Now with 100% more floor!

The weather cleared up, the crowd was dense, the location was decent, but.. ehhh… hrm. In the four years I’ve done this show, I’ve never made a profit. I’m on the fence about doing it next year.

How to show up late, but set up early
The show started Friday at 4pm. We had two choices: set up Friday morning, or Thursday afternoon. The forecast called for a slight 8,500% chance of rain on Friday (starting at 3:00am). I thought it would be better to show up before it started raining, but that would put me in a bind because of how much stuff I had to get reprinted after the high turnout at Edmond last week. So I split the difference! I called ahead to get permission to set up late on Thursday. And by “late”, I mean 11:30pm.

it's 1:30am, I have a pile of booth, and a forehead-mounted flashlight. Go!

Luckily I worked up enough consciousness in the night to verify my hotel reservation across town. There really is a cutoff time on these things! If I didn’t show up by 3:00am, I would have lost the reservation without a refund. I assembled the booth and made it out just in time. It started sprinkling at 2:45am.

Notice I have my roof this time! I never make the same mistake twice. I try to make different mistakes, gotta mix it up.

The blessing and curse of the street.
The show takes place right next to Gore Blvd, one of the main east/west paths through the city. The art festival allows some of us (as many as physically possible) to park on the street next to the show, and if we’re lucky enough to have a booth on the north end of the show, we can park so close that we can bump the back of our booth with the passenger door as we’re loading up! That’s so awesome that only the likes of Sir Ranulph Fiennes would be qualified enough to fully explore this colossal mountain of awesomeness.

In order from left to right: road (not visible), van, curb, booth, people.

The downside of being so close to the road is having to put up with all the traffic being choked down to one lane. Lawton seems to contain a disproportionate number of Ford Mustang fans, and with all the engine-revving, it seems that Mustang drivers revel in reminding the world that they’re driving a Mustang. Lawton also has folks with zillion-watt stereos who are more than eager to share their music collection as they wait at the nearest stop light. (Curiously, I never heard any classical or ambient music. I’ll see if they take requests next time.) Some people yell obscenities at us, and I’ve also had stuff thrown at me in the past. But come to think of it, they don’t seem to be upset — hooting and hollering and throwing crap passes for humor around these parts.

That parking convenience comes at a price.

I feel out of place.
(Oh, this is a delicate topic. How do I say this..) Let’s just say I finally found a potential market for my not-yet-invented wifi-enabled robotic flame-shooting trucknuts and corresponding smartphone app.

This crowd is looking for certain stuff, and I get the sneaking suspicion my stuff ain’t exactly at the top of their list. I might have to diversify my portfolio to involve more folded-up coke cans and walky-dog puppets.

Looking for a way to make a living on “thank you’s”
People walk into my booth, look around, then right as they’re leaving, they say “thank you.” It’s a pleasant gesture, but I’m not sure what they’re thanking me for — I didn’t give them anything. Maybe it’s a condensed version of “thank you for coming to this show and letting me look at your stuff.” If so, well.. I do feel altruistic most of the time, but when I calculate my finances year after year and keep coming to the conclusion of “doing this show will put me $500 in the hole”, something’s gotta give.

Anyway…
I’m off to get ready for Tulsa Mayfest. If it will be anything like the madhouse of last year, I might have to pull another all-nighter to get enough stuff printed.

Random quotes from the show:

• Mom and her son walking into my booth — Mom: “See the barn?” Son: “I don’t see the barn.”
• Another mom and son walking through a neighboring booth of sculptures — Son: “Did god make them?” Mom: “No, an artist made them.” Son: “What’s an artist?”
• Dad barking at his kid trying to enter my booth: “Don’t walk on his floor!”
• A neighboring artist watched my booth for a few minutes, and after I returned, he leaned over and whispered his reaction to my visitors’ tendency to blurt out what they see — “Bathtub! House! …Very good!” Without missing a beat, I followed it up with: “Now, chapter two: Personal Finance. How To Buy Stuff!”

But I gotta get something out of the way first…

Either I’ve been photographing since age 6, or there’s more than just one crooked house in the universe.

There’s one constant about doing this Edmond show, and it’s how much everybody seems to recognize my “Tired” house. They react with:

• “Is that the old twisted house that stood on the corner of 122nd and Broadway?”
• “That looks a lot like the old twisted house that stood on the corner of 122nd and Broadway.”
• While pointing at my print, “Where is that from?” (It was on Highway 33 west of Guthrie.) “Oh. Well, there used to be one down on 122nd and Broadway, but it was more twisted than that one you got.” (Uhh.. if you already know that it looks different than the one in your head, why do you need to verify whether it’s the one you’re thinking of?)
• “I know this isn’t the same one…” (here we go, now you’re getting it..) “But have you heard about this old twisted house that stood on the corner of 122nd and Broadway?” (No, never heard of it. Do tell…)

Here’s what I know:
That particular house “on 122nd and Broadway” has somehow been embedded in the consciousness of every single inhabitant of Edmond, Oklahoma, even though the structure has been gone for several decades. Just before it was to be declared a state historical site, some punk-ass kids set fire to it in the night. If the rumors are true that it actually went down in 1982, it’s nigh on impossible that I could have taken a photograph of it. Not only did I not own a camera then, but I lived in Kansas and had never heard of Edmond, Oklahoma.

