The Levis Commons art fair was held on Saturday and Sunday, August 17 and 18 in the middle of an outdoor shopping mall in the Toledo metro area. It was put on by The Guild out of Michigan.
Set up was on Friday afternoon and early evening with a nicely organized and managed move in. While the show organizers had their act together, the mall security folks had mixed signals and a few things in error, but nothing that some common sense couldn’t take care of. The booths were spaced up and down a central avenue in the middle of the town center type shopping area with ample space to park vans and unload. The only drawback was limited space behind booths for storage, which was more of an issue for the tents whose backs were to a store front. It was more of a neatness thing for the merchants than a space issue. Those of us down the middle with our backs to a center island were able to get away with a little more although most folks kept it to a minimum. It wasn’t a big issue, since parking was relatively close by.
Intentional or random, it was amusing to note that the section I was in was comprised of artists from Indiana, with five of them from Ft. Wayne or nearby and myself from Indianapolis.
Saturday started off a little sluggish with only a few customers walking around at 10:00AM. It picked up quickly and I made a couple of sales of framed pieces by 11:30 and thought I was getting off to a good start, but unfortunately it fizzled out from there. A woodworker next to me was doing okay with sales of lower price point wooden puzzles, but the rest of the row kept saying they were down from last year with the usual figure being about 50% down. A jeweler said that the show was never a huge success for them, but decent enough for them to keep coming back for the last six years. Having free lodging and meals with relatives was a major reason to come with the lower expenses for them.
Sunday was a bit better for me with several pieces from the flip bin helping the profitability. Unfortunately the total sales didn’t push itself high enough to turn a profit, although the best I can say is that the loss was the least I’ve incurred this summer. Just so it doesn't sound like I’m in the wrong business, there have been some shows that did turn a reasonable profit this summer. Just not enough of them.
For once the weather was perfect, in the mid 70s, no high winds and just gentle cooling breezes. It was sunny without being blistering, and overall it couldn't have been any better for an art fair. So you have to wonder why the attendance wasn't higher.
Traffic in the booth was slow, only occasionally getting more than one group in at a time. I didn’t see a lot of packages being carried around outside, and the attendance figures for the show may be optimistic. My gut feel for the numbers is more like about 5,000 to 8,000 across both days as I just didn’t see large swarms of people milling through the aisles. Another artist mentioned the mall is going through some financial problems with the banks clamping down on some of the stores. The story is that the shopping mall isn’t being patronized at the level of expectations it was supposed to have, and that’s reflected on the art show attendance.
Other artists seem to be doing okay at the show. The quality for the most part was high, with a few exceptions. Out toward the west end of the show was one booth that looked like it had teleported in from a flea market, and you have to wonder how much difference was from the jury slide to the real thing. The take away I received was this show is a mid level one in terms of sales, and that has as much to do with traffic as anything else. I was told that if the customers liked you here, they would support and buy from you. Somehow, that seems to be the case anywhere ;-)
I put my time to good use while sitting behind the booth. I set up a small table, taped some foam core scrap to the top, and proceeded to cut some mattes and frame some pieces. I managed to get seven 18x24 pieces done, so that’s help for the next show.
Getting that new body of work done is going slower than I thought it would, so in the interim, it’s a matter of pulling the slower moving pieces off the wall and making what’s there look stronger. Talking to R.C. Fulwiler gave me some food for thought and some ideas to try for the remaining six shows on the schedule.
Teardown went smoothly, although I was a little surprised to see a lot of people jump the gun and start tearing down at 15-20 minutes before the whistle blew at 5:00 on Sunday. Then again, there weren’t a whole lot of customers walking around looking for a last minute bargain. There weren’t that many walking around period.
End result is I’ll apply one more time to see how it goes with different work next year.
Comments
Karen also gives good advice ;)
What is your time worth? Do you find yourself doing the same thing over and over again? How can you make better use of the hours in your life?
"End result is I’ll apply one more time to see how it goes with different work next year."
Robert! Did we not have a similar discussion about Easton in Columbus?
So maybe you're doing this show as a fill-in when you have nothing else to do and need some free time to mat photos. Just remember that these shopping mall shows don't get anything even remotely approximating an "art fair" buyer. Stop torturing yourself, she said.
Thanks for the well thought out review Robert. I've done Levis Commons several times (not this year) and have had pretty good shows there EXCEPT when I was located in the middle "island" area which I believe gets less traffic than the outside perimeter. And as you said traffic for this show isn't terrific anyways so it's better to increase your exposure by being located elsewhere. I think most people go around the outside perimeter and head to the parking lot instead of going back to the middle booths. If you go back next year ask to be located in one of the spaces on the outside perimeter and hopefully your sales will improve.
wise comments from a wise blonde.
I like this work, Robert. Yes, it won't sell as quickly as a pretty door or a view of Venice, but it can be attractive to younger people who think they are cutting-edge. They can be sold for a higher price point, framed attractively and a body of these will get you into better shows. Do you know Allan Teger's work? www.bodyscapes.com? Allan is not searching for "what people will buy" necessarily, he creates work that they do buy -- and they are not inexpensive. He is not pricing to beat out the next guy. Also, while searching around do visit the top shows websites and again see what is getting into the shows. I can assure you these people are not selling $20 photos. Be brave, be true, be the best you can be. You've got the technical background, now how about being an artist?
