Well, after spending most of the summer and early fall in Delaware, NJ and Virginia, I'm nearly caught up on winter show applications, spreadsheet tallying, housecleaning, cat-feeding, new-neighbor meeting, and mailing out my 2013 calendars (not necessarily in order of importance). So time to crunch a few more numbers and figure out whether all that travel was worthwhile.
Last year, I spent three weeks with my brother in Pennsylvania and another five weeks at an extended stay hotel in the Jersey-side suburbs of Philadelphia, then rented a home 20 minutes from the beach for my final three shows. The lodging expenses killed me, and the show revenues weren't nearly able to keep up.
This year, I drove my van up in the early summer, then flew back and forth between FL and Atlantic City airport on Spirit Airlines. I booked shows so that I could fly up on a Thursday, drive to a hotel in Delaware (or Jersey shore), and do three shows in 17 days, then return to Atlantic City, park my van in third-party, offsite parking at the Ramada Inn just outside the city limits, and fly back home for a week or two. Then: Lather, rinse, repeat through the end of October.
Being able to return home was great for the psyche and the bank account (it costs me $550-$600 a week to be on the road, plus the show fees, vs. less than $400 for round-trip ticket plus parking). From summer 2011, I learned that there's nothing worse than staying for a week in an extended-stay hotel with no revenues coming in--unless it's booking a crappy show just to keep busy. (At the end of the season, I nabbed a Spirit Airlines credit card with a generous mileage rewards program, so hopefully I can reduce flight expenses even more in 2013.)
The other difference to the bottom line was that this year, I managed to have a couple of gangbuster shows (Rehoboth Beach, DE and Stockley Gardens (Norfolk)) to offset the dead ones (two wildlife art shows in Ocean City and Stone Harbor NJ, among others).
Stockley Gardens (Oct. 20-21) was the summer's most pleasant surprise. Held in and along four city blocks in an upscale downtown Norfolk neighborhood, this is one of those shows that residents circle on their calendars and plan for. Quality was high, as befits this very competitive show. Crowds were steady from the opening bell through close of the show, and never have I seen customers more focused on purchasing--and purchasing carefully. They browsed, marked their scorecards with their favorites, and came back to buy. If they had an issue (size, color, and--more rarely--price), they communicated it and were open to conversations to resolve it. Only once(!) all weekend did I hear "I'll think about it." Happily for me, it's a real 2-D loving crowd: painters and photographers did particularly well.
Despite tight on-street parking that made load-in more work than I would have liked, this show was truly a pleasure to do, and as professionally run (by volunteers) as any show I've ever participated in.
AFI member Dave Hinde, who lives in the area, also turned me on to a nice little show run by the Chesapeake Art Association in nearby Ocean View the previous weekend. As the name implies, the show runs right along the ocean, and during setup on Saturday morning the 30-40 mph gusts made setup a back-wrenching challenge. But the breezes died down a bit by 10 am, and the crowds were surprisingly steady for such a small show, particularly on Saturday. I wound up with a sales total about 50% more than I'd expected for a small, artist-run event--giving me a nice "bridge show" so I could spend extra time in the Norfolk/Portsmouth area. I headed out only a week before Hurricane Sandy headed up the coast, dealing a glancing blow to this area before hitting the Jersey shore.
The tidewater area of VA seems like an area worthy of more investment. Besides the shows I did (which included the Seawall Art Show in late August), there's Port Warwick, Virginia Beach Boardwalk, Gosport, and a few others.
Overall, the Jersey shore area shows were disappointing. Summer weather scuttled all, or part, of nearly every show I did in June and July, and the much-heralded Wheaton Arts Festival of Fine Craft in Millville NJ (also victimized by all-day rain on Sunday) wasn't much of sales event for 2-D artists. Beyond which, I miscalculated what would sell up there: I took larger canvases with me this summer, which have been selling well in Florida. But up North they didn't sell nearly as well as the smaller ones I'd shown in 2011. Like all of us, I'm hoping that the Jersey shore and other areas afflicted by Sandy rebuild better, and safer, than ever...but I doubt I'll spend as much time there in 2013 as I did in years past.
Comments
Did you do more shows in along the Eastern shore this year than last year? Were they different ones other than the good ones you mentioned in Stockley and Ocean View?
Any idea why your larger canvas prints sell better in Florida than in this area?
Are you able to do some shooting between shows, is your camera equipment part of your luggage?
Will you do as many shows in this area next year?
Maybe going back to those New Jersey shore towns will provide better sales next year, as insurance checks start to roll in. I remember being at Coconut Grove several months after Hurricane Andrew and the people were standing in line to buy art, not only was there insurance money from people replacing lost goods but the tradesmen, plumbers, electricians, contractors and other suppliers had money to spend. Perhaps there will be a resurgence next year in Jew Jersey also as a result.
Thanks for the mention of the Ocean View Art Show. It was our largest attendance in awhile, and the most artists. We hope to continue the trend in 2013. The show added almost $2000 to our scholarship fund, which will go to a couple lucky high school art students in May.