We recently hosted a podcast, "The No Mistake Mistake Art Fair Career: 10 Tips from the Experts"
Our guests were Larry Berman and Bruce Baker. Larry focused on getting into the show and Bruce focused on make the sale and connecting with the customer.
The podcast presented a countdown on the best tips starting at #10.
Our experts were Bruce Baker, a jeweler, who began consulting full time in 2005 sharing his retailing and business experience with a variety of groups ranging from Artists, Main Street Merchants, to Farm Market vendors. He has conducted over 600 marketing and production related workshops in the past two decades. His focus was on how to sell your work at art fairs and craft shows.
Bruce's Tips:
Top ten things to do to insure craft/trade show success
10. Brand your business
9. Send positive vibes always, without expectations
8. Post show follow up
7. Make your displays match your art, Find a unique look
6. Use your walls to display your work and promote your brand
5. Display your Art so customers don't have to work to see it
Display for easy touch responses
4. Lighting. Have it. Focus it on your work
3. Create impressive work.
Have an Impressive display
2. Develop products that customers want to buy
Pay attention to consumer trends
1. Don't be afraid to sell your art
Listen to the podcast as Bruce explains each of these tenets for success.
Our other expert was Larry Berman, a photographer, who has has been exhibiting at art fairs for over 30 years and was one of the first to recognize the importance of digital imagery in the art fair business. and He has built a career improving jury images for artists and/or photographing their artwork. He has hosted seminars on jury images and does consulting with artists and art fairs.
Larry's Top Ten Tips:
10 – Choosing which shows to apply to
Research shows before you apply. Find out if it’s a good fit for your style or price range. Too often basic questions about shows are asked on the forums after the artist has applied and been accepted.
It’s OK to apply to more than one show on a weekend to try and keep your schedule full. But choose your shows carefully to make sure they are worth the extra money if the shows you cancel do not have a refund policy.
9 – Understand how the shows you apply to jury so you can choose which images to apply with and what order to put them in.
JAS uses monitors and the jurors see the images 3 over 2 on a gray background, large enough to see a body of work. The artist statement is centered in the second row between the #4 and #5 images. Some of the better fine craft shows include the artist name.
95% of the ZAPP shows use monitors for jurying, and for most of those shows the jurors work from home. The jurors see the images one at a time on a black background. So your first and last images should be the strongest for a good first and last impression. The jurors can spend time looking at your images.
5% of the ZAPP shows project the images for their jurors, and some of them are the top shows. The jurors see the images projected simultaneously with one image per screen. Therefore your presentation should be chosen to keep the jurors eyes centered. Your booth image should not have any distractions so the jurors glance at it and dismiss it as being professional. Jurors get to see your entire presentation for usually less than 20 seconds so the less time they spend looking at the booth, the more time they have to evaluate your art.
8 - Black borders yes or no
It says on the ZAPP web site that black borders are no longer necessary. Because the shows that project the images haven’t changed how they jury since ZAPP started over 10 years ago, your images should always be uploaded at 1920 pixels square with black borders. If not, when you apply to the top shows that project the images, ZAPP will resize and add black borders to your images possibly degrading them. The more detail in your artwork, the more chance of the images degrading. Making a change to a JPEG and saving it degrades the image, no matter what quality level you save it at.
The borders have never been an issue for ZAPP monitor jurying because the jurors have always seen the images on a black web page. The black borders are to make sure all images project the same size. Because JAS uses a gray background, if you want to use your ZAPP images with black borders, make sure they don’t distract.
7 – Good photography
It goes without saying that good photography is essential, especially if you’re in a competitive medium like jewelry. Good photography takes the photography out of the equation and lets the art work be juried on its own merit. Don’t be too creative with the photography because you want the jurors to say “wow, great art” instead of saying “wow, great photograph of that art”.
6 – Backgrounds should match and contain neutral tones and not introduce color. Gray, black, or graduated black to white work best as backgrounds. The artwork should pop off the background, not get lost in it or distracted by it. White background should be reserved for web sites or magazine publication. In a dark jury room white blinds the jurors and prevents detail in the work from being seen.
2D work like paintings or photographs shouldn’t have any background. Crop to the edges of the art and do not include mats or frames. Your booth image shows the jurors your presentation. And don’t include signatures or any other identification on the artwork or in your booth.
5 – Photograph large or difficult to light objects under your white canopy. Your artwork looks great when set up at a show so why not use that same quality of light to photograph it for jurying. Hang 3 side walls and lay the fourth wall on the ground to reflect light back up. Just like using a 10x10 EZCube.
4 – Camera settings
Cameras are set wrong when new. Besides not being set to capture the most pixels at the highest quality, they are set to give shallow depth of field with a faster shutter speed so that pictures of your children or pets can be taken without blurring. The settings need to be the opposite to photograph art. Low ISO, stop the lens down for maximum depth of field and use a tripod so the camera can choose a longer shutter speed for the correct exposure.
3 – Consistency in your body of jury images. Something I learned from listening to Bruce Baker when we’ve done workshops together – when you choose pieces to use for jurying, if you choose from pieces made at the same time they’ll look like they come from the same mind and they’ll go together. Also, not every piece that looks good to you will photograph well. Be prepared to photograph a few extra pieces so you can test which group will make the best presentation.
2 – In general, what sells well doesn’t jury well and what juries well doesn’t sell well. Artists tend to think their best-selling artwork is what they should jury with. Usually more commercial, popular, or cliché work sells well but experienced jurors look for something different. Something they’ve never seen before or something they’ve seen but in a way they’ve never seen it.
1 – The 3 deadly sins of jurying are sex, politics and religion. All three are topics people feel strongly about and are guaranteed to turn off at least as many jurors as are turned on by them.
Today, Nawal is still designing and making tiles in Ann Arbor. Her companies, Motawi Tileworks and Rovin Ceramics, employ more than 30 people. The tiles are sold in over 350 shops, galleries and showrooms across the country.
