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A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of doing the Royal Oak Farmers Market Holiday Show. It was a winner for a first time event and it has the potential to be one of the better shows in the Metro Detroit area. This show is put on by the Guild. This is the same group that has its own Ann Arbor Show, the two Birmingham shows and a few others within a hundred miles of Ann Arbor.

First a little history. This show was started a couple of years ago as the Ann Arbor Holiday Show. It was held at the Eastern Michigan university arena where Eastern plays its basketball being part of the MAC. It was a strange place for a show because of the location. The arena is built into the ground so as a customer, you enter at ground level and walk down to the floor. This was not so good if you were old or had a hard time walking. If you ever attend a sporting event you know what I mean. And, yet, it was a good show for most of us. I was looking forward to doing it again last year until I looked at the dates and saw that it was the week before Christmas. The reason for this was that EMU had home basketball games the weekends leading up to Christmas and The Guild couldn't get the arena and earlier. So, I skipped it last year.

This year, they decided to move it to Royal Oak at the Farmers Market building the week before Thanksgiving. My first thoughts were "not another show in Royal Oak, bleech." Then I went to the web site and looked at who was already in the show and I was impressed with the quality of the artists who were doing it. Plus, if I did the show, I could have Thanksgiving and spend time with my brothers. So, I did the show. I had very low expectation because I don't really have holiday items. I thought that maybe I could pay for my trip and have some fun. Surprise, surprise, I did twice what I expected to do. I got to hang out with my brothers and their families, went to a Red Wings game, watched Michigan lose to Ohio State (lol), took a side trip to Ann Arbor to see some friends, dropped off some pieces to the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Association gallery that I sell out of year round, and had a generally great time.

The Guild tried some things with this show that was somewhat new and different. The show was held on a Thursday and Friday, probably because it was in use on Saturday and Sunday with farmers coming in to sell their produce and the other stuff that gets sold at farmers markets. While it wouldn't be my choice days to have a show, I think it worked out. Another thing they did was run the show from 12-9 PM both days. The reason they gave for extending the hours until 9 was that they wanted to take advantage of all the people that come to downtown Royal Oak to eat and hang out at the bars at night. Those people didn't come to the show and the few that did were not buyers. I had no sales after 6 both days and the people who did come, were there just to be entertained. I'm not a fan, anymore, of entertaining people with my artwork. If I have any influence, it would be to change the times to 10 AM- 6 PM.

The one thing the Guild did above all else that made this show work is that they sent some targeted email to specific zip codes from their database of loyal customers. They sent a listing of all the artists at the event with a thumbnail of their work. Since the show had a number of top quality artists, that email was impressive. I know that worked because I had customers who told me they came because they knew I was there. Two of them bought multiple pieces to give as presents. It wasn't crowded, but, that didn't matter. The people who did attend were knowledgeable sophisticated buyers. It was my kind of crowd. There were not many walking zombies except maybe in the evening. Many shows like to tell you how big their crowds are and most of them are there just to look or to see the music and all the other distractions. If you eliminate all those people, most shows would look like this one. I heard that many of those people who attended called the city to tell them what I nice show it was and how impressed they were with the art and the artists.

This show has earned a good reputation and should be better attended in the future. Hopefully, the Guild will keep the quality of the art high. I liked that there were only 85 booths. I hope that stays the same. Also, the art was the focal point of the event. I've pointed this out many times, that the best shows only have artwork and very little, if any, sideshows like a music stage. There were a few food vendors and they were high quality too, including Slows Barbecue.

Setup and take down were are easy as it gets. Setup was on Wednesday or Thursday before noon. There were plenty of people on hand to help unload and load back into your vans. Nicole and Allan did a great job of helping artists with any problems that might have occurred. Their crew was impressively friendly and helpful.

