I preface this review by saying that I absolutely love doing Paragon shows... I have a lot of respect for Bill as a director and appreciate what he was trying to do for New Jersey by offering a free booth space to all the artists who got juried in this year. I've done 4 other Paragon shows since last year and my average sales is over $3000 at each show, so needless to say I went into this weekend with high expectations. Sadly they were not to come to fruition. I wasnt even going to do the show being a 10.5 hour drive for me and I've never done a festival in Jersey before, but I was lured in with the free booth space and thought I would give it a shot. Sales-wise, this was my worst show yet. In fact, I came very close to zeroing out for the weekend!
Friday started off badly with Tropical Storm Andrea hitting the east coast hard. Flooding and horrible traffic caused my GPS to divert us off the highway in eastern PA and we ended up in downtown Philly, in torrential rain, on a Friday night, towing a trailer through the roundabouts. A road closure even took us further off the beaten path and into some sort of concert venue where we had to talk our way out of having to pay for parking to get through and back to the main road. I think the trailer should have made it obvious enough that we were not there for a concert... anyway, after an additional 1.5 hours we made it back to the highway and yet another toll road (over $95 just on toll roads this weekend!).
Bill had sent out an email earlier in the day that there might be a break in the rain from 4-8p and setup would be available at that time but warning it would still be very windy. After all our diversions, we arrived much too late to even attempt to set up, which I was just fine with as the weather had taken another toll for the worse and was causing mass flooding again. We opted to wake up at 3:30am and set up super early.
We arrived at the festival location at 5am. Unlike most Paragon shows, this one is in a big field, which unfortunately was still incredibly flooded from the night before. Literally giant pools of water were all over, making it impossible to drive up (like we were supposed to) or to even dolly in so we had to carry everything. The booths seemed rather oddly spaced out and didnt follow a great order (although almost everyone got a corner). One tent had blown over during the night and was completely upside down. There were quite a few empty spaces where artists apparantly decided not to come due to the weather. We laid out as many tarps as possible, set up all our tables, and sacrificed a couple extra propanels in water to have places to lay out the paintings. Surprisingly we were still able to set up everything in about 4 hours and were ready to sell! Our booth had a large puddle at the front but we were one of the luckier ones. One artist had so much water in front of her booth that it was impossible for people to get into it. She did an amazing job though with finding wood planks down by the beach and created her own boardwalk in front of her tent. I should have taken a picture. It was absolutely ingenious and looked beautiful!
And then we waited. And we waited. And we waited.... all day. Where were the people? We waited in rain, we waited in wind, we waited in a tiny sun. People just didnt come. There were some, and some were carrying good sized packages, but there sure werent many. I could wait 5-10 minutes sometimes before even one person would walk by my booth. The people who did come sure werent interested in my more modern paintings. The only work I really saw selling were landscape photographs of LBI beach, other traditional beach/ocean related art, and silk scarves patrons made themselves (thats another story... I'm not sure if scarves patrons themselves make should be allowed in a fine art festival). The silk scarf guy had patrons surrounding his booth all day watching others make scarves and waiting in line to make their own. The majority of us just sat there. It was my first day to ever zero out. The fiber artist behind me zeroed out. The people on both sides of them also zeroed out. The photographer next to me made one sale. The wooden instrument artist across from me also zeroed out. After all day in bleak weather, 13 hours in soaked and ruined shoes, and no sales I was thoroughly disappointed and regretting my decision to try out the show. However after a good meal at Red Lobster and a tall beer, I was able to put on a more positive attitude and forced myself to believe good things were in store for Sunday.
Sunday the weather was much better. Beautiful sun and low 80s. If for nothing else, it would be good for tanning. I made one $300 sale early and so did my neighbors behind me and across from me, so we were all thinking today would be a vindicating day! A furniture maker who made beautiful chairs sold a $2000 piece. The crowds were good in the morning and there was decent buying energy, but very soon the crowds died down and energy went back to a zero. Again, the only work I saw being bought was very traditional beach related art. Even the "beach art" that was more modern wasnt selling. There was one booth that I thought was really great with found objects they used to create ocean animals, like helmets for sea turtles shells, and driftwood for bird nests. It was really unique and ingenous, but I didnt see much leave their booth. I guess if you have traditional beach art then it might be a good venue to try, but otherwise it seemed like a bust for most people. In the last hour, I managed to pull out one good $600 sale, which after expenses brought my profit to just over $200. So I didnt loose money on the show, but I sure did come scary close. If I'd had to pay for the booth fee I certainly would have. I think the people on all sides of me ended up loosing money. Really disappointing as I said, I love Paragon shows and I've never done a bad show with them before. First for everything I guess. I'm just glad it wasnt my first loss! It sure did come close!
