Friday, April 27, 2007

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

This is a festival put on by the Lewisburg Arts Council. It is a small event- 4000 to 7000 people expected with 120 artists. I have heard positive things about it from other artists. I don't expect anything amazing to happen but it may well be my first profitable show because the cost to do it is so low. And it's outdoors! I'm very excited about that fact. If I don't sustain any injuries while setting up my tent it should be a fun day.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The Changing Art Market

While I was hauling in my booth gear for Gaithersburg a I saw a group of older women artists wearing these shirts that seemed to be made of shredded rags very ornately colored and sewn together. I was tempted to ask them what they wearing- maybe as a less rude way of asking them why they were wearing them. I later realized that one of the artists on my floor made these shirts. An artist in the booth next to me also made women's clothing. His work seemed like dated futuristic costumery- maybe something out of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I didn't understand it or see why anyone would like it. But I realized over the course of the festival that he had a loyal clientele. I also observed other women about his age range (baby boomers and older) exclaiming about his work as they passed. I asked him how business was going. He said it was in a long term decline- having peaked in the late 90s. Other old-timers who sold other kinds of work said the same thing.

For someone just starting out on the festival circuit this was discouraging to hear. I had read in one of my art festival guides about certain areas becoming exhausted or worn out for art sales. Gaithersburg is said to be one of these markets. But this is more than simply a problem with specific markets. This phenomenon afflicts the art festival circuit across the nation. I asked a number of the seasoned artists about this and they all gave the same answer- the generations that bought their work are now "full" of art. Not only that but many of them are downsizing their homes as they retire and the last thing they need is more art. They also complained that the younger generations didn't seem to go for their work the way their parents did. Here theories diverged as to why this is. Some said the festival circuit needs fresh blood- a younger generation of artists to be connecting with the younger generations of patrons. Other artists suggested it was a deficiency with "the youth today" and that their parents weren't teaching them to value and patronize the arts. Maybe they're too into their Ipods and other electronic gizmos. Maybe there're too many channels on cable TV now-a-days and that keeps them culturally malnourished.

From what I've seen so far (and I fully concede that I'm still wet behind the ears with the festival circuit) the younger generations are in fact quite interested in art. But I don't think that the work that has been sold by the old-timers for the past of couple of decades always connects with the younger generations of patrons. I wonder if the artists that sell via the circuit are in an insular world. They've cultivated the clientele that likes their work but have otherwise been oblivious to the changing demographics and tastes of the larger society. Maybe these artists have to reinvent themselves every so often or they remain prisoners to the tastes of a particular generation.

I'm not worried about this trend for myself. From my experience so far I sense that I'm on a different trajectory than these artists- that I'm facing a growing clientele rather than a shrinking one. And while the appeal of my work is restricted to the more culturally sophisticated I'm fortunate in that it has no age constraints. It attracts the interest of members of every age group from toddlers to retirees. But this is a serious problem for some of the established artists. I'm not sure what they will do- or what they can do. Hopefully they will find a way to adapt.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Not Going to Long Island

Another artist said it was a lousy venue so I'll sit tight till next weekend. Then I'll be having my first outdoor show in Lewisburg PA on Saturday. It's a small festival (only about 7000 people) but very inexpensive to do.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Show This Weekend

I'll be at the Rockville Centre Railroad Station on Long Island this Saturday. I don't have any background data on this show but it'll be inexpensive for me to do. This will be my first outdoor event and if nothing else I'll provide a comic diversion for the other exhibitors as they watch me struggle to put my tent up. All the other shows from here on out will be outdoor ones.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Sugarloaf Gaithersburg

The good news is that I continued my trend of doubling my sales show over show. I didn't quite make expenses but was close. I had one couple drop $300 on my work- my largest single sale yet. But overall the festival was a train wreck for the artists. The storm moving up the east coast was projected to hit that area hard. But Saturday turned out to be a relatively nice day though there was steady rain all day Sunday. The early warnings about the severity of the storm had people making other plans and attendance was half what it was prior years.

