show survey at the end, I wish they would offer more time for set-up. I need a good 2 hours just to set up my space, so opening the doors to vendors a full 3 hours before the start of the show is what works best for me. Yesterday's show offered a 2 hour window before the show but we went 30 minutes earlier in case the doors were opened earlier - and the building staff was unlocking the doors as we arrived, so I'm very glad we went early.
There's an elevator, thank goodness, or you'd find me lying on the floor with back spasms about now. The room is irregularly shaped with vendors around the edge and a few in the middle. There was plenty of room in front of my space to spill forward a bit without being any further out than my neighbor, because of the odd shape of the room. Electric outlets were located in the interior overlook areas but the organizers had a lot of heavy duty, very long extension cords they ran out to the vendor locations, securely taped to the floor. I was glad I brought extra lighting. No matter the venue, it's impossible to have too much lighting, right?
From what I saw I thought the show was well advertised. They use social media strongly, which is critical for their generation. (And me!) They gave swag bags to the first 50 customers, containing donations from various artists - and true to their May show, there was a line of customers waiting for the opening of the doors.
Another promotion was they gave each artist a dozen or more raffle tickets to give to customers who spent $10 or more. There were to be 3 winners and my understanding is the prizes were additional swag bags, meaning the winners received little somethings from various artists. I thought that was a great idea.
There was rarely a time when there were no customers in my space. I made more per hour in the 6 hours of this show than I sometimes make at multi-day shows.
The fee is inexpensive, vendors are treated well. Load-in and out was average, parking for customers was plentiful.
Not to shoot myself in the foot by temping YOU to apply, but their next show will be May 7, 2011, and a new venue has been secured - the Main Street Armory in Rochester.
tho it's late, any info about affordable holiday fairs? esp animal related? thanks
nancy
Pet Collage Paradise
The updates to the website are taking place now and our title sponsor, Raymond James, it hoping to have all of the updates done by the end of the year. We were hoping for much sooner than that but we are at the mercy of them since they maintain our website for us. There will be detailed info as you request on the new, updated website. It will be more user-friendly with lots of info for our artists pertaining to set-up, maps, etc.I will forward you thoughts to our board of directors as well. Have a great day!John
One hopes that it will provide answers for those who have been accepted to the 2011 show.
It may help if the artists who will be in the show voice their questions and concerns now so they may be addressed in the updated site. I am not connected with the show in any way that woud be officially meaningful (I was REJECTED, for God's sake) but I can pass them on to likely listeners.
Show Set Up and Lay Out
The folks who manage the show were well organized at check-in and very pleasant to deal with. The show is in a wooded area with several paved roads. It's easy to drive right to your booth and unload, and if you have a trailer, you can park it right behind your booth. Two big pluses so far.
The Show
Saturday morning people started arriving and I started to sell some of my teaser $40-50 items. It started slowing down in the early afternoon but I had an OK day. I walked around the show to get a feel and it was mostly hand-made with little buy-and-sell. Most everything was related to traditional or mountain-type craft of good-to-excellent quality.
Sunday was pretty much a duplicate of Saturday. It wasn't a barn burner, but considering the booth fee ($100), the ease of set up, and how pleasant the show staff was, I took in about $1,800. OK considering I had a place to stay. However, I will be looking for something else for my line. This is the same weekend as the Yellow Daisy Festival, but I didn't know about it until after the deadline.
Teardown
Organized and a piece of cake. I was drove in and hooked to my trailer and was out about 40 minutes after the show's close.
Hyde Park has a hip urban sensibility and a little younger vibe than what you'll typically see in many Florida shows. Lots of younger couples, runners, dogs, baby strollers on hand to complement the older age brackets that we're used to seeing. And until this weekend (my fourth time at this venue) I'd seen steadily increasing sales for my wildlife/bird photography. But at this show, it just wasn't happening. Show quality was quite good, though perhaps a little heavy on the jewelry. But it was almost spooky how every artist I talked with (save one, about which more in a minute) gave the same summary: Modest, but acceptable, crowds and sales on Saturday; sparser, more disinterested crowds and lower sales on Sunday. Personally, I did about 40 percent of the business I'd done last spring (two weeks before Easter, when most snowbirds typically clear out from Florida). More tellingly, my sales compared with last fall's show were down 25%. No large canvas sales; nearly all my sales were 11x14s. Although I remarked ruefully to my neighbor (who zeroed on his fun, colorful "eco-art" made from scrap metal and rocks) that "at least my $4 notecard sales were up 800% year-over-year." Not exactly the fast start to the winter season I'd hoped for.
I'm thinking that Halloween might have impacted the show attendance, even though Howard Alan Events did their usual fine job advertising and promoting, and even brought around Halloween candy for trick or treaters and patrons (and, what the heck, a few artists, too! Howard's shows don't feature artist amenities so we have to take what we can get.) There were several other wildlife photographers on the artist roster, and although several had the same kind of weekend I had, local shooters Irwin and Carol Glazer recouped a slow Saturday with seven canvas print sales on Sunday. So, you never know! Gotta tip my cap to 'em, they're great photographers and really nice folks, too.
Besides the free candy,there were a few other positives to be had. Setup here is early, but easy: Narrow streets, but \ wide sidewalks behind your booth. What's more, several new close-in parking areas replaced the grubby, tight-quartered lot we'd used the last couple of years. Departure was, I must say, handled brilliantly by Helayne and her staff. Artists on either end were allowed in first, at 6 PM sharp...and folks in the center were asked to wait This enabled artists in the first group to enter from side streets at either end, eliminating the traffic jams so often seen on narrow streets when everyone tries to access the area at once.
