This is a Christmas gift for everyone who got into this business because they want to live their life as an artist but then found out that your most artistic work wasn't selling like you wished. You looked around at what was selling and then made one of 3 choices:

1. create work like others whose work was selling so you could stay in the game
2. quit doing art fairs because the work you wanted to create was not finding its fans or
3. tried to find the middle ground where you could fulfill your artistic inclinations and that was still accessible to a large enough body of people so you could sustain an art fair career. Which one are you?

Here's a great article aimed at photographers, but equally applicable to the other creative people in this room, exploring that topic: "Photographs are about stories, not gigabytes."

Practice and exposure help refine the art of storytelling through photographs. Photographers often have to choose or balance between “commercial and passion photography”, Mithun explains. In that sense, success comes not just from commercial sales but audience’s artistic appreciation as well.

Read more at: https://yourstory.com/2019/12/photography-story-mithun-prabhu

A sad story here, something that artists rarely hear about, the background of finding the money to host art fairs. Especially the larger events, there is no way that booth fees and application fees pay for the events to be held. 

The story cites the added security costs because of the shooting at the nearby Gilroy Art Festival last summer. In addition, Louis Briones, executive director for the nonprofit Sausalito Art Festival Foundation is quoted as saying:

“In less than three years we’ve seen production costs double,” he said. “In 67 years, this first year that its not happening. Some years it’s gotten bigger, other years it’s gotten smaller. It has changed dramatically in other ways, but this is the first year we as a board decided to take a look at the entire picture to come up with a better plan.”

The rest of the story: https://www.marinij.com/2019/12/10/foundation-cancels-sausalito-art-festival-citing-costs/

Friday, December 13, 1 pm ET

ArtFairCalendar.com has tallied all the votes in our 2019 Best Art Fair survey (8th Annual). We had a record number of participants reporting in the favorites. The goal of the survey is to encourage "art fair tourism", bringing art lovers "52 Weeks of Art Fairs", coast to coast. 

There were many changes in the Top Ten this year with new events entering the ranks. Please listen as we speak with the art fair directors from those events (it's a secret who they are at the moment) and ask them this question:

       "What is special about your event that would bring people to travel to attend? Give up a day or more to be on the streets of your city?"

Then -- we'll announce the Top Ten.

This will be informative and upbeat especially as we all need good news! 

It's HERE! Sign up now for the art fair business's happiest event of the season! Join an ArtFairInsiders.com tradition!

Welcome to the 8th annual AFI Secret Santa. Secret Santa 2019 represents the 9th annual kickoff of gifting and good wishes for the art fair community.

Over the years, artists from around the world have come together during Secret Santa for a common theme—to spread goodwill and joy to one another, through the spirit of giving and receiving happiness.

In our eighth year, we invite you to join us once again, in a time where love and optimism is needed across the globe. At AFI, we rely on the kind hearts of our members to shine a little light during the holiday season, and this year is no different.

Last year over 80 artists and show directors sent through gifts through our exchange, one heartwarming gift at a time. This year, join us in keeping the tradition going!

HOW DOES THE EXCHANGE WORK?

• 1. Sign up* & get matched

  Once you have notified me you want to participate I'll add your name to the email list at DrawNames.com. Next you will receive an email from DrawNames.com. You must click the link in that email "JOIN THIS GROUP". That will take you to the sign up page. Do that and you will be registered to participate. (If you do not signup at the link you will not be included in the drawing.)

  Contact me to let me know you want to be included in the exchange.

• The evening of December 9, 2019, we will close signups and our computer program will choose who you should send a gift to (this is the most important part; this is about the giving!). If you have not signed up by responding to our emails from DrawNames.com, you will not be part of this year's matching.

• 2. If you participated last year you must still sign up. You should have received an email invitation from DrawNames.com on 11/29/19.
  
  
• 3. *You must activate your membership in the group when you receive this invitation by clicking in. If you don't you will not be included. While you are there add your mailing address to the "wish list." Also, add your wishes for gifts you'd like.
  
  
• 4. On December 10 you'll receive the name of the person you will be "gifting" with a link to contact that person. There is a cool email system that you can use to find out their wishes.

• 5. Find the perfect gift** & send it

  Once you receive the email from DrawNames.com with your match's information, you'll have until December 17, 2019, to ship your gift.

  When you ship it, come back here to tell us you've shipped it.

• 4. Receive a gift from your match

  When you receive a gift, you'll need to come back here and post an amazing thank you note, hopefully with photos!

