I just finished being a vendor at my first ever art fair, Martinez Art in the Park, and it was a great time. Also, I’m exhausted.
Setting up
I got to the park at 7:45am to help the other artists I was participating with set up the gridwall system that all 20 of us would be using to hang our paintings.
Once we got the walls up, we each took one vertical panel, roughly 6’ x 3’, and started hanging our art. As soon as we got to this point, I wished I had thought more about which paintings I wanted to be on top and how I wanted to orient my paintings at all. After a brief spurt of decision paralysis, I committed to a direction and started hanging my pieces.
My experience
I’m an introvert and I struggled with having so much attention on me. I actually found that it was helpful to just walk away when I noticed people coming up to look at my artwork. I convinced myself this was mutually beneficial because no one wants the artist whose work you’re admiring to be looming over you anyway.
In fact, the first sale happened when I was far from my artwork and another painter who knew me flagged me down to let me know someone was interested. After briefly chatting about how the painting, Cathedral’s Call, was made, where I let the collector know that I painted that one completely en plein air, they decided to buy it. Just then, the live band playing music started playing the national anthem (this was right when the fair opened). The collector and I shared an awkward chuckle and then waited for the song to finish to complete the sale. (What even are the norms around this?)
One of the best parts of the art fair was getting to share the experience with other artists in my community. In between the sales and conversations with visitors, I had many opportunities to chat with the other painters about their practices, their paintings, and what they do when they aren’t painting.
Lessons learned
We were asked not to have any storage or materials visible out front which meant the materials I bought to package up the artwork to make it easy for collectors to take home were stashed away. In practice, this meant that I didn’t package anything up and collectors took the paintings with no wrapping on them. This was fine for an art fair but I will try to come up with a better system for next time.
Also, sending out a newsletter update prior to the fair worked really well. I had many visitors find out about the fair that way and one painting even found its home that way after the fair.
In the end, I had such a great time and I definitely want to do it again.
