Time to say Goodbye

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And, unlike the old song says, goodbye does mean forever. Goodbye does mean we'll never be together again! It's time to let go of my old art fair set up. I built it in 1994, and while it served me well for many years it has gotten increasingly rickety (not unlike myself) and I have had to resort to more and more desperate measures to make sure it is stable enough to hold the ware for the duration of an event. Last weekend I nailed parts of it together. There was a moment when I was contemplating duct tape. It's time to let it go.

Here's how it looked, in better days...

 The question is, do I build another one? If so, for what specific uses? If it is to be solely a studio evnt display, that has a different set of parameters than an art fair display, that needs to be fairly lightweight, portable, and quick to set up. 

I used to spend a lot of time thinking about booth displays. Lately I am thinking about whether I want to do art fairs at all, given my own increasingly rickety self. Art fairs are a lot of work! And, honestly, I got spoiled in St. Paul; there were maybe 20 top-shelf art fairs within a day's drive; here there's one. Craft Boston used to be, but for the last at-least 5 years it has been sucking mud; the PMA show is headed that way also. 
Most of the good shows that I used to do, when I lived in St Paul are still running, but driving 2 or 3 days, staying in motels (I'm too old to sleep in a tent on the ground, at least when I am working), eating out - fast food is both nastier & more expensive than home-food - the calculation is different. The absolute most I could hope to make from a good show is probably around $5000 - & that would be a rarity. Subtract the booth fee & the studio time, & the classes I'd have to miss & the travelling expenses...not looking like such a great dice to roll now. 

OTOH, I used to love the art fair lifestyle. Seeing new cities, a group of friends I only saw during that season, trying new restaurants...I didn't even mind the driving. I'd try to find a Spanish-language radio station & listen hard to see if I could understand any of it. 

Anyway. The Maine Pottery Tour is over for another year. My event was successful, about 70 visitors & the same sales as last year - which is good, because last year landed in kind of a unique moment, when for about 5 minutes we thought the pandemic which had been keeping us away from public activities for a year was over. (It's still not, of course, but the pottery tour is mostly an outside event, & even a big turnout isn't densely packed, so I felt ok about doing the tour.) Anyway, maybe we've just finally hit a critical mass of people who know about hte tour, return every year, & help spread the word.

This week is always funny for me, because I've spent the last 4 months thinking about & working on the tour in basically all my "free" (lol) time, and now there's a space where that used to be. I have orders to fill & pots to list online & stores to approach, not to mention classes to teach!  - believe me I have plenty to do - but I am going to take a moment to appreciate the not-urgency of those tasks. 

Holy Crap It's Time Already

In the random way of things - and it is at least a little random - last year I got into every fair to which I applied. Then God said, "HA!" and all of them were cancelled. I took a moment...maybe two...or perhaps as many as four...to be bummed about that, then set it aside & got on with the business of surviving. 

Well, the time has come once again to start the application process. It will be an act of hope, tinged with a bit of anxiety; what if it was a fluke? I know there's a random factor, what if the dice all roll the wrong way for me this time? 

To complicate matters, in August someone stole my laptop, which contained the images which succeeded so well last year. Three of them I had stored in Dropbox, but I have not succeeded in recovering the 4th - so I will not be applying with the exact some images. Maybe there was some alchemic magic in those 4? 

Well. There is one way to find out, I guess. Topping today's to-do list: Apply to the Common Ground Fair. 

Wish me luck! 

Rolled the Dice

...Or else I set $40 on fire. I applied for the St Louis Art Fair, which happens in September. Every year I have an argument with myself about whether I should apply to the top-shelf fairs I used to go to, when  lived in St. Paul. I didn’t know how easy I had it, back then! At least 10 of the top 50 best art fairs are within a ½ day’s drive of St. Paul. The closest one to me here is the Smithsonian, which I don’t apply to because it’s very unlikely I could get in. Also the jury fee is $50, the lowest booth fee is $1300, and getting a hotel and food in DC for 3 or 4 days would be a crazy expense. Also, the *average* sales total is about 6k. Since jewelers always make the most, and since there are always a few big studios that make like 50k, that means the little people like me are making between $0 – 3000, for a show that costs about 2500 to do.