Thanks for the support Nels, it's become a PITA trying to stay on top of what the public is buying. What was interesting quite a few years back was discovering the work I was doing didn't become commercially viable until about seven years later after I initially did the shooting. I was changing directions slowly back then and since I was only doing about 6-8 shows a year, with only 3 or 4 of them being decent shows, it took a while to get the lay of the land as it were. In business, the trick is to catch the wave at the peak. Too soon and you're not going to get enough momentum. Too late, and the energy is already spent. I decided seven years was too much of a pipeline, and shifted toward something that was more accessible. That's worked for about the last 8 years, actually 5 as the last three have been a steady downhill slide.
RC has rightly pointed out that photographers have to stop copying each other and get something besides slot canyons and European doors and windows. What has been aggravating as hell is the best original work I've done is old enough to vote and gets a lot of attention but doesn't sell for much. Humor seems to be the odd man out, everybody enjoys it but won't pay much for it.
The pieces have been $20 for an 8.5x11 print since 1991. For that low of a price point, I stopped doing wet darkroom work on them and scanned a set of master prints. They go in an inexpensive but attractive plastic frame. Mark them higher or a nicer frame, and the sales drop. Price them lower, and the sales don't increase. I've had the work in galleries before but the amount I made from that was less than what they would get at one art fair. Here's an example of that work, but it's a dead end direction financially. They're good for a nice baseline, or bread and butter sales, but not enough to warrant filling an entire booth with them. They get a spot in the front to stop traffic flow and bring people in, and they work for that. Larger pieces don't sell, but one or two large ones help stop traffic.
My next show isn't until Labor Day at Upper Arlington, so the short term project is to set up the tent in front of my garage and start weeding out the slow movers and do a better job of seeing what works together for stronger impact.
Thanks for the very thorough review. You gave out a lot of helpful info. I know it is tough picking your way through the minefield of art shows, but stick with it and find your niche. Good luck, Nels.
Don't do gum prints. They are beautiful but the public does not understand the process and you will find very few buyers. Trust me on that one. I have seen several guys in my career try it, and they came and went with no success.
You have to deal with the market out there, and it is not real sophisticated for the most part especially AT SECOND TIER SHOWS LIKE LEVI COMMONS.
This was my first Guild show, so I had no idea what to expect. Like I said, it was ran fairly smoothly despite the mall security guys and their misdirections.
The artist next to me had a nice stream of sales with price points between $20-40 and some larger/higher priced work. Most of their sales were the lower points. More packages were noticed on Sunday than Saturday but not in great numbers. Looking across the street I didn't see any booths with crowds like they were giving away free beer. I think you hit it on the head that it's a show to build a following and a decent return, although it's not going to be a bongo bucks show but a respectable one nonetheless. It's a show that's going to call for working a mailing list and Facebook.
It's amazing how we use the weather as an excuse; it's too hot; it's too rainy; it's too cold; it's too windy, and of all things; it's too good to go to an art fair. Maybe it's back to the basics and give away free beer. One little show in Indianapolis gives away free soft drinks and hot dogs with no limits on them. Food for thought ;-)
As far as new work goes, I'm scattered as hell on that one. The flower shots aren't working as well as I would like them so none of those are going to help this year. There are about a half dozen older images that lend themselves well to introspective text that I could get done by Labor Day. The trick will be figuring out the presentation; text on image or as a dyptich.
I wandered over and checked out Chris Maher's work on Sunday. He wasn't in the booth so I wasn't able to speak with him. I rarely see nudes at the shows and had middling success with them when I started, but those are worth revisiting. I have a tremendous back "catalog", if you will, of figurative work that I shot from roughly 1978 to about 2004 that is is either studio based B&W, or figurative work outdoors in a sort of Arcadian setting. Much of that work was never printed, as only a few were used for projects back then. There are two 18 gallon totes filled with negatives in files, about half of which are medium format negatives.
Reworking and revisting some older work may be the short term solution, but I'm looking for something with a more visceral punch. As RC said, we don't need more European doors and windows, and I've had mainly New Orleans doors and windows for the last several years. Yeah, I've got a bunch of similar stuff I took in northern Europe that's not seen the light of day, but it's more of the same. Again, working on the short term, some heavy editing of displayed work is in order to cull the weaker images and raise the impact of what I do have. Heh, I may have to spring for the ZAPP conference and get into some of the portfolio review sessions. I've got free lodging down there, so the expenses will be kept down.
The longer term goal is to get away from inkjet prints (yeah, right after I've already plunked down for an Epson 4900) and do gum bichromate prints in large scale and do full color printing. That's time consuming but the idea is to do upscale work at a much higher price point. At this point, I'm just not happy with the results I'm getting, and I'm the one that has to change in order to change the results.
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