Fair Game

Back in Michigan tourism season is just getting under way. There are more visitors crowding the beaches and walking the state park trails. You have to park your car a little farther away from the entrance at Wal-mart. The stores, restaurants and galleries are open seven days a week instead of "by chance" and there are fishing tournaments and fireworks and parades and art fairs to look forward to. I feel nostalgic thinking about all the cool stuff I'm missing up north.

So when an artist friend asked me if I'd be interested in selling my window paintings at the Lake Asbury Pottery and Art Fair just south of Jacksonville I told her, "Sure." It seemed like a pretty good deal. She said the organizer of the event was looking for more vendors, the entrance fee was cheap and she'd even loan me her tent. I thought about how I'd enjoyed strolling through the art fairs in Ludington in the past and how I'd always wanted to try to sell my stuff in an art show. It would be fun to hang out with other artists and watch people browse through the booths. I pictured a pretty green lawn crowded with tents and the spaces between filled with folks in brightly colored summer clothing. Maybe I'd get lucky and sell some stuff. How hard could it be?

Right away I threw myself into preparations for the show. I made lists of materials I'd need to make more window paintings, like more window sashes and window paint. I started thinking about things I'd need to sell the finished work, like a credit card imprinter and a receipt book. I thought about how to arrange my booth to create an inviting retail space. I'd have a guest book available for people to sign up to get regular updates on my latest art. I'd have a giveaway at the end of the show. I'd have three pricing tiers — a high end, a mid-range and a low end product — to tempt every customer no matter how much money they had to spend. I'd craft free-standing sculptures to hang my paintings on. I'd make eye contact with everyone who passed by my booth because as I'd once smugly told my then six-year-old daughter who was trying to sell Girl Scout cookies at K-mart, "If you don't ask for the sale, they don't have to buy."

I had plans. Unfortunately, they were more suited to a six month lead time instead of three weeks, which was all I had. Instead of 30 paintings I ended up with nine. I didn't have time to make 50 window clings, only 21. The mid-range set of products never happened. The clever sculptures to hold the paintings devolved into precarious bamboo tri-pods, held together at the top with twine. After three weeks of furious activity I was tired and discouraged and wondered how I'd ever thought this was going to be an easy project.

The day of the art fair was a beautiful one, pleasantly warm, with a light breeze. The sun shone brilliantly through the leaves of the tree under which I had set up my tent. I had hung my paintings and strung up the window clings between the tent supports. From the booth space to my right a pair of watercolorists came over to offer encouragement. "These will sell," said Edith, after introducing herself. "They're beautiful." I felt reassured about making the decision to come and was grateful for her comments.

I carefully aligned my credit card imprinter with the edge of the table. I had special business cards stacked in a neat pile, ready to give away, and my cell phone was close at hand, pre-programmed to dial the credit card authorization number if a customer wanted to buy a window painting with a credit card. I daydreamed about quitting my day job and making art 24-7 in a cute little art studio/gallery in my back yard.

Al, the vendor on my left, asked me to watch his booth while he made a final dash to the restrooms before the show opened. "Remember, $2,000 takes it all," he joked as he left.

It was beautiful all day, perfect art fair weather. But no one took advantage of it. Well, that's not precisely true. There were about sixty people who came to the show and that includes toddlers and dogs. I found out weeks afterwards that there were two other art events happening at the same time as the one where I was, each well-established, well-attended and well-publicized. Funny how you can completely not recognize a losing proposition when you're blinded by hopeless optimism.

Later that day, Al told me that Sundays were terrible sales days at any art fair he'd ever been to. He was trying to cheer me up. I didn't point out that it was Saturday. He left again to use the facilities, but this time dropped the price for everything in his booth to $500. I'm pretty sure he was still joking.

At the end of the day, when we were packing up to go I ended up buying a bird feeder from Al. I did it to thank him for helping me set up and tear down my tent, and also for his kindness in not mentioning that when I first got there I arranged my booth so that it faced away from the flow of foot traffic. "I figured you knew what you were doing," he said.

The day wasn't a total loss. I had one person sign up for my mailing list who asked if I did work on commission. I may have gotten drool on my shirt then. And toward the tail end of the day a gallery owner stopped to admire some of the paintings and ask if I'd be interested in selling them at her shop. I nearly asked her to adopt me. And I sold two clings for a total of $14.

I'm not sorry I did the art fair. I met some good people, gained experience giving impromptu workshops on window painting to other equally depressed vendors and learned that displaying artwork at leg cocking height is extremely dangerous when there are loose dogs around.

What's more I can now cross this off my list of things to do before I die. I've moved on to the next item which is, "Learn How to Fly." How hard can it be?