FEATURED SHOW REVIEW
August 2006
Oklahoma
May 12-14, Arts for All Festival. Contact: Arts for All, Inc., PO Box 592, Lawton, OK 73502; phone and fax 580-248-5384. E-mail: afa@sirinet.net. Web site: www.lawtonafa.org. Application fee: $15. Space fee: $165-$275. Space size: 10x10. 100% outdoors. Exhibitors: 90. Hours: 4-8 Friday, 10-8 Saturday, 11-5 Sunday.
By Brad Foster
Texas Reporter
E-mail: jabberwocky2000@hotmail.com
Medium: Pen-and-ink drawing
After a spring season full of mostly outdoor shows on hot asphalt, surrounded by brick walls and plate glass, it was a nice break to set up in the lovely park of the Arts for All Festival. Artist tents were arranged back to back in short rows among the trees and bushes, and most spaces ended up allowing you a bit more room than the basic 10x10. This gave you the option of more breathing room, and storage or exhibit space, although the amount of extra space varied from spot to spot. (The best plan when packing for this show is to assume you will have to fit everything within that 10x10 space but then pack a little more to take advantage of any extra space you might be lucky enough to obtain.)
The official start of the Festival was at 4 p.m. on Friday, but the generous setup time began at noon on Thursday. That kind of extended setup schedule helped to keep the limited parking areas around the Festival grounds from being overloaded.
I arrived at about noon on Friday, and the good news was that most of the tents were already up. The bad news was that many of the artists who had parked along the main street that fronted the park decided to leave their vehicles there after unloading, rather than pulling around to the artist parking area at the back of the park. You could certainly dolly your equipment from the back area as easily as from the front, though, as it was only a little further away. (It’s always a little irritating when artists turn a blind eye to everyone else trying to set up.) I lucked into a spot along the front curb and had a shorter route to walk back and forth to unload.
During the show, the artist hospitality tent was available for tea, coffee, soda and water, plus buckets of ice and all sorts of snacks all day long. Booth sitters could be reserved in advance for specific times, and they came by my tent several times throughout the show to see if I needed help. Various members of the Festival committee also stopped by at different times just to say hello and see how things were going.
Special recreation privileges were arranged with the YMCA located adjacent to the park. Artists needed only to show their badges to make full use of their game courts, pools, weight room, showers and saunas at any time during the weekend.
Judging was scheduled to begin at opening on Friday, and not only did the judge actually come in and take time to look at individual pieces, but he actually spoke to us. I saw him later in the evening, making a second run through the show, talking at length with some artists. While I did not garner a ribbon, it looked like judging was done thoroughly and with great care.
The staff served an amazing Sunday breakfast for the artists from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., run by volunteers from the Wichita Wildlight Photographic Society. It featured not the table of doughnuts and juice that you might expect but dozens of people cooking and serving up eggs, sausage, hot biscuits, fruit, bagels, milk and juice. And for those who wanted to start off their last Festival day with a bit of a kick, they were serving champagne. (I get no kick from champagne, but those who tried it said it was excellent.)
There was a special 12-page insert in the local newspaper with full show information and a good map of the site. I was lucky enough to have a piece of my work showcased in the publication, receiving not only a credit line but a note of my specific booth location. I had several people stop by and mention they read the insert and came to the show because of it. The Lawton community really does seem to come out to support this show.
If you did not have an Oklahoma sales-tax number, the Festival provided simple forms outlining the tax rate, and a single sheet to fill in and drop off with your tax payment at the end of the show. If most of your sales were from credit cards or you simply didn’t like to make tax payments using cash, you needed to pack your checkbook to make this payment. This was an incredibly easy way to handle local tax, and I wish more states would adopt this Oklahoma model. Some states make it so difficult, expensive and time consuming to give them money that you sometimes wonder if they want it or not! This form simply asked for your total gross sales, told you what to multiply that by to get the tax, and instructed you how to make out your check. Simple and clean.
Last year, the show started out with threats of tornados. To balance that night of nail-biting, the weather was cool and beautiful for the entire weekend this year, and there seemed to always be good-sized crowds. After some great sales on Friday night, I guess I had high expectations because, for the rest of the weekend, I felt as if I wasn’t really doing as well. However, when I got home and was able to total up my sales, I found I had actually made just as much as in the previous year.
I was once again impressed by the variety and quality of the art on display. Unfortunately, it seemed that the one hot-selling item (at least based on how often people walked past my booth with it) was the “handmade” wooden roses, a dozen for $5. Lines for these stretched past its seller’s two neighboring booths, and it put a blemish on an otherwise high-quality show.
While I felt good about my final sales, I got a different picture from a number of the other artists I spoke with on Sunday. A painter with very nice, traditional subject matter had no sales at all. A jeweler and photographer both had sales much lower than they had hoped and said they would probably not return. A second jeweler also complained of low sales, noting he made only 20 percent of what he had expected. I did see many packages in the crowd, but apparently sales were a bit unevenly distributed throughout the tents. I will apply again, though, and I believe it is the kind of show that anyone should try at least once.