• 5. The best photos and thank you note will receive a prize
  
  

*When you sign up at DrawNames.com be sure to fill out your wish list with some suggestions for your own personal Santa: color preferences, your interests, dream wishes. Also at that time include your mailing address so your Santa can get your present to you on time.

**This is not about buying a gift, this is about sharing your creativity. Gifts should be made by you or handmade preferably, maybe from an art fair. Suggested dollar limit (if you're buying) $25.

Curious about our gift drawings? Put the words in the search box up above "Secret Santa" and you'll find lots of fun and good wishes.

	Powered BY American Electric Power

June 12-14
Columbus, Ohio

Notification: February 3
Application fee: $40; Booth fees start at $595 

Construction workers have their hammers, hard hats, and gloves. Police have their handcuffs, flashlight, and gun. Doctors have stethoscopes, tongue depressors, and syringes. You get the idea. Every profession has certain equipment and supplies that come with the territory. Artists are no exception, so we asked our Facebook followers and did a little research to find the ten things that you will find in almost every artist’s bag.

10 Things You’ll Find in an Artist’s Bag

1. Sharpie, Pencils, Pens, Paint Brushes: Okay, technically these are four different items and should take up almost half the list, but this is my list and I make the rules, so I’m counting them as one.
2. Zip and Velcro Ties: I have absolutely no idea why an artist would need these. Can someone enlighten me?
3. Tablets, and/or Laptop: For taking notes and keeping track of measurements. These are never used for games, Internet browsing, or Facebook updates that would distract the artist. Never, ever. Yep....What?!...Don’t look at me like that.
4. Tape Measure or Ruler: Good for measuring. No, really!
5. Sketch Pad: Makes sense. No explanation needed.
6. Pencil Sharpener: Just in case.
7. Camera: This isn’t for everyone, but sometimes it’s nice to capture images and use them later for inspiration.
8. Water Bottle: To, you know, carry water for cleaning brushes. I guess you could drink it too, but maybe do that before you actually start to clean your paint brushes.
9. Snacks: Also not for everybody, but taking a little food break once in a while is good for creativity. At least that’s what the little devil on my left shoulder tells me.
10. Phone: Yes, the phone can be helpful for artists, as long as it’s not being used just for texts and phone calls.

Do you have anything in your bag that we didn’t include here? What If you could only have one item in your artist bag? What would you choose? Please comment below.

(This is not an advertisement for the Randolph Street Market)

I love it when art fairs/festivals/pop ups/markets really get the vibe of attracting customers to attend their events. I stole this image off of artist Angie Consalvo's email to share with you.

What do you think? Do you have any images which will get those art buyers out the door and into your booth?

A member of this site shared a show review and it included this letter that he sent to the show organizers:

We participated in the ________ _______ 2019 and it was our first time exhibiting in your show.  Our booth location, listed in the program and advertised to our customers, was #85. When we arrived at registration we were not given that location per the map but had been moved to a spot with a hole, a tree, and half a driveway in the middle.

After a bit of back and forth, you offered us our choice of two spots; one being nearly the last booth in the show [notable: this is a show where everyone moves as a unit in one direction — so the “end” is the absolute end] and another other spot which seemed great: level, middle of the show, plenty of storage room.  So we took it.  Then we found out you had neglected to tell us that this spot was adjacent to a 20 foot wide food booth, (claiming this food booth had never been in that spot in previous years) with a queue stretching 30 feet down the road in front of our booth, and that of our neighbor.  As it turned out, this was more than a problem for us, it was — literally— a show stopper.

The entire flow of show visitors moved in a now-much-denser mass on the opposite side of the food line, either unaware of our booth or unwilling to try to cross through the food line to access our booth. We were having brisk sales up until the line spanned our entrance; as a result of this scenario, we did 85% of our sales before 12:30, when the line first formed, and only 15% —two sales— during the remainder of the day as the line had remained in force until late afternoon.

In talking with other exhibitors, including the food people, we find that:

1) the artists on the other side of this food had been on our side of this food last year and had specifically requested to not be anywhere near them again, so you just moved them from one side to the other.

2) this specific food vendor has been in that very spot for several years.

3) the line of people waiting to buy food here snaked from this booth spanning the entire length of their 20 feet, plus another 30 feet, passing in front of us and another artist.

4) this line-scenario happens every year at this food booth.

When we spoke to you about this your response was, “who would have foreseen this?”, even though it had happened repeatedly in past shows.