And here’s the best part: In 1982, I was six years old and could barely read!

(Anyway, back to the review of the show!)

Our own photography show inside the show

I’ve done this show for the past five years, and the layout used to confuse the hell out of me. For the first three years, I was across from another photographer. Last year, I was in a conga line of photography booths all on one side of the street. But after thinking about it, the layout this year was equally baffling, yet somehow brilliant!

Most big shows are really careful to equally space apart artists from similar media. This gives visitors a sense of variety as they walk through — but not in Edmond! They cluster us together like competing brands of hot dogs on a Walmart shelf, and I was on the side next to the spicy sausage (..mmm!)

Actually, there was the booth of a sculptor (the impressive Sean Corner) trapped in a sea of photographers! He had a photography booth to his left, one across the street to the left, a double-wide photography/painting booth directly across the street, and my booth was immediately to his right. The directors were either thinking, “All the photographers know each other and get along anyway, why not put them together!” or “Sean’s awesome work will pull in a lot of customers for these photographers to borrow from!” If you put friends together, you tend to get a positive vibe which lifts the atmosphere of the entire show. By the end of the show, all of my neighbors said their sales were strong and looked forward to having the same booth spot next year. Whatever happened, I’m fine with it happening again!

Reaction to my canvas

The more shows I do, the higher the likelihood of encountering repeat visitors and former customers. I get to ask how things are hanging (..the photos they bought), and see what they think of my latest work. But sometimes a repeat visitor will notice that I changed something, and this year brought the most noticeable change ever — I switched to canvas frames, and re-thought my matted prints.

A previous customer visited on Saturday and expressed disappointment that I switched to canvas. The discussion was friendly, but she thought my canvas prints looked “cheap” in comparison to the wood frames that she purchased from me in the past. She encouraged me to bring both wood frames and canvas to offer customers a choice.

I didn’t really have an answer that wouldn’t have sounded self-serving. I still have most of my traditional framed pieces, but if I displayed them along with the canvas, the booth wouldn’t have the cohesive look & feel I’m going for. The traditional prints would be at a disadvantage simply because they’re smaller at the same price.

I switched to canvas for several reasons: convenience of transport (they’re so light that I don’t have to get my van’s suspension replaced every year), the thickness and presence of a gallery wrap is more dominating, and I can print them at enormous sizes. I created a centerpiece out of my “Monument Valley Sunset” photo. At 24″x48″, it has a much more of an impact than the largest size I was offering last year — they were all 12″x24.

Aside from the one negative critique, the reaction was overwhelmingly lopsided in the other direction. (I eventually brought some of my traditional wood/glass framed pieces, not only to try her suggestion, but to fill in the empty spaces after I sold so many canvas frames. The traditional frames didn’t sell at all.) This was obvious by the massive number of visitors who not only loved my decision to use canvas, but some of them didn’t even remember seeing my booth last year. It’s the same set of images, but my booth just didn’t stand out then. It was also enough to finally impress the judges — this was the first time I won an award at this show (third place overall!)

This was my highest grossing show so far. Y’all better get used to canvas. That means I need to update the banner photo at the top of the site.. Heck, I don’t even live there anymore! :)

2010 is when it moved downtown. It got wet. (read my review)

2011 was the year of extremes. The first day was rock solid (I sold enough to question my ability to create enough inventory before the next show), but the second day brought so much wind that I had to break down early before it could destroy the rest of my display.

The Stillwater Arts Festival got all grown up

If you’re like me, “2012″ invokes mental imagery of asteroids blasting the earth with hellfire and destruction. So far, 2012 brought a festival of creativity to downtown Stillwater, Oklahoma — taking the form of a meticulous arrangement of 127 artists. Oh, yes. I typed that right, 127. And remember, this was a show which only six years ago had a third that many artists.

How did it get so big? This was the first year the show was available on Zapplication.org — a massively-popular system for artists all over the country to apply to lots of shows at once. All the big art shows use Zapp: Cherry Creek in Colorado (the creator of Zapp), Ann Arbor in Michigan, St. James Court in Louisville, Park City Kimball in Utah, and locally: the big OKC Festival and Tulsa Mayfest. If it’s big, it’s on Zapp. And here was the Stillwater show getting all big.

Where’d everybody go?