Anyway. The last time I did St Louis, I made upwards of $5000, and would have made more except I sold out of everything! I had one pot left at the end of the show. Can I expect to sell almost literally everything, again? Probably not, but I can bring more pots! One good thing is, the organizers of this event did not get greedy, and the show still has less than 200 booths. Also, St Louis in  September? I could probably find camping nearby, or a hostel. (I also have friends in St Louis, having lived there many moons ago; but it seems rude to ask for hospitality, when I know the art fair will be so much work that I will not be able to spend any time visiting my hosts.)

Of course, I might not get in! I have a better chance than with the Smithsonian, but any good fair, you have to assume you might get juried out. I probably could get into the Uptown, but the last time I was

there I grossed $2k, which was great for a fair I did not have to travel to, not so great for one 1500 miles away. I still do have a lot of good friends in and around the Twin Cities, some close enough that they wouldn't mind housing me even if I basically just slept at their house & drank their coffee, so I could eliminate that expense, but travelling 1500 miles is still going to be a spendy proposition, in terms of both time & money.

  

I also applied to 3 local shows, one is June, one in August, one at the end of September. There are not a lot of great shows in Maine, and it has taken me some time to make the mental adjustment that most shows here are going to mean weeks of preparation and three days of flat-out backbreaking work to net a frustratingly small amount of money. 

Why did I choose this stupid field*? I should have become a visual merchandiser. Or idk, a dentist, a money manager, an engineer.
Just kidding, we all know I never had much choice in the matter. Clay chose me, and I'm lucky it did. 

*Again, I know it is bad branding to admit I don't make much money! I know we are all supposed to pretend to be super-successful all the time. But fuck it, somebody has to be honest, otherwise we all secretly feel like losers. 

Wow Already? Again: Time to Apply for Next Summer's Fairs!

Last year's images

This year's images

This year's images

A potter is always living in the future. (Well: and also the past, in a different way. But that's a ramble for another time.) From a making point of view, for sure: the things I throw today, in my mind, they are already glazed and fired - I have a surface in mind for them, although it is fair to say the kiln often has other ideas. In business terms as well - in snowy January, I must decide which art fairs I want to swelter at next summer. Some of the fairs are even further out than that - two I am applying to are in September and October.

Last year I got a rude surprise when I didn't get into two big events I was counting on. (See, this is why I am terrible at business and possibly also life; I know I am supposed to pretend to be amazing and always successful; just openly failing like a common person, that is not good branding! But it's just you & me here...well, us & the whole damn internet...)

Anyway.

I got a surprise, not the good kind, when I got juried out (well: wait-listed, which in the end is the same thing) of two good shows. I made the best of it & actually had a great summer with no pressure of upcoming events, but I would not like a repeat for next summer! Getting juried out is not the end of the world, it happens to most of us at times, but it shook my confidence a little to get the boot twice the same year. Maybe my slides sucked? Maybe the pots suck?!? MAYBE I SUCK?!?!?!

So I am having to do a little work here to push those doubts aside. There's an element of the random; this was probably just that...but it couldn't hurt to be extra deliberative when choosing my images this year.

At the top of this post are the 4 images I used to apply last year; below them are the 4 I used on some applications this year, and 4 more I used for other shows. I was trying for a greater unity among the images this year. There are still lots of shows to apply to, so if you have some insight on which set of images might work better, I am all ears!

So far I have applied to the Common Ground Country Fair, The Portland Fine Craft Show, and started the complicated application for Belfast Arts in the Park, which requires filling out an in-site form, emailing images separately, and sending a 2 checks by snail mail. I'm also considering Art Providence - would love to hear from anyone who has done that show if it was worth it.

