I'm happy to report that my neighborhood now has a nice art festival! This past weekend was the 2nd Annual Downtown Silver Spring Fine Art Festival. I avoid any show whose name starts with "1st Annual" and the reports I heard from other artists last year ranged from "I lost money" to "surprisingly good." I thought the art in last year's show was of good quality, even though the sales were not good for everybody. That's the one thing that would have stopped me from applying ... if there was junk or cheesy crap in the show. Given it's location within walking distance from my house, and my current push to do more art festivals and preferably local, I decided it was worth a shot. This area of Silver Spring is packed with pedestrian traffic on any weekend, and there are special events here two or three times a month. So I knew there would be lots of people, but were they interested in pottery? Whenever I do a show for the first time, I try not to have any expectations for sales. But I did have a benchmark for a sales amount that would trigger me to apply for the show again next year, which I surpassed by almost $500. Hooray for my hometown!
I'm only two weeks away from my first art festival of the year (Downtown Silver Spring Fine Art Festival, May 5-6), so I've been busy preparing some fun new gear for my booth.  I got some awesome new weights for my canopy! I need to thank Mark Cortright, from Liscom Hill Pottery in California, for suggesting this idea on the Ceramic Arts Daily Forum ... to make canopy weights out of steel bar stock. I googled the term "machine shop" and my town, and after a few phone calls I found a machine shop to make them for me. Steel bar stock is sold by the inch, and the machinist can tell you how much it weighs per inch, therefore you can design the weights to exactly meet your needs. I made mine 37 pounds each, for me that is heavy enough to hold the canopy down in just about every weather situation, and light enough to transport them by myself. They are 2.5 inch round bars, 28 inches long. Note the can of Rustoleum, these need to be painted to thwart rust. btw, I used 2.5 inch round bars because the machine shop had lots of it in stock, therefore I saved about $100 compared to having them order new bars for me. Overall, these weights cost me $220. They are so much more space-efficient than the dumbbells I was using before. And I have to say, they just look cool! I also made some reusable price tags. This is not my original idea, I saw another potter using these, and I don't remember who it was. I rolled out long coils of clay, then cut them into 1.5 inch nuggets, with one end cut at an angle. I glazed them with my glossy liner glaze, and now I can write on them with a dry-erase pen. Unlike the paper tent cards I used before, I don't need to tape these down when outdoors. And now I can easily change prices in the middle of a show.
And that's not all, I'm also working on new booth curtains, made from a fabric that won't wrinkle even if I'm trying. Plus a booth sign with a QR code (I'm so modern). And I'm setting up a MailChimp account for my email announcements, so watch for some way more attractive emails from me! ( click here to sign up for the emails)
My fifth annual Holiday Open House is this weekend!
Saturday, December 10, 12noon - 5pm
Sunday, December 11, 12noon - 4pm
Free gift with purchase! No hints.
I will be unveiling some new designs, including these new rectangular plates. Dinner plate is 8x10.5" ($35), salad plate is 6x9" ($25), dipping bowl with a stamped bamboo design is 4" square ($10).
This oval serving platter will coordinate nicely with the above tableware. 16x10" $90
I've worked on a few versions of this Everyday Tea Set throughout the year, and this one is my favorite so far. It is inspired by the design of a traditional Chinese gai-wan. $95 for the set.
I've updated the design of Captain Casserole with a larger, more oven-mitt-friendly handle. $85
And I'll have a whole lot more. Those of you who have attended my open houses know that my display is bigger than a typical festival booth, including a "sale" area with seconds, experiments, and discontinued items. Hope to see you this weekend!
(did I mention free gift with purchase?)
 (l-r) Alan Dowdy, Karen Riedlinger, me, Amy Castner. Not pictured in person, but represented by pottery, are Karen Arrington, Kori Rice, and Carol Wisdom. Photo by Chris Lillios (my brother-in-law) Not just for me and my pottery students, I want all potters to have the world at their feet. I'm working towards that one potter at a time. I thought our booth at last year's Greenbelt Festival of Lights was a screaming success. This year, my students and I improved our sales by over 17%! This is our third year having this collaborative booth, and it now operates at the level of a serious business.
