Alison Thomas's Page

At first glance Crozet Art Festival looks like a county fair where someone stole the Ferris wheel.  It has a train and bouncy house for the kiddies and last year there was a roving guy doing card tricks. There’s also some sort of wine tasting going on. There’s a little something for everyone and the art can be described that way too.  Bonsai trees, hand made marbles, and some kind of herbs to large abstract paintings.  I did not see any Nerf bow and arrows though.  This is a local show for…

As I said last year, everything bad they say about this show is true.  It is huge and there is serious junk here from air plants to nerf bow and arrows.  Load in and load out are difficult.  If you are in the treed area, which seems like the best spot to me, you will be dollying across uneven grass and big tree roots.  And those huge beautiful trees are all sweet gum trees.  If you know sweet gum trees I don’t need to say any more. If you don’t know sweet gum trees well, it’s best to wear…

I did the Fairfax Paragon show last fall and was not really happy with the results so I was hoping for better this spring.  And I did do better, a little more than double what I did in the fall and I came out just a little above average for shows in this area.  As usual I don’t get around much but the artists near me were happy with their sales. 

This is a fairly small show with around 120 artists held in an upscale outdoor mall.  Booths are on either side of the street with…

I have had too many shows turn around on Sunday afternoon to break down early because of poor sales.  It bugs the hell out of me when other people do that as well.  I think it is incredibly disruptive to the people who are staying and maybe trying to eke out some sort of profit from a bad show.

However, there are valid reasons to break down early.  My general standard is if I feel my work or I am in danger.  That is a call that each person has to make for themselves.  And…

I’m finally home and glad to be here.  This is how I figured the shows would stack up for profit on this trip – Deland, Dunedin, Disney.  This is how it ended up Disney, Deland, Dunedin and if it hadn’t been for a sale at 4:45 on Sunday, Deland would have ended up at the bottom.  Here’s another fact I did not expect – 75% of my sales (by item, not cost) were northern scenes.  It’s a strange world in Florida these days.

So about Deland – Deland in the past has either been my…