We take our commitment to our Art, and to the shows we do, very seriously. This is our livelihood. We made sure to invest in inventory, advertised to all our customers, and set up our display in advance to make sure it will work in the pre-assigned location only to have a different booth and the access to our new location blocked.  As far as we are concerned, you broke your contract with us and it cost us a great deal of time and money.

Please — Do not ever do this to another artist. I know that at least two members of show management also exhibited at the fair; ask yourself: would you be willing to set up in this booth space and have your entire entrance blocked for the major selling hours of the show?

Because of your amateurish mistakes and lies, of omission and outright, your failure to correct or avoid recurring problems ahead of showtime, and your apparent inability to learn from past failures, we will not only never apply again, we will include this letter in reviews we post.

What do you think of this approach? Have you ever done this? What have you done in a situation like this?

Just got this and wanted to share. What are your thoughts?

Sausalito Art Festival Announces Hiatus for 2020

As a supporter of the Sausalito Art Festival, we want you to be among the first to know about the press release below, that was issued today.

As it states, the Festival will be paused in 2020 as the Sausalito Art Festival Foundation takes the time needed to plan a new iteration of the Festival in an effort to ensure its continued success. 

The decision to dedicate a year to planning was difficult but ultimately, we decided that we owed it to our community to thoroughly go through the process needed to prepare the Festival for its next phase of success. 

As we go through this planning process, we encourage you to reach out with ideas, recommendations, or other constructive thoughts. 

We look forward to welcoming you back to the Sausalito waterfront in 2021,

The Sausalito Art Festival Foundation


Press Release: The Sausalito Art Festival Foundation regrets to announce that it will pause production of its signature event, the Sausalito Art Festival, in 2020 due to the uncertain prospects for the familiar three-day Labor Day weekend event and the current challenges associated with its production. According to Foundation Chairman Wayne Kaleck, “we are taking a year to plan a new iteration of the Festival to meet a shifting arts and entertainment landscape.”
 
For 67 years, the Sausalito Art Festival has been recognized as one of America’s premier outdoor art festivals and is a winner of countless industry awards. Set on a waterfront location in Sausalito California, the Festival is attended annually by thousands of visitors and staffed by more than a thousand volunteers.
 
In spite of the event’s past success, explained Kaleck, recent years have seen unfavorable trends develop in the art fair industry, restrictions imposed on the Festival’s access to its traditional waterfront location, increasing competition for musical performers, and skyrocketing costs for security owing to events like the mass shooting at this year’s Gilroy Garlic Festival. “The Foundation believes that we owe it to our community of artists, musicians, vendors, volunteers and patrons, to take the time needed to grapple with the changing landscape and reimagine the Sausalito Art Festival to ensure its continued success,” added Kaleck.
 
The Sausalito Art Festival has historically been held over Labor Day Weekend. As a major regional event, planning for the Festival is a year-round process, and the Festival operation requires participation from dozens of city, county, federal and private organizations. “The Board of Trustees is evaluating a number of substantial changes to the Festival, and we believe it is in the best interest of everyone to take the time needed to thoroughly investigate the impact of these changes,” stated Kaleck. “That is why we are putting the Festival on ‘pause’ for next year.”
 
The Sausalito Art Festival is produced by the Sausalito Art Festival Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)(3) whose mission is to support the arts for the community. Proceeds from the annual Sausalito Art Festival support Bay Area arts and community non-profits through grants, artist awards, scholarships and donations to special projects. As a part of that effort, the Foundation also announced today the opening of its annual Leonard Kaprielian grant application process benefiting non-profit 501(c)(3) projects in Sausalito.
 
For more information, contact: info@sausalitoartfestival.org

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of ACT Insurance, its employees, or any of the companies affiliated with it.

In light of recent events, it seemed a good time to write a blog post about something that many artists and other creative people have faced for thousands of years and that some of them are still facing today. When, if ever, is it ok to censor art or books, and how much freedom of expression should creative people be allowed to have?

These are difficult questions that can’t be fully answered with this simple blog post. So why bring it up? Why bother even writing about it? Because having the conversation is just as important as answering the question.

As with most everything, people have differing opinions on the issue. There are those who believe that some images and words are not appropriate and should be censored every time. Other people believe that nothing should be censored - under any circumstances. There are also those who take a middle ground.

Sometimes the reasons art is censored changes over the years. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain has been censored numerous times over the years. While today it is usually banned because of its racist language and stereotypes, it was first banned one month after its publication by a Massachusetts library in 1885, according to a Huck Finn teacher’s guide provided by PBS. Why was it banned? Because of the “very low grade of morality...couched in the language of a rough dialect [with] a systemic use of bad grammar and an employment of rough, coarse, inelegant expressions. It is also very irreverent…”

Ouch! What artist or author would want to hear that about their work? Mark Twain didn’t mind. His response: “They have expelled Huck from their library...this will sell us another 25,000 copies for sure.”

