New panorama series

On top of having an insane traveling schedule for all of the art festivals I go to, I've been working on a new panorama series of fractals. It's been a long time coming, but I was finally able to locate clip frames that will fit my new panorama series. I will be adding them to my store ASAP in 12"x36" & 8"x24" sizes.

Pano 1

Boise, ID Art in the Park

One of the highlights of my art festival year is Art in the Park held at Julia Davis Park in Boise ID. Not only is it in my home state of Idaho, albeit 550 miles south of where I live in the northern panhandle, but it’s also one of more professionally run festivals on the circuit.

For those of you researching shows to do and are adverse to paying out a 20% commission based on your total gross sales for your booth fee, stop reading now because that is the case with this show. However if this steep booth fee isn’t a roadblock for you, I think you’ll find Boise’s Art in the Park both a financially as well as fun show to do.

One gripe many traveling artist have about particular shows is how hard set-up and teardown are. Even though close proximity parking to your booth is nearly non-existent, this festival has arranged with the Boise City Parks Department to donate their employees as well as dozens of small ATV/tractors to actually move all of you equipment and art right to your booth location. In the 30 shows I do every year this is the only arrangement of its kind I ever found. This is a huge plus in my book if you ask me.

Weather as always can make or break a show but for the second week in a row (knock on wood), we were presented with perfect temps and gentle breezes. I could get used to this ☺

Another amenity found at Boise is the wonderful artist reception dinner held after the show is closed to the public Friday evening. Free adult beverages as well as a meat eaters AND vegetarian buffet made for a great reward for the long hours of sales. Speaking of hours they were (for this year anyway) 10-8 Friday & Saturday and 10- 5 on Sunday. Ample time to conduct the volume of sales this show always seems to have. During this dinner booth awards are announced. As always, there seems to be those who complain about how these awards are judged and this show was no different. Both awards were given to Boise locals, which brought up murmurs of prejudicial treatment but in my opinion these artists were deserving.

The director offers special overnight parking permits for those who plan on staying in their RV but be sure to ask for it.

The estimated crowd of 250,000 people over this 3-day event offers the 265 artists plenty of potential customers to work with. Although a few of the artists I spoke with said their sales were down from last year, many, including myself had record sales for this show. So I think those with off sales were more a reflection on what they were showing more than a poor economy.

I love this show and as long as I’m invited to attend I always keep it on my schedule.


Booth fee – 20% of gross sales
Cost of sales ratio – B
Hours of operation – B+ (10AM to 8 PM)
Location – A
Event staff A
Overall grade A-

Art in the Park

Swiss Days

Let me start off saying that I’ll be reporting on the last 5 shows I’ve done a little out of order. I want to get the posts that are the most fresh in my mind out now and I’ll fill in reports on Billings, MT. - Boseman, MT – and a second show in Whitefish, MT as time allows.

I’ve been doing this show (Swiss Days) for the past 6 years and as long as I keep getting juried in, I’ll continue to make the long drive south to attend.

Swiss Days is a great community event for the town of Midway, Utah. It’s not only an arts & crafts show (emphasis heavy on the craft side) but the residents also come out for the parade, barbeque and music. This show is always held on Labor Day weekend in the little town south east of Park City, UT. When I first did this show, I was a little concerned about it’s remote location. The booth fee was high for a two-day show and this, coupled by how far away from a major population center it was worried me. An hour into the show, all my concerns over attendance was dispelled. The directors report 75,000 in attendance, which seems very accurate.

Because this show is held on LDS church grounds, the event starts on Friday and finished up on Saturday. Unusual for a 2-day show but it works for Swiss Days. Fridays are always slammed and in fact if you aren’t ready at least and hour before the official start time of 8 AM you’ll miss a great opportunity to catch the early arrivers.

As I stated before, the festival is highly slanted towards country crafts. Out of the approximately 200 booths, there are only 12 or so flat artists. Bizarre I know but it works for the show. I’ve been lucky enough over the years to be included in this small group and my sales are buoyed by the lack of choices for shoppers of wall art. That is unless you include the many wooden country craft type signs makers that seem to be everywhere.

This ratio mix obviously works for Swiss Days or they wouldn’t have been around for the decades they have.

Weather is always touch and go for this event. You’re on the backside of Park City ski resort so prepare for all types of weather conditions. I’ve seen searing heat into the low 100’s as well as sleety snow so be fore warned. This year had the best weather I can remember, mid 80’s with a slight breeze, perfect.

It seems that my trend of higher sales is still continuing (knock on wood) and Swiss Days was no exception. I was up 25% over 2007, which blows my mind considering how conservative this area, and state is and the abstract art I create. Go figure.

Swiss Days

Booth fee - $675.00
Cost of sales ratio – A
Hours of operation – B (8 AM to 8 PM)
Location – B (would have been an A if it were so freaking far away
Event staff A- (a little uptight over small things)
Overall grade A-

I'm trying

OK, I admit it. Keeping a current blog journal is way more work for me than I ever expected. When I started this blog in January of this year I was on my winter break and I had an abundant amount of time on my hands.