In conclusion, this show could be a gem for years to come as it gains a reputation. It is imperative that the quality remains high and the number of artists stay low. There may be a temptation to make it bigger, charge more for booths, and add things that take away from the artwork. There may be a temptation to add more food booths, too, which would be ok if the quality of the food stays high. If the Guild could get the building for Saturday and Sunday, that would help. I'm assuming that the booth fees would have been higher for a weekend event because the building rental would be higher. That would have to be taken into consideration. Thursday and Friday were ok. And, I would change the times to open earlier and close earlier, especially at the end of the show. By being open Friday night from 6-9, there were assuming that some of the best sales would have taken place at the end of a show, which, almost never happens.

For those of you out there that pull a trailer we would appreciate your input as we decide which one might be best for us.  We are currently using a Ram 1500 with a tri fold bed high cover for shows.  Ever inch of space is accounted for which has limited us on the inventory we can carry and enhancements we can make to our display.  I would prefer a van, but that is not financially in the cards right now.  We looked into cab high fiberglass caps, but those are pricey as well. There are many trailer manufacturers out there, many of which are located in South Georgia.  It seems like everyone we look at has bad reviews on line. So, if you have used or are using a trailer, can you tell us about your experience and what brand you have? Any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. 

It took me a few long cold winters to get used to life in the Midwest, after living in Florida and doing the show circuit there for 25 years. In the south, shows start up in September and wind down in April, and by then it's too hot. In the north, it’s just the opposite: May to October, and after that it's too dang cold.
I know there are road gypsies out there that can pull off the year-round art show circuit, and I tip my hat to them. As for me and my house, I am glad to have my in season as well as my off season. It helps me stay organized with my work and stay focused on production.
So how do you spend your “off season” (if you have one). Here’s something I wrote about this very subject, which I call my winter work.

http://sandyartparts.blogspot.com/2016/12/what-do-you-do-after-season.html

I would be very interested in hearing what other AFIers do when they’re not doing shows. Any comments?

December 20-23

Learn more about the Bandshell: www.daytonabandshell.com

For more information contact Terry Montgomery, montgomeryt@codb.us, (386) 671-8253, or John Cameron, cameronj@codb.us, (368)671-8268

ArtFairCalendar.com has announced the results of its 4th annual "America's Best Art Fairs" survey. This survey is the only national online listing of the country's juried art fairs and craft shows, designed to reward the festivals that create opportunities for artists to sell their work.

The study opens the voting beyond the traditional "art fair insiders" such as artists and show organizers to focus on voting by art fair patrons, fine art collectors and the public that attends art shows and festivals nationwide, every event needs these 3 groups of people to make it work: show organizers, artists and the art buyers.

We asked our mailing list of over 55,000 art fair patrons what was the best art fair in the country and had an outstanding nationwide response. Nearly 90% of the respondents completed our lengthy 25 question survey and the answers were both expected and intriguing. 

The winners reflect who voted. The winning shows shared the survey, got their constituents involved and knew that the resulting PR would pay off for their event. Just like in any election its all about getting out the vote. 

Best City for Art Fairs: Chicago

Chicago has it all, indoor and outdoor art fairs.  10 of this city's shows were voted into the Top 50, with 6 of them in the Top 20. Congrats to this city full of art lovers. Making a trip to the Windy City? Plan it so you too can catch an art festival. Our list of Chicago events.

Our #1 art fair is the Old Town Art Fair for the second year in a row.
The show earned more than double the votes of any other event.

Survey said:

• The setting is fantastic in the historic Old Town Neighborhood. It has a wide variety of artists with high quality art. We buy art here always.
• great art, great city - What could be better than Old Town Chicago????
• PERFECT mix of art, culture, food and FUN

2016 AMERICA'S BEST ART FAIRS - the Top Ten

Our entire Top 50 art festivals, a year round listing to encourage "art fair tourism":  www.BestArtFairs.com

* - new to the Top Ten

At that link also find

• who took the survey
• why people come to art shows
• what they buy, why they buy and why they don't come to some shows any more, including a lot of great tips for show organizers.

