Cambridge River Festival Report
Jun. 16th, 2003 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jim_pWell I'm not exhausted now, but I sure was at the end of the day Saturday and all day Sunday!
So Tam managed to snag booth space at the Cambridge River Festival to show off both her artwork and that of her mother. Tam, me, and our friend Catherine had all crashed at the Boston studio Friday night to get up at the (for us) ungodly hour of 7AM Saturday so we could pack up the car and get there for setup by 9AM or so. Packing the artwork, canopy, table, chair, supplies, and three people into Tam's Saturn wagon proved to be an interesing experience (anybody got a van for sale real cheap?)
Found our way there, started unloading and setting up... I swear I ought to buy stock in EZ-UP. It seemed like 90% of the vendors there had EZ-UP tents for their displays (and I thought we were gonna be oh-so-super-cool by having done so ourselves).
There are three rows of booths, and the closer you are to Memorial Drive the more expensive they are. I figured there must be two reasons for this. First, the closer you are to the road the more traffic you get. Second, the closer you are to the river the more goose-shit there is in the grass. Fortunately, I'd brought a big roll of plastic, so I cut off a hunk and laid it out to set the artwork on while we set up.
While we're setting up, a passing jogger stops dead to admire one of Tam's mom's paintings; a big, glorious, colorful portrait of a woman in the Haitian primitive style. I said to Catherine "Okay, obviously we display this one out front!"
Eventually we get the tent set up, paintings hung and propped, and the show opens. Tam is resplendent in her belly-dancing costume (she figured it would give the display an exotic touch). We get lots of admirers, Tam handed out lots of business cards and even sold two pieces! We went into this with no exepctations, since she's selling Real Art at Real Prices ($200-$1000) and with the economy in the state it's in we didn't know what would happen.
We noticed a couple of pieces that people Really Admired, so we rotated the display piece out front throughout the day.
We were most thankful that the rain held off; there were a couple of times during the day that the wind picked up in ominous fashion, but then it calmed down again. Still, the grey skies and threat of rain kept the crowds down. Most vendors that we talked to (including ourselves) said they just broke even.
Since it was very hard to load up the car in the morning with three people in it, and since we were bone-tired come breakdown time, I suggested that we fold the entire back seat down and load up, and then I'd walk to Harvard Square and take the bus back to Tam's studio. This made breakdown and loadup much easier, and Harvard Square was just a few minutes' walk from our end of the festival.
By the time I get to the studio, though, they're not there. Thank goodness for cellphones; I call Tam's cell, and it turns out they couldn't find a parking spot next to the studio so they were headed to Tam's rented parking spot in Brookline. She suggested I meet up with them at Chef Chang's for dinner... which I was only too glad to do :)
Not bad for a bit of a makeshift effort on fairly short notice (Tam put in for it rather late, and didn't find out she was accepted until just two weeks prior; she didn't want to put a lot of work into preparing unless she was sure she'd made it). We learned a lot. Sunday over breakfast we had a little de-briefing and made a whole list of things we could do better next time (e.g. make some prints of the more popular paintings for impulse sales, cobble up some battery-powered lighting for the interior of the tent, have a better display at the tent entrance, have more table space, that sort of thing). Overall, we were pleased and excited at the positive reactions people had to Tam's and her mom's work.
So Tam managed to snag booth space at the Cambridge River Festival to show off both her artwork and that of her mother. Tam, me, and our friend Catherine had all crashed at the Boston studio Friday night to get up at the (for us) ungodly hour of 7AM Saturday so we could pack up the car and get there for setup by 9AM or so. Packing the artwork, canopy, table, chair, supplies, and three people into Tam's Saturn wagon proved to be an interesing experience (anybody got a van for sale real cheap?)
Found our way there, started unloading and setting up... I swear I ought to buy stock in EZ-UP. It seemed like 90% of the vendors there had EZ-UP tents for their displays (and I thought we were gonna be oh-so-super-cool by having done so ourselves).
There are three rows of booths, and the closer you are to Memorial Drive the more expensive they are. I figured there must be two reasons for this. First, the closer you are to the road the more traffic you get. Second, the closer you are to the river the more goose-shit there is in the grass. Fortunately, I'd brought a big roll of plastic, so I cut off a hunk and laid it out to set the artwork on while we set up.
While we're setting up, a passing jogger stops dead to admire one of Tam's mom's paintings; a big, glorious, colorful portrait of a woman in the Haitian primitive style. I said to Catherine "Okay, obviously we display this one out front!"
Eventually we get the tent set up, paintings hung and propped, and the show opens. Tam is resplendent in her belly-dancing costume (she figured it would give the display an exotic touch). We get lots of admirers, Tam handed out lots of business cards and even sold two pieces! We went into this with no exepctations, since she's selling Real Art at Real Prices ($200-$1000) and with the economy in the state it's in we didn't know what would happen.
We noticed a couple of pieces that people Really Admired, so we rotated the display piece out front throughout the day.
We were most thankful that the rain held off; there were a couple of times during the day that the wind picked up in ominous fashion, but then it calmed down again. Still, the grey skies and threat of rain kept the crowds down. Most vendors that we talked to (including ourselves) said they just broke even.
Since it was very hard to load up the car in the morning with three people in it, and since we were bone-tired come breakdown time, I suggested that we fold the entire back seat down and load up, and then I'd walk to Harvard Square and take the bus back to Tam's studio. This made breakdown and loadup much easier, and Harvard Square was just a few minutes' walk from our end of the festival.
By the time I get to the studio, though, they're not there. Thank goodness for cellphones; I call Tam's cell, and it turns out they couldn't find a parking spot next to the studio so they were headed to Tam's rented parking spot in Brookline. She suggested I meet up with them at Chef Chang's for dinner... which I was only too glad to do :)
Not bad for a bit of a makeshift effort on fairly short notice (Tam put in for it rather late, and didn't find out she was accepted until just two weeks prior; she didn't want to put a lot of work into preparing unless she was sure she'd made it). We learned a lot. Sunday over breakfast we had a little de-briefing and made a whole list of things we could do better next time (e.g. make some prints of the more popular paintings for impulse sales, cobble up some battery-powered lighting for the interior of the tent, have a better display at the tent entrance, have more table space, that sort of thing). Overall, we were pleased and excited at the positive reactions people had to Tam's and her mom's work.
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Tam's website
Date: 2003-06-16 02:37 pm (UTC)There's a bunch of stuff there, but we've got to revamp it a bit... she gave out a LOT of business cards at the festval with her URL on them, and we want to make the site as inviting as possible
Any idea what the best (and least expensive) option is for a web storefront? Yahoo shops? eBay stores? Roll our own?