SONO, so bad

This is a review of the 39th Annual Sono Arts Celebration, held on Connecticut's "Gold Coast" town of South Norwalk, on Sat/Sun, August 16-17, 2014. The "celebration" consists of an art show, several music stages, food court and children's activities, all contained within two cross streets that juncture at the SoNo train trestle overpass.

I had been hearing mostly bad things about this show for several years but jeweler acquaintances supported it and said with the large crowds, it was still a "good selling show" for them. I decided to give it another shot, "jurying in" with both my line of porcelain jewelry and decorative porcelain wares. I had exhibited at this show many years ago, mostly in the nineties with my last participation being around 2004/2005. It was never a stellar show for me but yielded a decent profit and good times with its regular stable of artists and the ever popular "Puppet Parade". It was fun. There used to be great art by 200 or so artists run by very capable artist-organizers, even awards and a "somewhat" buying public. None of this remains. Partly due to the "somewhat" buying public but largely due to the state of things in general. South Norwalk has seen better days and this event has morphed into nothing but a crowded street fair.

I was impressed with the show's "Pre-show" materials that the management company emailed. The info was clear, well organized and alluded to some perks which led me to be very optimistic about the event. Not much of it proved to be all that accurate. I had the earliest set-up time of 5:30-6 am and the line of cars to get into the festival street hadn't moved until after 6 am because no one could find the staff to let us all in. With the light of day, the vacant storefronts and the homeless sitting on the benches were unsettling but nothing proved as maddening as the unswept streets, littered by several days' worth of refuse. Several other inconsistencies came into light as well: parking fees, no vegetarian option with Sat/Sun's free lunch, artist hospitality tent not well stocked. But this is the small stuff.

There were about 65 "artist" booths with only 60% really qualifying. The remaining were filled with buy-sell (cut-rate at that), DIY booths (henna, silk scarves, etc) and designer booths (work designed by them, made elsewhere). One such designer booth was the hit of the show with an under $10 product neither constructed nor decorated by them (it says it on their website). Quality overall was abysmal and clearly NOT juried at all. The music was not suitable for any art show with very loud hard rock throughout both days. Two days of nice weather (sun/clouds, temp's in the upper seventies, low eighties) brought out the crowds but sadly they were not there for the art fair, rather just to walk the streets.

Though, I did make a small profit (80% jewelry sales, 20% ceramic sales; $65 the highest priced item sold), I would not return to this event. It was uncomfortable. The puppet parade wasn't even fun anymore, with only a handful of puppets making the rounds...if you blinked, you missed it. For anyone who remembers, this used to be a huge draw, as art organizations, clubs, high schoolers, etc., would construct life-size puppets to parade with accompanying drums throughout the festival streets. It would last 20 minutes or so. I was so bummed. And yes, the jewelers who had done so well in years past, were complaining about how dreadful sales were this year, too. Even a couple of painters who had enjoyed "great" sales last year, echoed the jewelers' sentiments. In the end, it's a street fair in a with an expensive buy-in. So sad.

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  • ya, I did this show for the first time last year, too bad I didn't write a review after that or maybe I could have saved you a weekend. It was bad.

  • What a shame Colleen and Don.  Thanks for the info.

  • I was there too and you beat me to a review. This was the first time I had done the show and the last. I started to have bad feeling shortly after we got our acceptance to the show. We travel to the shows with a camping trailer and my first question was if they had RV parking. I was told they would check and get back me. I followed up a few more times but then gave up and made other arrangements. I did finally get an answer after I got my setup packet.

    The setup packet arrived the Monday before the show. The first thing I did was look at the booth assignment list to what booth I was in and who was next to me. That is when I noticed that I had the same booth number as someone else. I was also concerned with the number of commercial and non profit booths in the list. I also noticed that they had obviously scanned the first page of the document into the PDF and had managed to cut off bottom of the page. I still don't know what it was supposed to say there.

    When we got there in the morning to setup the booths were not setup as the maps showed. This was just the first of many things that were different from the setup instructions. I really think someone took a previous years setup instructions and changed the dates.

    So initially we thought we had a good space. That was until we realized that the main stage was across the street from us. We found this out just after the show opened when student from the school of rock started playing. We were about 100ft from the front of the stage with nothing to block the sound. The music went on till the end of the day and the only difference on Sunday was who was playing. I thought I was going to an art show but it turned out I was at a concert. I couldn't talk to my customers and I might even have some hearing loss :)

  • Thanks for your comment, Christina. That's why I wrote it...I really don't like to criticize but I guess I'm at the age where I care less about keeping my trap shut and feel that if others are on the fence about doing it and they expect an art show, to pass up on it. When I was looking for reviews on this one, there wasn't much said excepting for non-buyers...it goes much further than that!

  • Thanks for the critique, Colleen...sorry it was such a bummer but glad you shared it with the rest of us because now we know.  Too bad everything can't stay the way we remember it, I hate it when good things stop being good...is that called change?

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