There are some smaller events, like the Winthrop Sidewalk Art Festival, whose applications are not yet open. I'm considering giving that one a try - it's only a few miles from my house, the booth fee is tiny, and I have heard good things about it. 

ETA: A reader commented that there is a Facebook group, Art Fair Reviews, that might be helpful. (Thanks, Susan!) Boy was she right! I joined the group and immediately got the information I needed specifically about Art Providence, which was , don't. Or that was my take. I saw comments like, "We almost made our expenses" and "we made our expenses, but only because we didn't need to get a hotel" and "It was our worst show of the year." Everyone says it's well organized, with excellent quality vendors; nobody says they sold well. So, I am crossing them off my list.

Morning in Belfast

I don't know if I've ever done an art fair in a more beautiful location that Belfast, Maine. It was insufferably hot yesterday, so we didn't get a lot of visitors, but today promises to be sunny and 70s - the perfect Maine summer day.

As often happens after an extremely hot day, we got some thunderstorms last night. I didn't take my tent down but I did remove all the pots from the shelves & put them in crates on the ground. That turned out to be an unnecessary precaution, as winds did not get about 10 mph in Belfast last night! Still, better no to take the chance.
As always, I worried about the display; in particular if I would have enough pots to fill it. I do! Hopefully at the end of the day I will have none. 😉

Pots by the Pound and Other News

Fall has brought a flurry of activity with it! We got a last blast of summer weather last week, including one day in the upper 80s. This was fabulous for the tomato garden, and I am daily processing and freezing that harvest. Ditto the pole beans!

Claywise, I am getting ready for the next big thing: Maine Craft Weekend. I've skipped it for the last couple of years, but this year I decided to take a different approach. Instead of treating it like a little brother to the Maine Pottery Tour - getting out the good shelves, etc. - I decided to hold a much needed studio clearance sale.

"Clearance sale" sounds so janky, with a side of desperate. To make it a little more fun, I added a twist: I am holding a Pots by the Pound sale. Here's how it works:

Pots with red stickers are $1; pots with blue stickers are $2; pots with yellow stickers are $5; and so on. Customers choose their pots, then weigh them, all together - red stickers with red, blue with blue, etc. Got five pounds of red-sticker'd pots? That'll be five bucks please. I'm counting on the fun and the novelty to bring people out, and my promotional efforts, of course! I really do have a lot of seconds and demo pots that I am tired of looking at.

Once that is done, I have four events to gear up for: the Holiday Pottery Shop(Starting late November), the Portland Pottery Holiday Show (Dec 14 - 16), Art on the Hill (Dec 1-3) and...wait for it...ACC Baltimore!

I used to do this big wholesale show every year. It made my financial life much smoother: write the orders in late February, spend the next few months filling them, call them back for holiday orders. I knew that I could count on at least as much as the orders I had written coming in for those months.

The last time I did ACC Baltimore, the show coincided with the North American Blizzard of 2003. As you can imagine, the blizzard put a damper on the event. Baltimore is not like St. Paul or even Portland; they don't expect 30 inches of snow. The whole damn city was shut down for four days.

Now, being snowed in at home is one thing. You saw it coming, you dutifully bought your milk and bread the day before, you hunker down with your books and wait it out. Being snowed in in a hotel room...that's a whole 'nother thing. When I say the city was shut down, I'm telling you, even the Seven-Elevens were closed! I ate out of vending machines the whole time, with the pickings getting slimmer by the minute.

They didn't cancel the show. Of course they didn't. So we dragged our asses and our wares into the hall to await all the people who weren't there because travelling in a blizzard is a Bad Idea and they wisely stayed home.

Anyway! That sucked really hard, I lost a bunch of money, and later that year my van broke down. I haven't had an appropriate art-fair pony since then, until now. Now I ride the Grey Lady into battle!