For more anecdotal information listen to a recent podcast with Lynn Smith, vice chair of the Old Town Art Fair, where she shares her insights on why the OTAF garners so much enthusiasm throughout the greater metropolitan area, making it a "must attend" event. Art buyers from Florida and Ohio also join us to tell us why they attend art fairs and buy art. Winners! 2015 Best Art Fairs

Show directors, we have prepared an extensive report full of 

helpful information with insider information from experts who already know how to produce a successful art fair including: 

• Our analysis of the extensive survey results and how to use them to make your show a "best art fair"
• 5 Important Keys to a Successful Art Fair +++
• Our 5 favorite ideas for encouraging buyers to attend

Click here for more info.

See the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/

ArtFairCalendar.com's mission is to promote the American tradition of art fairs by showcasing events where art collectors find hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind fine work and encourage the interaction of client and creator. 

June 16-18
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Presented by the Milwaukee Art Museum
180 Artists
Deadline: December 13

The festival takes place inside the museum's spectacular Santiago Calatrava-designed building, as well as on the adjoining outdoor museum grounds featuring our state of the art Clearspan tents. Enjoy the festival rain or shine indoors AND outdoors! (Indoor booth availability limited, based on first come, first served).

This is the Museum's largest special event and is highly visible, with setup and parking close by.

Marketing:

In 2016 marketing and media coverage accounted for a total of 19+ million impressions with social media posts reaching 3K LFOA Facebook friends, 69K Milwaukee Art Museum Facebook followers, 20K Milwaukee Art Museum Instagram folders and 48K Twitter followers.  The LFOA website say 76K page views, with 22K unique users, and 64.2% new page visitors.

Awards:

A total of $10,500 in awards will be

presented. Ten awards of $1,000 each to be given where excellence is determined by the jurors. The remaining $500 is awarded to the winner of the Sculpture Garden media/category.  Awards are based on the artist's entire presentation. The top ten award-winning artists are invited back to LFOA for the following year without jurying.

Jurors will also select Honorable Mention award winners, all of whom are invited back to LFOA for the next year without jurying.

Learn more: lfoa.mam.org

Apply: https://www.zapplication.org/event-info.php?ID=5147

I have a motor tremor in my hands and find it hard to insert the chip card into the reader.  i was thinking of inserting the card into the reader and then inserting it into my ipad  is this feasible.  and then i was thinking of getting the 49.00 reader  since there is a slot for the whole card and that might solve my problem of inserting the card  does anyone have the 49 reader and how do they like it

This was held last weekend in a charming Five Points Park in downtown Sarasota. Bill Kinney produces the show and does a good job of it. About 130 artists setup on the street and sidewalk with the park as a charming backdrop.

This time of the year you see mostly locals, the winter people have not arrived yet. You are selling to a mostly older, monied crowd. They are very traditional and conservative in their tastes for art. They love the birds, beaches and flowers.

My sales were barely acceptable. I made a little money because I slept in my own bed and did the commute from Ybor City where I live. I need a younger more hip crowd, Sarasota is not my market, but hell, I gave it a try. Many others did quite well. The bird photographer was a happy camper. A well known wood artist hit it big when Jerry Springer bought two of his pieces. The traditional clay artist across from me sold steadily all show long.

Bill crunched the numbers from the feedback from the artists about their sales. He was happy, he called the show a success. I would have liked to have seen more people. It got pretty lonely out there after 2 pm both days.

Hey, November in Florida, show sales are pretty slim, you take what you can get. Personally, I would not drive a long distance to do this one, but for local artists it will do just fine. This weekend I will be at the Sanibel show.

Later, gators.

This was a small indoor show, for the most part, held in a civic center in Lagrange, Ky, about 22 miles north-east of Louisville just off I-71. It was divided across two civic buildings or small convention halls with about 72 artists there.

About ten artists were located outside on the portico of the buildings, where they were afforded free electricity and reduced booth fee. These locations required a tent. The weather was a bit iffy for the outside venues, fairly chilly on Saturday but not so bad on Sunday. I noticed several of the booth outside chose to have open sides. Call me a weenie, but these old bones would have had sides up and the Mr. Heater Buddy propane heater fired up. I opted for the inside location at the higher price and an extra $20 for the electricity.

