Buckhead Spring Art Festival was this mother's day weekend. I think it was the fifth year for this show and I have done them all and should have reviewed them all. Lots of past info written about this show. I will quickly go thru the logistics again but if you want greater detail just search past reviews.
Set up is on Friday in a beautiful park in Chastain Park Atlanta. You can drive up to your booth spot, drop off, then go park your car then come back and take your time setting up. Booths are along one side of the street and most people have room behind their tents. Many of the artists sit across from their tents and some can blow out. They have golf carts to run the artists back and forth from parking to their cars if needed. My booth isn't far from parking so I usually don't need a cart.
Saturday predicated rain and it was cloudy most of the day. The crowds weren't too big, I think the forecast scared everyone but it never really rained on us. This is the first time I brought lights to my booth and they made a difference in my opinion on the cloudy day. I had two big pieces leave that day and usually Sunday is my big day at this show. So I was happy.
The layout was a little different this year because there were concerts scheduled at the park in the evenings. Less booths at the beginning of the show, so instead of my booth being about 50 booths in I was about the fifth booth in. It was fun on Saturday afternoon getting to hear and peak at Il Divo warm up, especially considering how expensive tickets are to actually go into the amphitheatre to watch. Also David Bromstad from HGTV Color Splash came to the show and filmed and visited with all the artists. That was fun. I am a fan of his being a colorist. Tons of advertising for this event. It was all over the place, every magazine, website, newspaper, billboard, news channel on and on. Every AFFPS show there is lots of press on featured artists. Jenny Hennley made the AJC, I was featured in the buckhead newspaper and MArc Villanueva was featured in David magazine.It also happened to be my birthday on Saturday so I was very spoiled by the other artists and staff with lots of gifts from artists especially designed and created for me and even a flash mob preformed a shimmy bellydance routine with happy birthday around my tent, lol. Also the food trucks at this event are top notch. No funnel cakes to be found. I eat from the sushi truck, an ahi tuna salad that was amazing. I love that. Usually I don't buy festival food. But AFFPS shows always have high end food because they attract a higher end of patrons
Sunday the rain left us and it was sunny and warm. Tons of people and lots of buyers. I had great sales and pages of people I have to follow up within the next few weeks for custom work. This will keep me very very busy for the next few months. If you have read my other posts on this show, this is the norm. Good sales and great follow up sales.
Load out was the easiest yet at my end. This can be a difficult show to get out of because of the long narrow road the show runs along. I am pretty fast to break down, and I had my double booth. Break down started at 6. Broken down with a pass by 6:20. Fully loaded by 6:40 and driving out and off to deliveries.
This was my 5th show in 6 weeks. I have next weekend off, really need it but so far all shows except for Dogwood have been great this spring.
Comments
This was my very first big art festival. I did a tiny local spring festival (about 10 vendors) and an small art crawl in Nashville last year, but this was a whole new experience for me. Talked my oldest daughter and one of my granddaughters to come along to help. We all had a great time, even though my sales were terrible, just sold two pieces, a framed canvas print and a matted print. We were very impressed by the AFPPS staff and how well they ran the show. Everything went smoothly.
Even though my sales were terrible (and several of my neighbors said their's were too), the highlight of the show for me was when the judges presented me with the second place ribbon. I really wasn't expecting anything like that! They said they were impressed with the quality and presentation of my framed canvas prints.