If you can't tell, I am pretty excited about this! Art fairs were once my main gig, and though it's hard work, it's also exciting and ever-changing and immerses you in an intense, if brief, community with your fellow artisans. The thought of returning in part to that life gladdens my heart...and makes my back ache, in anticipation.

But first things first! Today I am painting my ware shelves and making wine chillers and sugar bowls, and sending out postcards for Pots by the Pound. Hope to see you here!

Art on the Hill

A few weeks ago, after a long break from art fairs due to lack of an appropriate vehicle, I did a sidewalk show - the Portland Fine Craft Show.  I worked like a mad bastard to get ready for the show, schlepped and hoisted and waited and smiled in what I hoped was a welcoming and not maniacal way during the show, and remembered the deep satisfaction that comes with art fairs.

I remembered: work is awesome. (A friend of mine is fond of saying, "Work is great. It's jobs that suck. " I know what he means!)  Working your ass off for weeks and then seeing, directly, the reward for that work - that is a fabulous feeling. I also was reminded: I work better with a specific event or goal in mind. Or at least I work harder!

That is the way of it, with self-employment: you eat what you kill. Maybe that's why I always got restless, in conventional employment situations; it's hard to feel the direct connection between how hard you work and the rewards you reap.

With all that in mind, and with the trusty Grey Lady always ready for saddle or pack, I registered for another fair: Art on the Hill, put on by the Society of East End Artists at the East End Community School in Portland. This is the school at the end of the Portland peninsula that used to known as Jack Junior.

Summer's not even technically done yet, but with this goal in mind (and, of course, the Portland Pottery show, and the Holiday Pop up Shop) the urge to make is coming on strong.  I know how events sneak up on me! Time can change from "more than plenty" to "oops too late!" in the space of a day. (Or, in the words of Hermione Granger's homework planner, ""Don't leave it till later, you big second-rater!"

The Smell of the Crowd

The crowd actually smelled pretty good yesterday at the Portland Fine Craft Show. It was a hell of a long day - I had to get up around 4 in order to be in Portland in time to set up for the show. We got a great day though, low 70s & dry.
The night before I remembered around 8 pm that we would be on asphalt - no way to stake the tent. I scrambled to Lowe's to find a weighting solution that wouldn't be too ugly. I ended up with white sandbags, about 40 pounds each. Good thing, too! Though it wasn't super windy, city streets can channel breeze in such a way that it gets magnified. I had no trouble - 40 lbs per leg seemed to do the trick - but I saw several people who had to grip onto their tents when we'd get a gust.

I did a firing specifically for this show, and was glad I did - it was a good one, crisp bright colors and some lovely juicy rivers of soda. My bet was a little off, though: I leaned towards mugs and ice cream bowls & other small things, and people wanted serving bowls, vases, and jaunty jars. If I'd had more of the larger items, I could definitely have sold more.

This was The Grey Lady's maiden art fair, and it reminded me of the days when that was my life: make, fire, load, travel, sell, come home & start all over again. Damn, it is a lot of work! Someone I had forgotten that: a shit-ton of work, and all crammed into a few days.

 Also, I need to figure out how to load the truck more efficiently: if this had been a better show for me I wouldn't have had enough work. It didn't suck but I wasn't dancing in the street. Wait, yes, I was, but only because the music moved me to do so. It was an amazing violin and synth duo, I am still trying to figure out the group's name.

But I digress. If it had been one of the more high volume shows I have done - The Uptown Art fair, or The Saint Louis Art Fair - I wouldn't have had enough work there. So I gotta figure that out, how to get more stuff in the small bed of my truck.

Next up I find homes for the leftover inventory. Not too worried about that - it really was a good firing, so I think my wholesale accounts will be happy, but I've got to unpack everything & figure out what is going where.

Silver Lining

Yeah, so, that art fair? The one I was so excited about? Kind of stunk for me. And by "kind of" I mean I missed making the booth fee back by $1.

