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.