I did the St. Stephens show for the 4th time and have been waiting and watching for blogs about the show. I have been wondering what went wrong as the weather was perfect. I barely made 1/3 of previous years and all that I spoke to said the same. Some sold nothing.
I live in Ft. Lauderdale and went to my doctor today who asked if I had done the show and how I did. When I told him he said that he, his wife, and out of town friends have gone to the show for over 30 years and this year they drove for an hour trying to find a way in, but the police had all the roads blocked. They left and went home! I guess that explains it folks. If I live here and can hardly get to the show site because of the blocked roads, how can we expect the buying public to find us? What a shame, but it does explain why there were not nearly as many patrons as years past when we had cold or wet weather. I head north next year!
Please folks who were there, lets have some comments!
I did the Beaux Art Festival and I thought it was beautiful, well laid out and well managed. I did very well and hope to be invited back next year.
Comments
I exhibited at St. Stephens for the first time this year. Our booth was near the Main Hwy entrance and I thought we were "doomed", as we were a bit isolated from the rest of the happenings. However, I was pleasantly surprised that we had equal traffic and a good number of sales. I saw many people carrying art and other packages assumed to be show purchases.
I agree with the previous posts about traffic and parking.
The traffic was, indeed, a nightmare. The Grove show used to have a shuttle bus service from the Metrorail (Miami's light rail) parking lot to the show. I don't know if that was discontinued, or just that people did not avail themselves of it. The lot where we had to park our van went from its normal $6 to $15 by 7 am, and then escalated to $25 at 9 am. And the barricading of streets was compounded by lack of affordable parking. Again, a remote lot is needed.
My booth was just down the way from Andrea's and I certainly understand that many artists did not do much in the way of sales. But that was not my experience, and I just wanted to add my voice to this discussion. I have even enjoyed post-show contact and custom orders in the last 2 weeks following the show.
I plan to apply again for SS, and I appreciated all the hard work Daisy and her crew did to set up and manage the show. Because of the weather up north, I understand that there were about a dozen accepted artists who were not able to travel to the show. Perhaps that gave it more of a scattered look than usual.
Johnnie, you gutsy Guy, I guess it was winter break that's why you went to check it out. I will e-mail you to get the scoop. Baily Jack does SS, did you see her there? I will need to e-mail her for the scoop as well. I am in Dogwood and Decatur Fest, Yahoo.
Later:>) Ginny
Parking is awful for both Grove shows unless you get there early. The one good thing I can say about it--my favorite garage kept its price the same as last year. It was more crowded than usual on Saturday as I had to park on a different level and then couldn't find my car for about half an hour.
I can usually go through both shows but CGAF is just too big and I was burned out by the time I got to SS. CGAF is very easy to figure out as it is one long show while SS is scattered throughout the school yard and parking lots. I went down one row at SS, bought a fun piece at a ceramics booth and then left.
I am lucky in that I can take the back roads out of the Grove so I can get home in 20 minutes.
andrea, my wife and i went to the st stephens show on mon . we had tried to get to it on sun but traffic was a mess and we didnt get there until closing time so i took some notes on available places to park and returned the next day. i found a free side st and parked with no problem like i had the day before and we walked the 4 or 5 blocks to get to the shows. traffic and parking were a nightmare on sun. the public parking at the oak st lot went from their online price of 5 to 15 but they were full. i personally dont know what else the police could have done due to the massive amount of cars. we passed 20, 25 and 30 dollar lots that were all full sun evening and mon midday. as for the st.steph show it was our first and probably last time to visit. mandatory 'donation', flea mkt look and setup, haphazard at best. ghost town on mon and the half dozen or so artists we talked to were not happy about the show in general (we are both artists and were scouting the show as a possible venue). really dont know why either show went thru mon. so so crowd, another $nite, $food. given all that, a lot of very good art with beautiful weather but parking and traffic from hell.
Thanks for the check in...I have done it two previous years and it was going down, took a pass this year and am glad I did. I am going to write a post about the "big shows, are they over?"