I'm told this was a good fair, until this year. It's that Reverse Midas Touch thing again!Or else some other factors, like a new, larger fair this year - the MCA put on a fine crafts show this year, for some reason choosing the same weekend as the established Designing Women show. (Actually I know the reason - they are piggybacking on the crowd that already comes out for the 50-year-old WSCH 6 Sidewalk Art Festival, which features mostly fine art. (Mostly paintings of lobster traps and lighthouses, honestly. Not that there's anything wrong with that.) Still, sucked for the people who counted on the Manchester show.

Every dark cloud has a silver lining, and I was lucky enough to find two: 1) I had been meaning to rebuild my art fair display for years, but something else was always more important; now it is done and 2) I now have tons of inventory to get to my various accounts for the tail end of summer, going into leaf-peeping season and beyond to holiday shopping. Some of it is already at the Portland Pottery Cafe, and more on its way to Quench in Belfast, Mudfire in Decatur, GA, and my website, if it is a bright enough day to take photos. 

Moving right along!

Making Art, and Making Money

Check out this list. I'll wait.

Top 25 Fine Craft Show ranked by average sales

These are the top craft shows in the nation. I am a little bit comforted in a misery-loves-company way, because I always thought my take, back when I did these sorts of events, was way below average. It was, but not ridiculously so. And I'm a potter, my raw number is always going to be lower than the jewelers or clothing folks.
But: think for a second how much it costs to do one of these shows, between booth fees, gas, hotels, and meals. Take, just for a ferinstance, the Smithsonian Show. The lowest booth fee is $1265. Might as well add in the application fee, that's a cost of doing the show, too. Now think about getting a hotel room for five nights - in or around Washington DC. Even the Super 8's and the Motel 6's are spendy; let's say $150 a night. You could maybe get a room for less but you can't write luck into the plan. And food: realistically, you aren't going to eat peanut butter sandwiches in your room every meal. And food vendors at the event are always overpriced. You could maybe - if you are super-frugal - get away with spending $25 a day on food & drink, but I think $30 is more realistic. I've got a travel day on either end so that's about $180 for six days of bad food. It's about 1200 miles, plus some noodling around town to go to Lowes and buy lights or duct tape or whatever, and back & forth from the show to the hotel every day - might be pretty far if you need a cheap hotel. I'd have to be driving a truck or van so let's say 18 MPG. So we've got about $250 in gas.
It looks like this:

• Application fee $50
• Booth fee $1265
• Hotel $750 and you know there's gonna be some bullshit hotel tax in there, too.
• Bad food $180
• Gas $250
• Probably some bullshit parking costs, too, let's say $40

 $2535. That's all money you have to spend whether you see a dollar from the show or not. Most of it you have to come up with well in advance. Now, the average take from the Smithsonian is $5983. (When I was your age, a show didn't even count as "good" unless we made ten times the booth fee. That's not even five times the booth fee! The fees have gone up a lot more than the sales. The venues, they still get their money. The organizers, even the non-profit ones, their share hasn't dropped. When shit falls, it always fall on the little guy.) It's important to remember, too, that half of the artists will come in below average - although that's not for sure, there may be someone pulling the average down with a ridiculously low number. More likely, though, is that there's someone pulling the average up with a ridiculously high number. We've all been at that art fair where the artist in the booth across the aisle makes $20,000, whereas the low can never be lower than zero.

But I digress. Let's pretend we went to this show and sold a little less than average, because we know the jewelers tend to make the most, and not by a little. Let's say $5000. Subtract $2535 and get $2500. (ish) Most sales are credit or debit cards now, so let's add in conservative processing fees of $100, or 2%, on our 5k in sales, leaving $2400.

Half of your retail will cover your making costs and overhead, so now we've got $1200. This is not a terrible number, if you think of it as pay for 5 days' work; but if you think of it as your paycheck for the six weeks leading up to the show - the time it took to make the work and prepare for the show - well, now it is less impressive. And that's not including opportunity costs: the work you could have made in the six days the show took up.