Set up started on Friday at noon, and was a little slow waiting for a few parking spaces to open up. Looking at the supplied map, I thought there was a drive up to the rear doors. No such luck as I found out there was a concrete walkway behind the hall and a ten foot dropoff down to a neighbor's backyard. I knew I should have brought a real dolly instead of a dinky folding platform cart :-( I was able to start unloading about 12:45 or so, which wasn't too terribly bad.

The hall is a city owned property so the hours of operation were quite firm, and they closed the doors and kicked us out at 5:00. I did the show by myself and it took longer to set up than normal. At 5:00 all I had done was to get the panels up, get the lighting wired up, and about a third to half of the prints hung. Part of the problem is that no storage space is included behind the booth, so it's either allocate part of of your normal space for storage or take it to your vehicle. I lucked out is one respect in that an alcove was across from me where the organizers plugged in a tablet with a Pandora music channel hooked to the PA system. They wanted that covered up so the unattended iPad would still be there, so my outside wall that had a useless pipe and drape there covered up the alcove and I had a place to store my tubs.

The layout of the show was a bit narrow but adequate for the crowds. Booth fee was $200 and I paid $25 extra for a corner spot. Unfortunately the outside wall was in a dead corner and few people noticed there were pieces hanging back there, although I did sell a framed piece that was back there.

Although this is an indoor show in a convention hall, the lighting reeks. There were large dark shadowed areas on my panels. I almost brought a couple tubs of drafting table lights, but decided that was too much trouble to hook up and used a couple of 300 watt equivalent LED lights that lit up the 10x10 space very brightly. Definitely bring your own lighting to this show.

Attendance was down considerably from last year, and everyone blamed it on the post-election blahs. The area itself is conservative Republican, but more of an old-money small town. It is a prosperous area and the demographics have it as an upper income and well educated area. It should have been better, but many of the artists are repeat exhibitors which speaks of decent sales for many in the past.

A few artists did do well, as usual, and many were struggling. All I did was earn back the booth fee, and wound up with about a $150-200 loss considering gas money and cost of the work. It was unusual as there were talkers who were interested and educated in what they liked but just couldn't get to the tipping point to make the buy. I feel there is promise there and will give it another try for one more year.

Tear down went quickly for most people, and were out of there after an hour to an hour and a half. The rental time was for up to 7:00PM, with tear down starting at 5:00PM. Myself and some others were a bit slower and some of the staff was getting antsy at the extra time as they were going to get fined by the city for the time past the contract. We finally just moved everything we could out to the loading dock and finished loading outside. It was about 8:15 when two of us were the last to leave.

As far as organization goes, it was well done with lots of volunteers coming around checking on you to see if you needed a potty break or lunch. Meals were offered outside by food trucks which had decent prices and high quality food. One day I picked up a club sandwich, chips, and a drink for $9. The sandwich was touted as a club but it was more like a "Dagwood" than a club and I wasn't able to eat the entire thing.

Assistance was given at tear down to help cart stuff out to the parking lot and loading spaces. That really did help and was appreciated. My sales were very disappointing, but others were worse. Another photographer there told me all he had sold by mid-Sunday afternoon were greeting cards. He had done shows for 8 years and was seriously considering pulling the plug on doing more shows.

You all are invited to take part in our 5th Annual Secret Santa Gift Exchange. Members of the artist community sign up to exchange gifts. We do it anonymously (or not). All gifts should be handmade/from an art fair/etc.

Then we show each other the gifts, all kinds of interesting handmade objects from handmade potholders (honestly) to batiked pillows and original fused glass serving pieces. 

(Search "Secret Santa" on this site to see the cool stuff.)

Play with us? (Last year 50 artists participated)

It works like this:

1. you sign up here:  
   http://www.artfairinsiders.com/forum/topics/naughty-or-nice-5th-annual-secret-santa-at-afi or email me "connie@artfaircalendar.com" that you want to participate
2. I send you the link to be part of our gift giving. You click on it!
3. You have until November 30* midnight to join at the site DrawNames.com
4. December 3 we use the DrawNames.com site to do an anonymous matching with someone else who has signed up
5. on December 16 all packages need to be in the mail
6. in the following days we show off our gifts to each other
7. The person who got the coolest gift and tells us about it in the most creative way wins a prize.