The wait for us folks in the center wasn't long at all; in fact, my breakdown was complete just as Helayne gave the green light to get our vehicles. I was on the road a half hour later. It was almost like a parade!
Unfortunately, great logistics won't pay the bills. But there's nothing to do but dust myself off and get ready for Patty Narozny's fall show at Miromar (in Estero) this weekend. It's a local show for me, and it'll be good to sleep in my own bed on a weekend for the first time in months. Local shows in my hometown: a sure sign that winter--and snowbirds with vacation bucks to spend--are on the way.
- Is the art fair business quite changed from ten years ago?
- Have 2009's economic woes affected your business?
- What adjustments are you thinking about for 2011?
- Tell us where you found your best shows: East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, Florida, South, Southwest. Are there differences in buying at art fairs in different regions?
Will you go first?
The first year it was pretty small, some good artists but only worth going to because it was 5 minutes from my house. Parking was easy and plentiful so there was nothing lose. Over the next few years it got bigger and better. There were artists that I saw at Coconut Grove and even a couple that showed up in the Chicagoland area at Amdur shows.
Then the show moved to a new location by the village hall. It is much further south of its old location which changed the demographics of who might attend. It isn't visible from the road and while there were signs, it isn't the same as seeing the booths, people walking around etc.
The quality of art has fallen over the past couple of years and this year, while I only saw 3/4ths of the show, it was almost all 2D and not necessarily the best 2D.
In this case, the show was forced to move, they weren't allowed to use the park anymore. The change in location has turned what was once a very promising show into one not to be bothered with. It is sad.
Over the past few weeks we have shared with you news of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund’s
Senate Report Card grades through the “Dirty Dozen” and “Same State, Different Story” profiles. Today, we bring you the final installment in our Senator Report Card series. The “Honor Roll” profiles 13 senators who received an A+ to B+ on their support for the arts. And they aren’t the only ones – in fact there are 37 senators who received a B+ or above on our Congressional Arts Report Card.Take a moment to let these Senators know their support is noticed. Share the Honor Roll via Twitter or Facebook and help get the word out. Or go one step further and support the arts year round by lending your voice to the growing grassroots movement for the arts in America and becoming an official member of the Arts Action Fund. Play your part today – it’s free and easy to join.
So I was juried into this mega Art show... I decided to apply to this show after reading a review about the show from 2006 in a magazine... Sunshine artists magazine rates this show in the top 10 the past two years... Greg Lawler reviews from artists since 2006 are not good. Sounds like this show made some changes after 2006 and artists don't like it anymore. Does anyone have any feedback concerning this show?
Thanks.
December 18 & 19
Lake Park, Florida
Holiday Arts & Crafts Fair
Deadline: November 15
Downtown on Park Avenue
Organized by Town of Lake Park
100 + exhibitors
Lake Park, Florida
Holiday Arts & Crafts Fair
Deadline: November 15
Downtown on Park Avenue
Organized by Town of Lake Park
100 + exhibitors
Lake Park - "The jewel of the Palm Beaches"
Good timing, isn't this?
- Visit their website for more info: www.lakeparkflorida.gov
- Questions? Contact the Economic Development Director of Lake Park, Jennifer Spicer,
(561) 840-3122, or jspicer@lakeparkflorida.gov - Apply today: www.zapplication.org
WHAT: National Endowment for the Arts invites Lake Eden Arts Festival’s Executive Director to present at the National Council of the Arts meeting in Washington D.C.
WHEN: TOMORROW - Friday, October 29th 2010
Jennifer Pickering, Executive Director of Lake Eden Arts Festival (LEAF), will present at the National Council of the Arts meeting in Washington D.C. tomorrow. From over 1,400 outdoor arts festival organizations, LEAF | Lake Eden Arts Festival was one of only two organizations selected to speak at this prestigious meeting of the National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) advisory body, which meets three times annually. The meeting will be webcasted live from 9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. on the NEA website.
The 171st meeting of the NEA’s advisory body will highlight the NEA’s latest report, Live from Your Neighborhood: A National Study of Outdoor Arts Festivals. The report examined 1,413 outdoor arts festivals in the country through surveys and case-studies. The study’s key findings indicate that outdoor arts festivals have diverse art forms and audiences, a commitment to quality programming, low or no-cost admission fees and integrate within their communities. The report also raises an important question for other arts organizations to ask: “What are festivals doing right and how can we replicate it?”
LEAF is a non-profit organization established to build community and enrich lives through the Arts – locally & globally – with festivals, events, mentoring, and educational programs.
Shouldn't we all be listening? I'll be tuned in -- lots to learn here -- how about you?
Does anyone here know anything about LEAF? This is a new organization to me.
Fast forward: 2010 - ArtFairCalendar.com is the #1 Google-rated site for "art fairs", most of the time, but always in the top three. Who would have known? Thousands visit the site daily. Nearly 19,000 people subscribe to the newsletters. The site has become an excellent vehicle for people looking for art fairs. Even artists use it!
In 2008 Scott said that social networking was the next big thing and I'd better have a site to serve all the artist subscribers to the newsletter. People were meeting in communities online and artists were a community who would like to be in touch with each other outside of the art fairs. So along came ArtFairInsiders.com. Yep, it gets good Google ratings also and we are thrilled with its growth. Thanks, guys! Who knew this would work?
Last month we launched site #3: www.CallsforArtists.com. We are building it into a site where artists can quickly find deadlines for art fairs at a glance. It is also, of course, another place where art fairs can get some notice from you. Please take a look and let us know how it looks to you. We'd really appreciate it if you would encourage art fair organizers that you know to join us there also.
How are we doing here? What do you think of the new site? What should we do next?
