I'll borrow my description format from the fine blogs just posted on Gasparilla. First, the Good:
* You can't find a nicer venue. Mercato "Lifestyle Center" (I guess "shopping center" is too bourgeois a term for the moneyed denizens of North Naples) is located smack on US 41, a couple of miles north of the city's celebrated downtown. The shops are trendy, the center impeccably clean, and the brick pavers pleasing to the eye.
* It's run by Naples Art Association (a.k.a. von Liebig Arts Center), who put on several other well-known shows downtown, including the Naples Renaissance, Naples National, and the Downtown Naples Festival of the Arts coming up at the end of the month.
* Accordingly, they have a strong reputation among the arts community. Tthis paid off in a full roster of 125 artists, all very high quality, and a good mix for the paying patrons ($4 at the gate) to choose from.
* The city Powers That Be like that they've had lots of experiencerunning shows, and they run a brisk, efficient, and very tight ship. Load-in started at 3 AM on show day (and you thought Howard Alan shows were sleep-depriving!). However, I have no idea how many artists took advantage (?) of this opportunity; I arrived from my Fort Myers home around 6:30.
* There was good signage to the check-in booth. The process was quick, and a detailed show map was drawn up on a whiteboard (a nice idea; it made it easy for assistant director Nancy Doyal to point the way to your booth.) Not that you could really go wrong: the booths were laid out in a long, straight line down the central avenue of the mall, er, Lifestyle Center.
* What's more, several headset-equipped staff members, including show director Marianne Megela, walked along with your vehicle to your spot, and made sure that you followed the rules by backing precisely into your space. You were expected to unload immediately and quickly onto the sidewalk--Marianne even helped me unload--and head immediately to the artist parking.
It was staged with uncommon military precision, and if you trusted the process, it went extremely well. More about that later.
* There were certainly buyers afoot on Saturday: The painter of nautical subjects next to me sold one of his 4x5-foot originals twenty minutes after the show opened, and kept selling throughout the day, and easily sold into five figures. Hallelujah! to him! Everyone else seemed to be doing fair-to-good, though I was busy enough that I didn't have much time to walk the entire show. Sales on Sunday seemed to slow for nearly everyone, though. Not sure why, as the day was bright and beautiful. But as show vets can attest, those things happen and seem to defy explanation sometimes.
* It was a comfortable show to work. Booth-sitters wore bright vests, took pains to compliment your artwork, and brought water around if you needed it. Nancy and Mark, the show assistants I dealt with, were cheerful and friendly. The wide avenues had plenty of room for folks to navigate, and there was lots of room behind the booths for storage. (Though the brick pavers were uncomfortable to stand on all day. If you do this show, bring padding for your rug! )
The Bad:
* Attendance at the show was only 4,000, based on paid attendance. Some of my customers commented that they didn't know about this new show until the day before the event .
* Compounding the problem: Because of the center's design and the show's location, the show tents were barely visible from US 41, which surely hurt curiosity traffic.
The Ugly:
* Did I mention that load-in/out were staged with military precision? Unfortunately, that included several episodes I witnessed where artists who broke the rules or didn't follow directions were sternly rebuked in an in-your-face, boot-camp style that I hadn't seen since my days in est training. By the end of the show, I was half-expecting transgressors to be ordered to "drop and give me twenty" (pushups).
That really seemed unnecessarily harsh. After all, it's a first-year show, and it's unreasonable to expect artists to have 100% familiarity and execution right out of the box. That really left a bad taste in my mouth...and I wasn't even one of the transgressors. Rules are rules, and they should be followed. But there's a way to enforce them without belittling the artists the show will need to survive...and thrive.
BY THE WAY: Boulderbrook Productions (Richard P Sullivan) put on the Naples Masters Art Festival this same weekend. How 'bout a review of that show? Anyone??
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