art marketing

Definition of exhausted: Me. Actually, I'm writing this the day after the Gathering of the Guilds, an artist-owned art fair that I'm told is the largest west of the Mississippi, so you'd think I'd be recovered by now. But this is the 11th year the Oregon Glass Guild participated, and only the second year that *I* shared a booth at the show so, as with last year's show, I ran myself ragged. And found out I still have a LOT to learn. I am--for those of you who don't follow this blog--a show newbie. What I don't know about being an art/craft fair vendor could fill an encyclopedia. On the off chance that there's someone out there even more clueless about shows, I figured it'd be kinda constructive to discuss the things that went wrong (and right).

"Uneven. VERY uneven," said the man sitting next to me, "I can't decide if she's brilliant or a D student." "Yes," concurred the lady on the other side, "She's still looking for her voice." We were paging through a computer slideshow, evaluating artists' work for a competition. Applicants had been asked to submit a body of work, not just one [...]

Staffing a booth is fun, but not nearly so much fun as designing and building it. (And taking it down is hell, but that's another story) Having exactly ONE art fair under my belt, I'm not gonna suggest that I'm an expert at booth design or management. Terry Belunes and I took our new artfair booth out for a test run last weekend at our first show; we were pleased with the results, but found lots of room for improvement. Don't take this as showdesign gospel, but the following is booth design from a newbie perspective. I welcome ALL suggestions and helpful hints.