There are good reasons that people give for why censorship is needed (usually for the sake of children), whether you agree with them or not. There are good reasons that people give for why censorship is not needed, whether you agree with them or not.

Still, it seems odd to call for art to be censored simply because I don’t like what I’m seeing. Who am I to censor something that I consider “offensive” when someone else may have the opposite feelings as I do? My feelings about this “indecent” thing may be very strong. The other person may have feelings just as strong as mine. A piece of art that I consider “immoral” could be a beautiful work of art to someone else.

And here’s the great thing: If I am offended by some piece of art, I have options. I can be my own censor.

If I find a passage in a book that is offensive to me, I can stop reading and close the book.

If I’m at a museum and I see something “indecent,” I can walk away.

If I see art I consider offensive about someone or something that I consider sacred (or that I feel at least deserves reverential treatment), I can ignore it.

What I do know, and I think the majority of people in the world would agree with me, is that there is NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON LIVING ON THIS EARTH who has the right to kill someone else because they were offended by an image, word, or another piece of art. Ever. No exceptions.

Artists, authors, sculptors, and other creative individuals should have the right to create whatever art they want. I have the right to personally decide whether that art is something I want to look at or not. In essence, it really is that simple.

Do you agree with the post? Want to express your opinion about censorship? Please comment below.

The holiday season is upon us once again, and the time has come to buy presents for your friends and loved ones. Yet, it always seems like there’s that one person who is next to impossible to shop for. No matter what you do, you can’t seem to find that perfect gift for them.

If you are looking for a present for an artist or crafter, this can be even more difficult. Sometimes it seems like no matter what you get them, there’s always the thought that they could make the same thing just as nice. Don’t fret! We have compiled a list of 10 gifts that you can get for your artist or crafter this season.

1. Magazine Subscriptions: There are many arts and craft magazines to choose from, some of which include “Arts and Crafts Homes and the Revival” or “Elle Decor.” You can also get them magazine subscriptions to other things they may be interested in (sports, nature, history, etc.).

2. Gift Cards: Hold on! We’re not just talking a generic gift card here. And before you say gift cards aren’t personal, consider this: your crafters go to some place like Michaels all the time anyway and spend their own money, so why not get them a gift card and help them save a little cash this season.

3. Craft Jewelry: Scissor necklaces, tape measure bracelets, and other unique and fun jewelry can be a fun gift to give and receive.

4. “Creative Doodling and Beyond”: Really any doodle book will do, but this particular book is full of fun prompts and exercises to help spark the creativity of the artist in your life.

5. “Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Crafts”: I know, I know. Not everyone is a fan of Martha Stewart, so this gift might not work in your case, but this book is full of step-by-step guides to create some exciting projects that your crafter will enjoy.

6. Moleskine Notebooks: These were the go-to notebooks for artist legends like Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, and writing legend Ernest Hemingway, as well as many artists and writers today. These notebooks are great for sketching and doodling as well as taking notes.

7. Self-Healing Cutting Mats: These mats are great for crafters who are constantly cutting paper, fabrics, and other items because the mat “heals” itself after the crafter cuts on it. No more scratches on the dining room table or workbenches.

8. Craft of the Month Club: These clubs can be fun for both adults and children. Each month the person who received the gift will get a kit with a new craft for them to do. This is a gift that keeps on giving all year long.

   NOTE: Pay close attention to the details before you buy. Some clubs start with an introductory rate and then charge more after the first month. This isn’t necessarily bad, just know what you are buying before you charge your card so you aren’t surprised later on.

9. Art and Craft Supplies: Paint, sketching pencils, scissors, fabric - the list could go on and on. After all, artists and crafters need supplies. You can ask the person’s significant other if the person has specific brands or supplies that they prefer.

10. A Gift Unrelated to Arts and Crafts: Artists and crafters have other interests besides just arts and crafts. Maybe they love shoes, or are a die-hard fan of football. Finding the other interests of the person is a great way to find a present they will love.

Do you agree with our list? What other presents would you like to see come your way this year? Please comment below.

Note: The links above are provided with the understanding that we do not endorse or stand behind any product mentioned, and we are not affiliated with the brands or stores in any way. The links are simply to help you see the product and get an idea for what the gift could look like.