I think I can pinpoint the difference-maker. Last year, after our furious selling pace on Saturday, our booth looked half-full on Sunday. It's harder to attract people into a booth if it looks like the good stuff may be gone. This year, we brought enough inventory to keep the booth looking full for both days of the show, and our sales on Sunday were much better. I can apply this insight to my own shows. I had two shows this year (Artscape Baltimore and Bethesda Row) where I had very few pots left for the last day. Sales were pretty slow on those days, but I've always thought it wasn't worth bringing more pots, because last day sales were always slower anyways. But now I know better. This means hauling in more boxes of pots, and hauling out more. But 17% matters. Here comes that recurring conclusion again, anything worth doing takes a lot of hard work.
Speaking of hard work, it really gratifies me that my students are having this much success. It reflects their preparation and hard work. Not just leading up to the show, but with all the dedication they pour into their pottery work year-round. They deserve it! My ego feels pretty good too.
This weekend is Greenbelt's Festival of Lights! The show is at the Greenbelt Community Center, where I teach my pottery classes. For the third year, I will be sharing a large booth with my super-talented students from the Advanced Functional Pottery class. This class is about both pottery skill and design, and everything we make is functional. One of the projects we worked on this year was a Three-Part Condiment Server: Carol Wisdom's hand-built leafy dishes look organic, but fit together like a puzzle.
Amy Castner's small wheel-thrown bowls were altered to subtly hug each other.
Alan Dowdy cut and assembled his three compartments into one pot.
Karen Riedlinger made graduated sizes that nest together.
And here's mine! This is not the set I made during class (I sold that one a few months ago) but a design I developed more recently. As you can probably see, I took inspiration from both Carol's and Amy's designs. The pointy corners make good pouring spouts too.
 Other projects we worked on this year include pitchers, canisters, ornaments, dinner plates, platters. We'll have lots of great pottery in every price range. Plus lots of these students were also part of the wood-firing, we'll be proudly showing off those toasty pots too.
Click this logo for the event's website. Hope to see you there!
 my simplified display and inventory at BAZAART I'm back from my indie-craft experiment at BAZAART. It was definitely different from my usual show experience. I learned a lot! Some was good and some not so good. Here's what was good about it ... it was much easier to pack and set up for the show. Usually, packing pottery for a show is a complicated 3-dimensional puzzle, trying to get all of those pots of various sizes to fit into as few boxes as possible. It takes a while. Packing my simplified indie-craft inventory was a breeze. All the pots were small, and many were the same size. The entire inventory fit into two boxes, neither was full or very heavy. I was able to bring a smaller display. My usual display is three or four tables, plus two shelves. For this show, I brought two tables and one shelf. I only needed room for nine different items, and I could keep extra quantities stored until space became available. Two boxes of pots, and half my usual display fit so easily into my car. I could actually see out the rear-view mirror! Normally, packing the car is another 3-dimensional puzzle, but not this time. I set up the display in less than two hours. It usually takes 3 to 3.5 hours. I took it down in one hour. That usually takes 1.5 to 2 hours. Overall the good news is ... taking an indie-craft approach to pottery selling is a lot less work. The show was very busy, about as busy as last year. I was writing up sales all day, and barely had a chance to sit down. But here's what wasn't so good about the results ... because all of my items were under $50, the grand total of sales just didn't add up to last year's. In fact, my sales were only 67% of last year's. That's a big drop! Last year, my sales included a $250 platter, a $175 vase, amongst other high-ticket items. This year, I didn't have a single receipt over $100. And that was the difference. Last year, the pricier items were 39% of my sales. This year, I didn't have them. Was it worthing trying? Yes, I needed to find out what would happen. But I'm not sure it's worth repeating. This doesn't mean I won't apply for other indie-craft shows, I still might. But only if I think my normal inventory would seem appropriate. This reminds me of one of my conclusions from The Hourly Earnings Project. When I compared the hourly rate of a big art festival vs. a small art festival, I decided that the small art festival was nice and easy, but anything worth doing takes a lot of hard work. I'll add a new, but related, conclusion now ... if you aim smaller, that's what you'll get.