Hope you'll join us.

May the gifting begin!

*I moved up the date this year because we were all getting frazzled getting things out on time ;)

A couple of years ago one of the staples of Fall in Florida, the Festival of the Masters at Downtown Disney, was cancelled amidst much unhappiness and many complaints about how it was run. Another formerly fine show that had run its course.

But wait (trumpets blaring)!! Its back -- do you know about this? Coming to the Disney Parks: Epcot International Festival of the Arts for six weekends starting in January 2017. From Disney:

We’re excited to announce a brand new event at Walt Disney World Resort: the Epcot International Festival of the Arts debuts Jan. 13 – Feb. 20. It’ll be a trifecta of global masterpieces: combining visual, culinary and performing arts for six colorful weekends.

Details: https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2016/11/all-new-epcot-international-festival-of-the-arts-coming-to-walt-disney-world-in-january-2017/

Oh, too bad. I just read closer and see it is not "our" kind of festival of the arts, but in the comments I see people looking for out kind. 

But now that I've started writing this I'll share some of the old stories. You'll particularly enjoy this first one (written by Nels Johnson) as it not only talks about Disney it sheds light on some of the other phenomena in the business:

Nel’s rant from 11/2013 http://www.artfairinsiders.com/profiles/blogs/the-indifference-of-the-crowd-was-terrifyingly-disheartening plus great comments there

This one, sort about something else, but Alison Thomas' comment brings us back to reality: 

http://www.artfairinsiders.com/forum/topics/is-god-telling-me-something?page=2&commentId=2160589%3AComment%3A167515&x=1#2160589Comment167515

I liked these too:

2011 http://www.artfairinsiders.com/profiles/blogs/disney-2011 & 

http://www.artfairinsiders.com/profiles/blogs/emerging-masters-at-festival-of-the-masters

Then while you're at it, check out these also. 

Our archives are brimming with all you ever wanted to know about art fairs. Any of you got an old "good old/bad days stories?"

Application Fee:  $25/Booth Fees: $325(single), $650(double), $400(corner)

Every aspect of this event is artist-focused and seeks to provide a venue for enhancing the artist's visibility in the community.  During the festival, cash prizes for Best-in-Show ($500) and Juror's Choice ($500), along with student prizes will be presented.  Other amenities include hotel discounts, free parking, and artist's hospitality.

As most everyone knows this year both Naples National and Coconut Grove fall on the same weekend.

Thoughts and opinions as to where you will go.

From my friend artist Greg Strachov ...

Dear Connie,

     There was an incident which the art community should read about in hope that it acts as a warning.    I received an email from someone who was interested in surprising his wife with one of my paintings.   He said that he was a biologist who was out at sea doing research.  He also said that he saw that his wife, in California, loved my work and that their anniversary was soon approaching.   I sent him some images and prices of my work and he selected a $4,800.00 painting.

    A week later, I received a check for ten thousand dollars and later that day, he sent me an email asking me to "please pay the shipper when he arrives to pick up the painting".    He then sent an email asking me to send the balance of the check to California,  to the main office of the moving company.   My bank had a twelve day hold on the check!   He became upset when he learned of the hold and said the he will call his bank to get it cleared sooner.   A few days later he emailed me and said that the check had been cleared and to go to a specific bank to send the check to the shipper.    I waited and then went to my own bank and asked if the check was clear and learned that it would be less expensive if I go to the bank that he recommended.   I asked the bank representative to investigate if the check that he sent was in my account.   When she opened her computer, she found that the ten thousand dollar check had a stop payment put on it ten minutes ago.   If I did not stop at my bank and simply went to his, the funds would have come out of my own savings since his money was no longer there.

  My advise to all artist is  be careful when you deal with email or telephone customers.   I called the FBI about this and they instructed me to go to their website and file a report.   I was a little surprised at this too because I would file this report and never know if there was something done.   Be aware!  

Has anyone else recently received one of these "opportunities?" Do you  have any suggestions for the rest of us?