Blog

Market Days

December 4 and 5, 2010

Tallahassee, Florida

Market Days is an annual show held at the fairgrounds in Tallahassee, Florida. Artists are set in fourbuildings that line the road in and out of the fairgrounds. Thereare additional booths between the buildings in the median. Theirwebsite (www.marketdays.org)advertises approximately 300 artists with 15,000 people inattendance. However, paperwork delivered to the artists for nextyear noted 20 – 24,000 people in attendance annually. The weatherwas nice both days. A little cool in the morning but in the upper60's in the afternoon.

Most items were hand made by artists exhibiting. Of course there was some buy and sell, and then therewas an imported metal booth that covered approximately 10-12 10*10booth spaces; they did tell folks that they bought the items forresale.

Saturday was crowded by most show's standards. It was approximately 10-12 feet across the isle and manytimes it was impossible to walk across from booth to booth due to thecrowd. While there was plenty of people, they appeared to be goingfor lower end items. The mustard and soup mix ladies next to me hada booming day. Unfortunately, Sunday was dead. Even the niceweather could not bring out the buyers. 80% of my business onSaturday with sporadic sales on Sunday. All of my sales except onewas under $50, and I had one sale that was over that amount.

Fellow artists I spoke with didn't have much good things to say about sales, however, I spoke with severalthat did very well with their Christmas and under $20 items. Thebooth fee was $450 and I did ok. It's an easy show to do and I gotto visit with my friends that drove down from Atlanta for theweekend. Plus I found a nice gift for my lovely wife.

The folks running the show do a great job. They are friendly, constantly checked in to see if Ineeded anything, had coffee and donuts all day. Additionally, I hadfour of the main show staff including the director to spend timetalking with me and thanking me to be there. I just can't say enoughabout them They really make an artist feel special.

This last Saturday was the Winter Market held at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis Indiana. This was my 5 or 6th Eiteljorg show (I also participate in the Women in Art show in the spring) and overall it was in keeping with past shows.

Load in is not the easiest as you have to park at a curb - traverse a winding ramp to gain access into the museum and then depending upon booth location possibly load onto a very small elevator.

This year, layout was more challenged by the addition of an exhibet devoted to trains that took up much of our prior artist space. Because of this - upstairs space was utilized, booth sizes were greatly diminished and artist numbers were reduced greatly.

We were not thrilled to find ourselves upstairs in a smaller darker location - but our neighbors were friendly - we bring our own lighing just in case and we made it all work.

Being upstairs - we believe our foot traffic was not what the main floor artists had in numbers - but we were still happy to be in the show at all as many past artists were not accepted due to the diminished numbers.

Load in was helped by being able to load in the afternoon prior to the Saturday event (thankful I did that as it was snowing hard and very wet Saturday morning). Load out was slowed because of the bottleneck at the elevator - but still only took us a bit longer than our usual hour strike.

My husband and I paint and do photography. Sales were fairly good - this is always one of our better shows as the crowd tends to be a little more high end. We sold one nice sized painting as well as a couple smaller ones, some photographs and notecard sets as well as a number of smaller miniscape paintings.

I have been noticing a trend lately that people are purchasing more what I would call purposeful art - ceramics and jewelry and perhaps a bit less decorative.

All in all a great way to spend a snowy Saturday. This was our last show of 2010 - next up is the Indiana Artists show at the Indiana State Museum in February. This will be a new one for us - so I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.

Happy arting all!

-k-

Has anyone heard what happened to this event? I heard nothing but kudos and thought I'd love to give it a whirl. Since I couldn't find an application for anything more current than 2009 I e-mailed the promoter (Venues). No response, site not updated since 2009. I called and left a message, and although it is still a working number, no reply. So, I called the Chamber of Commerce in Ponte Vedra. They've never heard of it, have no information. Now, I'm curious.

Did this once great event simply disappear? Any decent Jacksonville area shows to recommend?

hey this looks like a great show- I just got my acceptance, and before I paid I figuired I would see if anyone here had experience with it

Thanks

Sean

I started Phoenix Rising Designs in 2004 after about 6 years of apprenticing and selling for other artists and designers. I have worked some really great art shows and one really muddy one. Seriously, shin deep in mud and sleeping in my van. The bathrooms weren't finished with walls between the toilets so... Anyway, I've done my share of moving around with my work! haha I am a wife and mother to one son and I homeschool him. I also fill in at a vintage clothing store and a bead store and teach classes at a wellness center on Gemstone Therapy.

I mentioned "people", right? Well those of you who have helped me in the past are free to add your stories as well. Rozee, we almost got stolen, remember? haha Brittany, you helped me for about 6 or 7 seasons and fell asleep with mud and rocks in your hair, right? My husband and son helped be run stuff to the van in pouring sheets of rain in Huron, Oh. Cambrey, how many lunches did we eat at that apple festival again? These are the silly, crazy, and (sick, right?) fun stories but I also have met some great people, had wonderful sales and fantastic times on circuit too.

I am currently working like crazy to add more wholesale accounts to my business. My styles are tribal and steampunk jewelry. I have an online store http://www.phoenixbartender.etsy.com/. Why "phoenix bartender"? Well I like the mythical creature and I've been a bartender since 2001 at night and an artist by day.

Rambling on...thank you for reading and thank you for adding my business to your "LIKE" list on facebook.

June 3, 4 & 5
Columbus, Ohio
230 Artists
Deadline: January 12

The Columbus Arts Festival presented by Time Warner Cable will celebrate its 50^th year of bringing the best in fine arts and crafts, food and entertainment to downtown Columbus. We invite you to apply to be one of 230 visual artists selected for this nationally recognized festival.

Fast Facts:

• Estimated attendance of 350,000 in 2010
• Over $650,000 in marketing/advertising support and partnerships
• Special promotions and innovative programming planned to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary
• Booth fee $450 for 10'x10'
• $6,000 average sales
• Produced by the Greater Columbus Arts Council

Artist Information:

• $11,000 in Artist Awards
• Indoor hospitality area with beverages and snacks
• Contact information and booth number in Guidebook
• Name and image listed on website with live link to artist website
• 24 hour security provided by Columbus PD

Jury Process:

The jury will be held February 5 and 6 at The Westin in downtown Columbus. This blind jury process is open to the public. Please contact Leah Alters, Festival Director at 614-221-8531 or lalters@gcac.org for the weekend's schedule or to RSVP to attend the jury.

For more information visit: www.columbusartsfestival.org

Apply today at: www.zapplication.com

We look forward to seeing you in June 2011!

------------------------------------------

Find more art fairs looking for artists: www.CallsforArtists.com

Hi,

Does anyone have any info on this show?

What happened? Did Nels take a picture of some guys painting hanging on a fence? Really? Let's organize a bunch of torch holding town "folk" and go chase him out of his castle. Where was the outrage when the 10 or 11th "art" photographer shot the same slot canyon? Once again...with feeling. The problem is not that Nels did this, any more than several of the "art" photographer's, when not totally ripping off good men like Ray Hartle, are out shooting statues and such. Once again my children...you are killing the goose by becoming a decorative market place...Instead of rising up like rabid dogs in opposition to the tape measure and swatch caca that prevails, it appears you jumped on a poor old guy for doing wrong...and maybe it was. The problem however, is not Nels. it is the constant pandering to the swatch/tape mentality. As long as fine art/craft biz is dictated to by decor there will be an ongoing march towards average.. Remember, if you can't make it good, make it big...and if you can't make it big, make it blue...or watever this years color is.. F..k it, who wants pie? . .

Generalisamo Hippie