This weekend I will be at BAZAART at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. This show is, to some extent, an indie-craft show (google the term "indie-craft" if you don't know what that means). Though not entirely, it is a mix of indie-craft, fine craft, and fine art. I used to look down my nose at indie-craft, because it typically does not require decades of practice to master, and the price points are kind-of low. But I can see that indie-craft is a growing segment of the art world. And the more I observe it, the more I appreciate it's one area of strength that traditional crafts could learn from ... an emphasis on good design. I never thought of pottery as belonging in that category, but design has always been a priority for me, because of my education and my previous career. And last year when I did this show for the first time, I was surprised that I did quite well amongst an indie-craft environment. So this year I am trying something different ... I will thoroughly embrace an indie-craft-style display for my work. My usual packing list for a show is a full-page, two-column list of items, including many one-of-a-kind items. But for this show, my packing list is only nine items, and I will bring lots of volume of these nine things. These items were chosen based on good design, things that appeal to both pottery fans and non-pottery fans. And everything will be under $50. Bowl with chopsticks $40 each or 2/$75 Enormous coffee mug $35 each or 2/$65 Mini elephant $20 Elephant tea light holder $40 or 2/$75 Chickadee tea light holder $22 or 2/$40 Small birdhouse $48 Set of four coasters with crab fossil $30 Personal teapot $48 "Peace + Joy" ornament $10 When my students ask me "what will happen if I try this new idea?" I answer "there's only one way to find out." So this weekend I will be taking my own advice. If this goes well, I may start applying to more indie-craft shows next year.
Festival artists have a love/hate relationship with weather. The forecast for this past weekend at Bethesda Row was for steady wind and gusts up to 40 mph. Which means a serious stress-out in the days leading up to the show. I was cursing the forecast. Wind is the worst enemy of pottery. But as the dawn arrived on Saturday, the wind did not. In fact, the weather was glorious. Sunny and warm, with cool breezes. The angled sunlight of autumn, and falling leaves that were turning color. It was beautiful. In the end I was cheering the weather. Now I have a different problem. I sold a lot more pottery than I was expecting. So this is all the inventory I have left, and all the holiday shows are coming up. Plus four wholesale orders, which need to ship for the holidays too. But I'm not going to start worrying about this until tomorrow.
Yes, there is a friendly rivalry between my neighborhood of Silver Spring and nearby Bethesda. But I will say that Bethesda can throw a killer art festival. This weekend, about 200 artists will take over the streets in downtown Bethesda, in the blocks that surround the Barnes & Noble. My pottery and I will be in space 49E on Elm Street. It's an easy walk from the Bethesda metro station, and all the nearby parking garages are free on weekends. Hope to see you there! bethesdarowarts.orgAlso, I've set the dates for my Fifth Annual Holiday Open House ... December 10-11 ... more details will follow soon.
This is the sculpture that greets you when you visit Annmarie Sculpture Garden in Solomons, MD. It's an oyster tonger, a tribute to the traditional Chesapeake Bay lifestyles and industries. You can see in the background all the setup going on for Artsfest. I love this show, and the park, and the people who run this park. I had to miss it last year and I was really glad to be back. Though the weather was nice on setup day, the rest of the weekend was chilly and drizzly. Sales were off from my usual expectations, but still pretty good. Not a record-breaker, but worthwhile. Weather happens. It's one of those things you can't control, so I try not to worry about it. Ok, I admit I watch the Weather Channel a lot in the days before a show. But I try to focus on things I can control, like recognizing shows that can still draw a decent crowd in bad weather (like this one), and my own marketing efforts towards my regular customers. And having enough shows to do, knowing some of them will be impacted by weather. There will always be those sparkling days that make up for the gloomy ones, if you think of it as a long game. The oyster man looks like bad weather doesn't bother him at all.
|
RSS Feed
