Foxfire Park Fall Fine Arts Festival
Downtown Nashville, Indiana
"The Art Colony of the Midwest"
October 19th, 20th, and 21st
&
October 26th, 27th, and 28th
This first time show looked like a good bet to fill in a big hole between St. James and a show in Lexington, KY. Booth fee was low, $120 for one weekend or $200 for both. The time is at the peak leaf viewing for Brown County, Indiana, and hordes of visitors converge on the small town during those two weekends. Seemed like a good idea. The show was scheduled to have about 70 artists each weekend.
The show ran Friday through Sunday for two weekends, and the artists had the choice for either one or both. I figured going for both was a good investment, particularly if the turn out was good.
Set up was on Thursday, and rain was threatening for the evening so the promoter sent out emails Thursday morning that we could show up at 10:00AM instead of 6:00. That was a good idea as there are only a couple of hours daylight left at that time. Half of the artists were set up when I arrived around 4:00. The field was scrub grass with gravel poured to level out spots. Later on they put down straw in the booths and the aisles. I was feeling ill and wasn’t moving fast. After the sun went down there was no field lighting, so I plugged in my inverter and used a 100 watt light to keep working. I finished putting up the tent and offloaded all my boxes by 8:00 and left.
Friday arrived looking like warmed over Hell, dark clouds, intermittent rain, and damned cold. I judged correctly and brought along the 2-burner Mr. Heater. It kept me warm and the rear of the tent was much warmer than the front. That gadget was worth its weight in gold that weekend. Didn’t sell anything at all on Friday. The first couple of hours saw very few people walking the show, and the standing joke among us was asking when they were going to open the gates. There was an admission charge, and many of the tourists passing by wouldn’t come in with the $5 admission. Eventually show management dropped the charge, but someone forgot to cover up that part of the sign. There was a micro rush mid afternoon, but the rain started again and the crowd dissipated like a puddle of water in the Sahara. The show was supposed to go until 6:00, but by 4:30 some artists were zipping up and leaving. No one around me sold anything significant and most were reporting nothing.
Saturday was equally lackluster, cold, dark, and damp. The weather dampened everyone’s spirits, especially the customers. I finally got lucky and sold a single $80 piece. The jeweler across from me still had sold nothing, likewise a painter, and a potter.
Sunday was beautiful weather with glorious sunshine and a day I would rather have been out taking photos. Regardless, most of were in high hopes we could do a resurrection shuffle and make enough money to turn a profit. It didn’t work. The visitors walked through, oohed and ahhed, said “nice work” and kept on going. Nothing sold that day for me.
At the end of the show, a photographer with some very nice landscapes sold a $10 flip-bin piece for the entire weekend, the jeweler across from me zeroed for the weekend, another jeweler didn’t make booth fee, the potter next to me came close to break even, a painter didn’t meet expenses. This was the back row of the show, and my suspicion is that it was death row. The artist behind me sold about $800, and the ones up next to the sidewalk (where people could walk in without the admission) did okay and I heard of one doing $1500.
So what was wrong with this first time show? People were used to seeing flea markets and swap meets on the grounds [edit: Flea markets and swap meets were not held on this site. That was incorrect information given to me. My apologies for the inaccuracy]. The signage was not readily noticeable, and the admission fee wasn’t covered up after they decided to drop it. The rows of booths were parallel to the street and the back three rows weren’t that obvious. Rotating the layout would have made more sense so people could there were a bunch of artists there. Another issue was that the art fair was not the destination draw; the promoters were hoping that they could tap into the crowds of tourists coming into town. It was an older crowd, not a terribly sophisticated one either, for the first couple of days, and the third day was families and kids, which meant we were the monkeys in the cage for their viewing amusement.
Most of us on the back row said we weren’t returning for the second weekend. I decided I wasn’t coming back and would just forfeit the extra $80 booth fee. It would cost $90 in gas to make the 60 mile drive from my home. I decided I had lost enough, and didn’t plan to go through the futile effort of setting up and tearing down again. I saw that I was slated for the back row again, and that sort of sealed it.
An artist friend on mine in Muncie, Indiana has a neighbor who does shows with stained glass. The neighbor dropped an email to him after visiting the show on the second wekend, and he passed it along;
“I did check out the Nashville show. They weren't charging admission and there was less than 30 booths. Not much of a variety of arts. For a juried show I was disappointed. I asked one vendor how she was doing and she said terrible. I was there in the middle of the afternoon and there were less than 10 people walking around. I saw a vendor from Florida, one from Michigan and one from IL. I bet they went in the hole and were disgusted.”
I checked the revised booth layout before the second weekend. It was down to 50 artists for the second weekend, but almost half of them bailed out. When faced with low sales, the wrong crowd, bad weather in the 40’s and low 50’s, and high lodging expenses at peak tourist season, I can’t blame any one for cutting their losses. I won’t do this one again, barring some sort of miracle like getting paid just to show up.
