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 hard soled shoes. It can be dirty although this year it was quite damp so it wasn’t as dusty.
Spaces are exactly 10’ x 10’. You can usually manage a storage box or two beside your chair across from your booth but there is no space beside or in back. Bring a rug to keep the dirt down in the booth.
On the plus side this is pretty much the only major art show in Richmond all year. People attend in droves. They buy but they want to see everything first.
This year the weather really destroyed Saturday for me. My work is large and somewhat fragile so unless I get someone who wants to pay for something and pick it up on the way out my sales really don’t start until 3:00 as people are leaving. It was fairly hot in the morning and I had many people seem really interested. I made one sale before 3 and then at 3 really big black clouds rolled in and the people disappeared. No more sales. It never really rained until 5:00 (for the drive home) but most people park at the stadium and take a shuttle bus to the show so it is a long trek back for them. Sunday was better and I managed to pull out about 75% of last year when it was one of my best shows of the year.
This is a sleep in my own bed show for me so I can’t say anything about restaurants in the area. There are the pretty standard food booths and they are away from the art. At least for the women there are artist only bathrooms. Coffee and doughnuts in the morning. They are just glazed doughnuts but you don’t need a ticket and you can take as many as you want. The food booths get mobbed so it is probably best to bring your own lunch.
Comments
I'm pretty sure it is juried by check considering some of the stuff I have seen there. But it works for me.
Ah, we did this show once. That is the whole story there and you know what it means.
We were always on the lookout for a show on that particular date and had heard good things about this one, it is huge, there are big crowds, etc. Both of those things are true. But, is it juried by check? We wanted to make a good impression and send a couple of originals to the show committee (small ones to be sure) and they kept them. Hmmm... the best thing I could say was at least I got to see beautiful Richmond.
We always felt great price resistance in southern cities and never got any of them to work for us.
It is not horrible and in fact this past show it was damp and rainy part of the time so it wasn't bad this year. But most of the booth spaces are on grass and it gets a large crowd which turns the grass to dirt pretty quickly if it is dry.
Thanks for the review, Alison. I had just heard about this show and see that the show producers tell you to put down a carpet because of the dirty. I don't think I have ever seen that in any information materials ever before. So, I thought the dirt must be really bad if they are warning you about it.
I come from Florida and am doing 3 shows in the Virginia area....Art in the park was our 2nd show. I was shocked at(as mentioned above) the lack of space and the quality or actually lack of quality of this show. Ha d amajor be backer..called to tell me he couldn't make it back (he went home to measure) cause he was called into work.....Obama was visiting ,maybe he was a cop or security guard???? anyway he called again on Sunday and I thought this was a done deal. The piece was clearly.priced $1095 for one with a discount for the set.I told him $1800....he was shocked at the price,,,did he not see the price on the art????anyway willing to negociate I asked him what he was wanting to spend "under $1000." there was no way...needless to say I was not willing to go that low.....so even when a be-backer,bes-back it still isn't a done deal.