I talked with the most established, successful photographer there late Sunday afternoon. He's been doing Gaithersburg for twenty some years and said this was his worst one ever. I think I may have out-sold him but I'm not sure. I'm not saying that to gloat- these guys have families and kids in college and these slow events really hurt them. I don't even want to see the dumbasses putting birds in their pictures having a bad show- a man has to earn a living somehow. And as long as it doesn't involve exploiting others or somehow hurting anyone it's alright by me. I 'm thankful I don't have anyone else to be providing for at the moment. But these sales trends point to a tremendous upheaval going on in the art world and this may be a difficult year for a lot of artists. I'll post much more on that later.

Otherwise it went much the same as the other events- most people blew by my booth without even noticing its existence while those who stopped were quite enthusiastic about it. I also gained a new group to add to my fan list- Europeans. That area being close to D.C. had more of an international component than any other of the shows I've done. They probably won't be a significant makeup of any shows I'll hit but it's interesting to know.

Every show I do impresses upon me what an ignorant dork I am. I have booth lights now and therefore have electricity run to my booth. The power supply is very carefully managed according to how much wattage each artist has purchased. At one point my laptop battery was running low so I thought I'd recharge it by plugging into my booth's power strip. A minute after I did the entire booth row I was in went dark. I discreetly unplugged the laptop and put it away. They got the electric back on about twenty minutes later. I didn't think a laptop would draw that much current. Oops. And I got yet more advice about my booth. If you talk to the old timers they'll give you all the advice you want. I always do talk to them and I finally found out what's with all those director chairs they're always sitting in. I've been using this crap lawn chair I bought at Target for twenty bucks. But I learned that it's disconcerting for a customer to have to look down to talk you and those high rise director's chairs keep you eye level with the customer. Yet another booth improvement I can't swing at the moment. Next it'll be hardwood floors and a hot tub.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Sugarloaf Gaithersburg

I head down to Gaithersburg tomorrow. This will be my best show so far both in terms of attendance and the quality of the crowd. It's also my first event that ranks in Greg Lawler's Art Fair Source Book http://www.artfairsourcebook.com/. There will be around twenty other photographers plus a number of other wall-art people so they'll be plenty of competition. In any case I'm quite excited about it. My posting has been light this past week as I've prepared for it and I may not post again until early next week when I'm back and recovered (these events are really tiring.)

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Make Your Own Prints Part 2

So why are some digital photographers outsourcing their print making? At the professional level it isn't to save money. A high-end service bureau will be more expensive than the artist using their own equipment and purchasing their fine art papers in large rolls. Just how hard can it be to make a high quality digital print anyway? You just hit the print button in Photoshop or whatever photo management software you're using, right? Wrong. For those inexperienced with trying to make professional-grade digital prints I suggest the following experiments. Take any two dissimilar computers you have- this will probably be easiest with two laptops or a desktop and laptop. Open the exact same picture on each computer with their screens side by side. Compare the two pictures. How different are their colors? How about contrast? How about color saturation? Lightness/darkness? Are you surprised at the differences? If you have a desktop photo printer take any print you've made with it and hold it right beside the picture as it appears on your screen. Try this with a number of pictures of different subjects under different lighting conditions. What's happening?

Computers, monitors, printers, inks, and papers all have their own unique color handling behavior and none of them are as sophisticated as the human eye. Computers from different manufacturers have different color displaying abilities and the same is true for different monitors, printers etc. There is even variance within the same model of monitors from the same manufacturer. Digital cameras lie. Computers lie. Monitors lie. Printers and inks and papers lie. And by "lie" I mean they introduce distortions and deviations from the ideal print that portrays the original subject matter the way you want it to. Achieving mastery of digital printing means conducting a long, painful battle with technology. You have to learn the hardware and the software. You have to learn about papers and research the ones that perform best for your work. Then you have to get it all to work together to achieve the results you're seeking. Eventually you can get the better of the technology and make it do what you want it to do. Until then it's getting the better of you. It's hard to master it. It's frustrating. It takes time and experience and wasting a lot of paper and ink. And just about all naive users of digital printing don't understand this. But those starting at the professional level come into this awareness very quickly. And they are then faced with a choice- spending the time, effort, and money to master digital printing or pay someone else to do it for them. Digital print making at the professional level is hard- no question. But if a photographer takes their art seriously and really cares about their work they will learn what is required to do it right.