I guess my point is, this shit is hard. It's not just me. These numbers matter, because I am still weighing a transition to doing art fairs more than wholesale/ consignment, and I need to assess it in a hard-headed way. I haven't yet bought a van, and before I do I want to make sure I'm not following faerie lights.

Designing Women

After weeks of prep and worry and more prep, it's time to saddle up. Whatever I forgot (ahem: business cards) I'll just have to do without; the weather will be whatever it is; people will come and buy, or they won't.
If you are in Central Maine, come see me!

Longfellow's Greenhouses
81 Puddledock Road
Manchester

Oh, and I almost forgot: today is my birthday! That's got to be good mojo, right?

Countdown: 3 Days

This Saturday, my first art fair in forever. Between now and then: so much work! I've got the display about 80% done - or, more accurately, 80%-as-done-as -it's-going-to-get-before-Saturday, because I am now recalling: the display is never done. I used to say that pottery is my business and the booth display is my hobby.

Here are the shelves so far. This is the main piece of the display I used for many years, updated with paint, crates, and quarter-round shelves. It has a couple of advantages: it's lightweight, it folds down flat to take little space in transport, and it sets up quickly. It has some disadvantages as well: you can see right through it, so it doesn't hide of the spare stock, packing materials, or other items you bring along to an art fair, that you don't want on display. It's also a bit unstable: it won't tip by itself but if somebody comes along, say, and leans on it, well, all bets are off.

I can solve these two problems with lattice panels and a cordless drill. I cut them to size and then just tack them with a couple of small screws to the back to the vertical shelf supports.

With the lattice tacked in place, to make sure it will work

Two screws on each end hold it in place to lend stiffness to the shelves.

I started painting it, so now I have to finish...but man, painting lattice? is a pain in the ass. It's all edges.

I hope to finish this today, and then unload the glaze kiln.

The Art Fair Booth Project

Remember the 90's? I do. I lived in St. Paul for most of them, weighed 20 pounds less than I do now, and I mostly sold my work at arts fairs. And made a living!

I've been saying for years that I am should go back to doing art fairs; my obstacles have been vehicular and boothal. (Do you like that word I just made up? It means "of, or related to, a booth.") Recently, as I've mentioned, I was invited to do a local art fair, one close enough to make multiple trips to bring the wares and the display, so the vehicle part is solved: now I just need a booth display.

The display in my head is awesome, and I was holding out until I had time and money to build it, but with less than three weeks left before the show it's time to admit that the awesome booth is not going to happen, and to settle for the adequate booth: a rehabbing of my old display - the one I used in the 90s.

So, let's see what needs to be done.

1. After a decade of schlepping and another of unheated storage, the stain and urethane are looking pretty shabby, and even flaking off in places.
2. The hinges are rusty and ugly
3. And, last but far from least, one of the ladder-supports has been cannibalized for another project, and will need to be rebuilt.

Surfaces first - I can get some sanding discs and re-purpose the angle grinder I bought to clean the kiln shelves.
To save time, I decided to paint rather than sand right down to the wood and re-stain and vanish. Ain't primer wonderful? Sticks to anything, and covers a multitude of sins.

Now, I've got to make a decision for the final color. Everyone tells me I would be wise to paint it white and keep it simple, and I'm sure that's true...but I can't help wanting something more fabulous than conventional wisdom allows.

When I think about what draws me in at a fair, honestly, at first, it's not the work. I get pulled in by the booths that are appealing, the booths that
are themselves artworks, and then look at the work once I am in. Am I alone in this? I think not. On the other hand, hasn't this resistance to conventional wisdom lead me to some spectacular failures? Why yes. Yes it has. Sometimes the fabulous in my head does not translate, and even other artists don't see what I was trying to do.

Still, like Popeye, I yam what I yam, and even though this will not be the awesome booth in my head, I am leaning toward some and pattern that harks back to the colors and patterns on the pots.

I've got until tomorrow morning to decide.