SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

After my latest dilemma with workshops I got to thinking...

Should I go back to doing art fairs?

WOW!! 

A lot of "ifs" "ands" and "maybes" there!

I would actually LOVE to!! We loved doing art fairs.

But before I go on let me give you a little history about my "art fair" career.

It all began in 1993 in St. Louis, Mo. at the Greater St.Louis Art Association Spring Art Fair at Queeny Park. 

Now let me say upfront....we had NEVER done an art show in our lives! NEVER.

This art fair is a very long time semi-upscale art fair that you have to jury into and I had applied but had no clue on how to go about it and, of course, got rejected. No problem...we didn't have a display anyway.

Well....2 days before this show, the President of the Association called and said "We've had a cancellation...would you like to take the spot"? WHAT?!! Of course!!

Wait.....what did I just say....we have no display!! And when I say no display I mean all I had was a pile of watercolor paintings...unframed/unmatted. That's it. No frames, no mats, no screens, no bins, no lights, no nothing!! And 2 days to get ready!!

I must be nuts.....but what an opportunity.

John and I (along with working regular jobs) spent 2 days making frames on a little hand miter saw he had, cutting mats with a hand cutter and straight edge...building screens out of 2x4"s and chicken wire and building bins for the unframed work.

The evening of the set up we walked into that building with our "display" and felt like the Beverly Hillbillies!!

Here were all these nice professional booths and we didn't even have lights!! "Run to the Home Depo John and get clip on lights and extension cords and I'll start setting up", I said, with fear in my voice.

Can you say

"GREEN" 

It's was written all over us...but hey!! We were there!!

The funniest story about all this is that we didn't have shrink wrap for the unframed pieces to display in the bin so we went to Sam's and got a huge roll of Saran Wrap and wrapped them all up to protect....only problem was...they stuck together...so....

wait for it......John's job all weekend was to sprinkle baby powder between them to keep them from sticking!!!

You're laughing aren't you.....

I knew you were :)

Yep...it was pretty funny!! We laughed too and still laugh at it.

I sold one $15 painting but what we learned from the other artists in that 3 days was priceless.

That was the beginning of 15 years of traveling all over the country doing art fairs. We had about 120 under our belt when we stopped in 2009. We met so many wonderful people and eventually bought a travel trailer and had the opportunity of traveling all over the U.S. Before it was all over we had done fairs in Arkansas, Tenn., Missouri, Arizona, Wisconsin, Alabama, Illinois and Michigan to name a few.

2 earlier shows above: Ann Arbor, Mich. 1994

Riverfest in Little Rock, Ar. 1995

******

And this was our last show in 2009 at Panoply (our very favorite that we did for 11 years) in Huntsville, Al.

*****

So in 2009 I went back to nursing full time and we figured we were getting too old for all this set up and tear down (which can be gruesome).

I retired in 2012 and started doing workshops online and then traveling and taking students in my studio.

.....but it's just not the same.

We both missed doing art fairs.

***

After losing my daughter in 2013, we decided life is too short for not doing what you love to do so we went back to doing The Arkansas Craft Guild show in Little Rock at Christmas Time. We figured we could handle that....it's indoors, not hard to set up or tear down, it's close to home....sure....why not.

So we did it in 2014 and we did it again in 2015 and will be there again this year.....

Booth sure looks a lot different than those early days..huh?

and we've done okay. It's hasn't killed us, although I'll admit it's a little harder at our ages (me 70 soon and John 71 already), but we've done it.

So here we are, looking at how workshops are just not always reliable, among other things, and thinking..."Hey, we could do a couple of more art fairs a year! One in the spring, fall and December.

We don't have the R.V. but that's okay, although we did love that, and yes we are older and can't do the pace we used to...

but.......hmmmmmm

so like I said

"Should I stay or should I go?"

Did I mention we DO love it ? :)

I'll let you know, (but we have already written for a couple of applications for 2017)

We've come a long way.

Thanks for stopping by,

Suzi