The photographers who come through my booth ask me how I make my prints. Non-photographers always want to know about Photoshop. Potential patrons of digital art should ask the artist how they make their prints- and what papers they use. After all the print is what the patron pays money for. This is ultimately a more meaningful question than asking the photographer whether they manipulate things in Photoshop and you will be the more sophisticated patron for asking it. This will give you a good feel for how seriously the artist takes their print-making without needing a lot of technical knowledge yourself. Cruise around an arts festival with that question and see how many photographers you spook.

I don't know what the future holds for the photographers who aren't making their own prints. I'm not sure if their work will ever be considered collectable or not. My guess is that time will sort out the wheat from the chaff.

Monday, April 9, 2007

Make Your Own Prints Part 1

The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. ~Ansel Adams

At one of the first fairs I attended an amatuer photographer asked me how I printed my work. I began telling her about the Epson printer and various papers I use. She interrupted with "I just go to Sam's- it's cheaper." This startled me- I think I mumbled something like "yeah it would be" in reply. There is a trend among digital photographers- especially among those who started directly with digital equipment verses those who started with film cameras- to outsource their printmaking. Presumably those photographers who are wishing to sell their work are using a more sophisticated outfit then Sam's. To be sure there are some very good companies that produce (technically) high quality prints on fine papers. But no photographer who's presenting their work as art should be doing this.

What do collectors of photography seek? A print made by the artist. Anyone can go into the library of the University of New Mexico and check out Ansel Adam's negatives. They can make all the prints they want from them. Are these prints then worth anything? Of course not- they weren't made by Ansel Adams. For all practical purposes negatives are worthless. Files on a computer are even more worthless.

The print is everything when it comes to photography being presented as art. The exercise of the photographer's eye is just as critical in making the print as it is in taking the original picture. And the quality of the print is just as important as the subject of the picture itself. The print is the actual work of art being created by the photographer. It is the end goal of all else the art photographer is doing. But in the digital era many photographers- especially those starting out in the digital world- have lost sight of this.

All the better art festivals require that photographers make their own prints. But I know there are photographers getting in to top-end art festivals who aren't doing this. I'm not saying this to knock festival organizers- it would be very difficult to effectively police this.

More on this in the next post.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

The Temptation of Ben

During the Hartford show there was an exhibitor who came by and offered some suggestions about what I could do to make my pictures more saleable. This person was definitely on the craft side of things rather than the art side with what he was selling. He told me about one photographer he knew who would take portraits of people and distort them in amusing ways in Photoshop. He also mentioned some other shticks that photographers were using to sell their work. He meant well and I appreciated his concern for my sales situation. But I don't think he needs to be worried about me. He doesn't see what I see and hear what I hear. In every show I've been to there has been a certain select group of people who are drawn to my booth. Most people drift by barely registering its existence. But those who do stop are quite enthusiastic about what they see- the compliments are very effusive. And some of them even purchase prints. There are more compliments than purchases but that will always be the case. The people who like my work really, really like it. So who are these people?

I've been curious about this and have asked them a bit about themselves to get a feel for who they are. Some are simply well-educated, intelligent people. Many are experienced art festival patrons. Some of them are other artists. Some are amateur and professional photographers, scientists, art educators, gallery owners/managers, nature lovers, and young aspiring photographers. In other words all the right people. These kinds of people have been a minority of the crowd coming through the venues I've been to so far. But that will change. There are summer festivals where the more cultured demographic will be the dominant one as opposed to the blue collar demographic (though I don't mean to be putting the blue collar folks down- it takes all types to make the world go around.) From everything I've seen so far I expect to do well in these events.

My work is attracting the attention of the right people. And my work is getting me into the quality festivals. So I don't think I'll need to resort to Photoshop chicanery to manipulate people into buying my prints. I'll be patient until the more sophisticated venues of summer. Or maybe I'll become disillusioned and cynical and start putting a cardinal or two in every picture and showing up at my booth drunk on festival mornings. We'll see.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Social Skills

I was hesitant to tackle the festival circuit because I didn't think I had the right personality for it. I'm not the car salesman type who can start schmoozing with people as soon as they walk in the booth. But I'm learning you don't need that. People will start a conversation with you if they like your work and I'm really enjoying talking with these people. They seem to be an interesting set of people- by and large educated and cultured. Even in the humblest venue I've been in there were some pretty cool people who dropped by. So I'm enjoying the social aspects of this more than I expected to. More on who my patrons are shapping up to be in the next post.