Art on the Rockies produced by the Vail Valley Arts League was held July 12-14 in Edwards, CO on the campus of Colorado Mountain College. Traversing down the Vail Valley are the communities of Vail, Avon, Beaver Creek, Edwards, Eagle, Gypsum and Dotsero. Summer art shows are also held in Vail, and Beaver Creek, so be sure you know which “Vail” show you are reading about. Edwards is more or less the business center for the upper Vail Valley.
SET UP was organized and well regulated starting Thursday evening, and continuing into Friday. The 110 booths were set up in the college parking lot, on grass around the central building and in a large communal tent. We were in the parking lot where spaces were 12’ wide and about 18’ deep. There was plenty of room behind the booths for storage. In the parking lot, you could drive to your booth space.
TAKE DOWN was equally easy.
THE SHOW opened Friday evening at 5:00 with a champagne art walk sponsored by Korbel. Between one and five there were a couple downpours, the heaviest rain this summer, which put a damper on the art walk. Only a few people wandered around the booths. Saturday morning I walked the 110 show booths. I met some artists who had done Cherry Creek and had added this show to make their trip west worthwhile. There was a high percentage of out of state artists and not all were from the west. The mediums were well balanced, but painting, jewelry and photography dominated. Everything was pretty much high end and absolutely no buy/sell. A food court sold good food, beer and wine (no kettle corn sold at this show!). There was a tent that had art activities for kids and both of our grandkids went there. The weather Saturday and Sunday was nice but warm in the afternoon. It was cool with a little cloud cover and it only rained briefly Sunday during take down.
ATTENDANCE AND SALES. I wasn’t real concerned about the Friday art walk because of the weather, but no sales is no sales. Saturday and Sunday the crowds were sparse and it would be a gift to say 2000 people attended the show. Pictures show this BUT, those that did attend were there to buy art. A painter on one side of me sold two major pieces (probable around $10K), a mixed media sculptor sold expensive pieces, and I saw a lot of wrapped wall art and shopping bags going out. My total sales were in the $2.5K-$3K range and I came within one belt sale of reaching financial expectations for the show. Other nuts and bolts about the show are in www.artshowreviews.com.
OTHER STUFF. Water was free all day, and coffee and goodies were available in the morning. There were port-a-pots in the parking lot and indoor (handicap accessible) restrooms in the college building. There was a silent art auction. One thing that was lacking was trash and recycle bins in the parking lot. The only ones I saw were near the college building.
FUN STUFF. My wife, Jean, took off first thing Saturday morning and ordered a custom paring knife with a cocobolo handle and her name etched on it before I had made a sale. Later she was talking to the husband of an artist about trading work as he was interested in my belts. His wife is a tall attractive former model. He came over to my booth later and said he would like a belt, and he wanted me to make his wife a custom thong. He got me and I was speechless for a minute as I thought he was dead serious. Jean was in on the joke. She wanted a belt too. Daughter, son-in-law and three grand kids were there and we had fun in the pool and hot tub with the kids at the condo.
Comments
In case anyone doing a google search comes across this discussion first, I also posted a review http://www.artfairinsiders.com/forum/topics/art-on-the-rockies-revi...
The past few weeks have been very busy and I am currently getting prepared for our show in Denver this weekend. The review is slowly coming along. I wanted to post new information that has become available. The list of 2014 artists is up on their site (I have a pdf of it) and it says they have 110 attending artists. There are only 103 listed and 25 of them (including the show director) are returning from 2013 (75.7% turnover including the show director). The numbers appear to speak for themselves.
FYI, I have seen the jury close 1-2 times on ZAPP this year. It is back open again. I guess they are having issues filling the spaces.
I will be posting a review of the 2013 show within the next week. I need to put all of my thoughts together now that I have cooled down a bit (but am getting angry just thinking about it). In short, it will say that I do not recommend the show and the director should be asked to resign. I will run the numbers if I can, but I am expecting 75% turnover.
That sounds like the smart choice for me. I was planning on declining, but when I saw your blog and review, it made me reconsider. Thank you for getting back to me, Richard.
Richard, thank you for the posting, and for the review, too. Are you doing the show this year? I have gotten in. I applied when I was hopeful about a western swing that did not materialize. It's a long drive from Virginia, but if people buy large paintings, which is what I have, it's worth thinking about. But sheesh, from your photos, there's no one there!
The pictures you've posted are pretty typical for my experience of Colorado Mtn shows in the summer. When this show was in the "town" of Vail it was people falling out of bed saying, "what's going on here?" That was 18 years ago and it seems not much has changed.
So I can't order a leather thong? ;-) You may be passing up a lucrative new income stream!!!!!
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