Traveling to art festivals every weekend has limited the amount of free time I have to blog and for that, I’m sorry. Between getting ready for the show, driving to far away places, setting up my booth, maintaining the always hectic pace of meeting and greeting prospective clients, closing sales, tearing down my both, driving back home and starting all over again for the next weekend has become maddening, but I love it.

So I’m trying to figure out a way to squeeze in regular posts. Suggestions are gladly accepted.

Whitefish, MT

Most often I show at large art festivals that are attended by thousands if not hundreds of thousands of visitors. The science of selling art at these larger venues distills itself down to a shear numbers game. The more people walking by your booth the better chance you have at catching an interested eye and making a sale.

I, like other traveling artists have found it necessary to forgo cris-crossing the country to attend these larger shows because of the ever-escalating cost of travel expenses, namely gas. When gas was closer to $2.00 per gallon instead of over $4.00, I didn’t hesitate driving to a show say in Seattle, then traveling to Denver the following weekend and then back to California the next. I just followed the “A” list of shows.

With the reality of high gas prices, I’ve been forced into looking closer to home for places to sell my art. That’s not to say I don’t still travel to far off festivals, I do, but whenever possible I like to plug in something a little closer to home instead of taking the big gamble on a show thousands of miles from home base.

That was the case with this years 4th of July weekend. I booked a show in Whitefish, MT that is an idyllic little town that bills itself as the gateway to Glacier National Park. This show is a perfect, “tourist” destination show. Many people who came through were in town for both the 4th’s festivities as well as visitors to the park. For the artist, this is a great combination to look for when booking shows. Happy vacationers with spendable income.

For the most part the weather was fine but you must always be on the ready for afternoon thunderstorms when doing Montana shows. There is a better than average chance one will find you, be forewarned! We were lucky because just 10 miles away a monster of a storm hit and closed down the Kalispell airport for the duration of the storm. Imagine those forces hitting a hundred white tents, not a pretty site.

Sales were remarkable for such a small crowd. I didn’t hear one other artist complain about lack of interest or sales.

If I had one piece of advice to the show promoters it would be to make this a 2-day show instead of spreading the already small crowd over 3 days. People are in town anyway and it’s my opinion that with proper advertising the same amount of people would attend and our costs as artists would go down.

If you want to check out a small but profitable show and want to spend a few days in Glacier park to boot, look into this Whitefish, MT festival.

Cost to sales ratio A-
Location A++
Overall grade A

Fremont Fair

What a trip!!!

I’ve heard about the infamous Fremont Street Fair held in Seattle on the 3rd weekend of June for years, but I was always too caught up with attending another Seattle Venue that same weekend to even give Fremont a fair look. This year I gave it more than a look, I jumped in head first and forever more will be a supporter of this festival.

If you are looking for an up tight museum quality art festival don’t think Fremont. But if you are willing to experiment with a new venue and are not intimidated by massive crowds, many of which just finished participating the world famous NAKED BIKE PARADE, you have to check out this fair. How many festivals do you know of that actively encourage you to get naked, paint and decorate your body to coincide with that years theme and then ride your bike down the main street in your birthday suit? Very cool and very Seattle.

Sales wise I did way better than expected. From previous posts, you know my feelings on mixing artists with the buy/sell crowd selling imported items they bought instead of making themselves, so beware. This show is full of them. But somehow it works in Fremont.

Overall quality of art- C-
Sales- B
Uniqueness- A+++

Fremont Fair

Spokane ArtFest

A little late in posting because of my insane festival schedule that should not be attempted by any artist, which is faint at heart.

For this show I had fabulous weather, relatively easy load in, great booth neighbors and way above average sales. What more could I ask for. Once again, as years past, the after hours music and adult refreshments were top notch. It’s always great to catch up with other artists in a relaxed atmosphere with no customers around to interfere. This after show time is perfect for that.

Most other artists I talked with had similar reports as mind with the exception of one painter who was asked by the show director to remove his reproductions from his booth and only show his originals. It seems that another artist with a similar style (who was most likely having a bad show) complained to the promoter who was then forced into doing something about it.

Some shows adhere to a fairly strict policy of making the artist limit their reproductions to a rather small portion of all the art in their booth. The thinking here is so not to confuse the public into thinking a repo is an original. Signage and pricing on each print takes care of this abjection but some shows use this clause as a way of maintaining a high percentage of hard to sell originals vs. affordable prints. This policy is something I completely disagree with. No one wins here. The buyer, although they admire and might want to buy an artists work may not be able to afford the original but would be more than happy owning a print. The artist misses out on the sale and the show director loses that artist from re-applying to their future shows because of lack of sales.

Because I’ve done this show for the past 4 yeas I’ve built up a rather nice collector base in the area. It’s always a pleasure to have someone walk into your booth and announce “they’re back for more.”

All and all, I give the 2008 Spokane ArtFest a B+.

Spokane ArtFest