I had almost decided not to go to the show due to not having enough time to prepare. I had allocated, what I thought, would be plenty of time to get everything ready to show. Mind you, I was starting from scratch…no tent, no panels,no lights, no trailer, very little stock. But my regular photography work was pretty slow at the time so I wasn't worried. Things went smooth at first. I found a Trimline and ProPanels right here at Artfairinsiders (Thank you Kurt and Edwige Moses!), drove down to North Florida to get it. Then I built a track lighting system that has ten 17 watt LED's. Still had about a month to go to get it all done. Started building some nice black float frames for my gallery wraps. About three weeks to go and one of my real estate clients calls. They have five BIG mansions for me to shoot, interiors and exteriors. (I specialize in elevated photography and normally just do elevated exterior shots for my real estate clients, but this particular real estate company has been really great to me so if they ask me if I'll do the interiors I'll take care of them!) I knew that that many BIG photo shoots would make show prep time a bit tighter but I figured I could handle it, I'd just get a little less sleep. Next day I get an email from another agent with a list of about 20 more high end homes and estates to do, all requiring coordination scheduling with owners, etc. Well, there goes the show, I thought.
But I plugged on, getting even less sleep. Down to the last week before the show and I still had to find a buyer for my flatbed equipment hauler trailer because I needed that money to buy an enclosed trailer (which I still had to find), still had a bunch of printing, mounting and framing to do, still had to figure out how I would arrange everything in my booth. All the while, the RE agents were requesting more and more real estate photos, including twilight exterior shots.
On the Saturday before the show I finally found a buyer for my flatbed trailer. On Sunday I combed through Craigslist and found a nice 6 x 12 enclosed trailer. Picked up the enclosed trailer on Monday on the way home from a photoshoot. Real estate agents had me busy all day and night Tuesday and Wednesday. I told the agents that Thursday was MINE, because I HAD TO GET READY FOR A SHOW! They were okay with that. Got up and started working at 4:00 AM Thursday morning and worked 21 hours straight. And finally everything was ready to load up! I did it!
It was probably a good thing we didn't sell much because I sure didn't have any extra stock to replace it with!
Anyway, we had a blast! We met a lot of great people. Our neighbors were fantastic. And to the guy whose dog crapped right in front of my tent on Sunday afternoon, THANK YOU for picking it up right away!!!
I did manage to totally embarrass myself during load out Sunday evening. Our booth was about 3/4 of the way through the route. We got everything broke down, I got a load out pass, walked down the hill to my truck and trailer, and proceeded to drive to my spot to load up. The route was pretty narrow and there were a few places where it was pretty hairy getting through, and a couple places where I had to wait a few minutes for vehicles to move. It wasn't until I saw the port-a-pots at the end of the route that I realized I had driven right past my booth spot, past my daughter, past my granddaughter, and past all of our nice neighbors! Oops. On my second attempt I asked the nice girl taking the load-out passes to pretend she didn't see me. She made me feel just a little bit better when she said I wasn't the first to miss their spot today. My daughter has started calling me "Drive-By".
I look forward to doing many more art festivals. Please tell me they won't all be this hard to get ready for!
This was my first year doing this particular show and I had great sales, especially on Sunday. The crowd was great and they were actively buying. My booth was located more in the middle of the show and we never saw the HGTV folks. I guess they only needed so much material so quit filming after a bit. We also could not hear the music from the amphitheater. My husband and I are very fast to break down so he was the first to get a pass to bring the car down. Even so, because we were blocked in a couple of spots by food trucks leaving and other road blocks, we didn't actually exit the show until 7 p.m. - still pretty good. The trick I think now is to have a booth located near the exit end of the show (which is where the HGTV people entered) so that once you are buttoned up, you don't have to attempt to navigate down the long, narrow, one-way street to get out.
Every show that we have done that was organized by AFPPS has been extremely well-organized and artist-friendly with booth sitters who come around to provide snacks and water and even ponchos when we were scheduled to set up in the rain. Chastain Park is especially beautiful too and in a very well-to-do section of Atlanta. The fact that the show was over Mother's Day helped too as many people were out with the express purpose of finding gifts. I would definitely do this one again.
Love your reviews, Melanie. Congratulations on this success! Rest well!
You always make this show sound like a cool party, Melanie. Glad to see it the good sales continue. Isn't this the show where Jimmy Carter showed up last year? Is the neighborhood so wonderful that celebrities show up?
Thanks for the review - glad to hear you had great sales! Sounds like you need your weekend off!