The only thing totally out of our control (the weather) was wonderful both days! Sure, the wind picked up on the second day; but at 15mph and 75F, it wasn’t the cold, dank, rainy, tornadic cluster of silliness that mother nature usually offers us this time of year.

The weather was nice, the collection of artists had never been greater, but what about the crowd? They were evidently off doing something else, at least from the point of view of my booth. (Here’s the part where I whine, and thanks to my technical background, I whine in maths.) The promoters of the show estimated 10,000 visitors for the two-day show. Saturday was 10am to 5pm, and Sunday was 11am to 5pm — 13 hours total. Dividing 10,000 visitors by 127 artists, and 13 hours, that means each booth was visited by 1 person every 10 minutes, on average. If they reduced the size of the show back to 85 artists, and had a 20% increase in visitors (just an extra 2,000), the ‘visitation rate per booth’ would double. (As of this writing, two days after the show is over, the City of Stillwater website still says “approximately 80 juried artists“…)

In this part of the country, there are only so many varieties of artwork to choose from, so inviting more artists simply increased the number of artists in each medium. Last year the show had four photographers. This year we had 12 — one tenth of the show was photography.

Location, Location, and that other thing

Visitors generally want an art show to be located in the best part of town, and we artists want our individual booths to be located in the best part of the show. The “best part of town” for an art show is a place with ample parking for a zillion visitors, and in neighborhoods where people feel comfortable walking around (parks and business districts). The “best part of the show” is different for everybody, but we do agree where the worst part of the show is: on the fringes, out in the dark corners where nobody goes.

Even though the mere concept of a shopping mall is disappearing, we can still learn from the mountain of research regarding store layout. I can’t seem to find the journal articles I had on this, but it was fascinating stuff: Malls can be designed in practically any shape, but each hallway ‘spoke’ from the center must have an “anchor store” at the end. In order for a store to be an anchor store, it must move a massive number of sales per square foot, and generally be a magnet that pulls people to the entire building. With anchor stores on the fringes of the structure, traffic will flow through the building from one anchor store to the next. Visitors discover the other stores along the way. How would this apply to an art show? In the mall analogy, consider anchor stores to be food vendors and music stages. Attract people to the edges of the place. Don’t let people think the edge of the show is just a place to turn around. Don’t let people get bored.

Here in Stillwater, Oklahoma, when people think “downtown”, they think of a three-block stretch of Main Street, from 6th to 9th. Anything past 9th is “past the last traffic light.” Anything off on the side streets (7th and 8th) is, well… “off on the side streets.” So, if you want to set up an event downtown, and you don’t want to send visitors out away from the action, you’re pretty well stuck between 6th and 9th.

So, where did they decide to plop down the show this year? Between 7th and 10th. Where was my booth? Past the last traffic light. But mine wasn’t the worst location! Since the show had 120 artists, the extra booths went out along 8th and 9th in both directions — the shape was unlike any Tetris block in existence.

When I talked to other artists, it was pretty much a consensus — the show was too big, and the artists out on the side streets felt like they were too far away to be noticed.

Overall

We artists can go on and on with a million different excuses why we think our sales tanked at a show: “My booth placement sucked… there were too many artists… there’s another big event going on across town… the weather, the noise, blah blah blah…” But sometimes it’s just dumb luck!

Welp, off to Edmond!

If all goes well, I’ll try to get lesson plans put together up for a fall class. I’m also up for one-on-one tutorials as well.

—

The Multi Arts Center in downtown Stillwater, Oklahoma is looking for new teachers, and they have an opening for a class on digital photography.

I am considering jumping in, but I only have a rough idea of what I would cover. I have an even more vague notion of the cost. Depending on the details, it might be a one-day workshop, or it might be a several-weekend class. So before I give it a go, I’m curious how many people would be interested in this.

The field of digital photography is quite large. Do you have anything specific in mind?

• Organizing and developing photos in Adobe Lightroom.
• Shooting flowers in low-light conditions on the second Tuesday of every odd-numbered month in Oklahoma counties ending in the letter e! (..speaking of which, Le Flore county is quite nice this time of year!)
• Or would you like an overview of everything: “This is a camera. This is the button you press to make the camera do stuff. Go!”

What about the structure of the class?

• Hands-on tutorial: Bring your camera and computer, and we do the occasional outdoor workshop together.
• Lecture / Seminar: Watch me press buttons during the class, and you work at your own pace outside of class.

Length of class?

• A single weekend workshop, done.
• An ongoing course that meets every weekend, for a couple months straight.
• Combination of the two: “Part 1″ meets for a couple days. “Part 2″ meets for a couple more. Then there’s probably a “Part 3″, and you can enroll in them one at a time, or all at once.

Let me know what you think — respond to this post, or email me directly: jason@jwallacephoto.com