FEATURED SHOW REVIEW
September 2006
Missouri
June 3-4, Art in the Park, Columbia. Contact: Columbia Art League, 111 South Ninth Street, Suite 140, Columbia, MO 65201; phone 573-443-8838 or 573-443-2131. E-mail: col-art@coin.org. Space fee: $150 for members, $185 for non-members. Space size: 12x12. 100% outdoors. Attendance: 15,000 (2005 staff estimate).
By Elizabeth Sullivan
Texas Reporter
E-mail: ecsullivanart@aol.com
Medium: Watercolor painting
My fourth year at this usually wonderful show turned out to be very disappointing. The show moved from a park at Stephens College to a much larger city park. Although the setting was beautiful and the layout allowed for about 130 artists compared to the previous show’s 75 artists, everything else about the move was a distraction from buying and selling artwork.
There were two groups of artist tents. One bunch was set up on both sides of a sidewalk and was about 20 tents long, while the other group (most of us) was on top of a hill in the grass. Setup was the most difficult I think I have ever done, mainly because we all had to dolly everything a long distance over grass, through a playground full of children, and up and down hills. (Even more children were out there at breakdown.) By comparison, the previous location was compact. We still had to dolly, but no booth was a long way off.
At the old location, a buyer could walk the entire show easily and return to the tents he or she was interested in with no strain. At the new location, no one returned to the tents of us artists on the hill. It was hot, and our booths were a long walk from the entrance. I don’t even need to mention the hill.
The lucky artists on the sidewalk saw the same public walk by twice, as the walkway led both in and out of the park. Their sales were correspondingly better than those of us on the hill. I was at a location as far as possible from the entrance. My sales crashed from my usual $3,000-$4,000 to only $1,200. The photographer next to me made about the same. I didn’t find a single artist on the hill who was pleased with sales, which was completely opposite of last year’s show, where every artist I talked to was happy. But the biggest complaint I heard concerned the extremely difficult setup and breakdown.
I talked to Jill Stedman, executive director of the Columbia Art League. She is a wonderful woman and has been responsible for all the successful Columbia shows I’ve done in the past. She told me she talked to some artists who had excellent sales at this year’s show. Those must have been the artists on the sidewalk, close to the entrance. I did find one exhibitor who was pleased with sales (a paper-and-card artist), and she was on the sidewalk. She was the only one on the sidewalk I interviewed, so there were probably more who were pleased with that location.
Free breakfast on both mornings was provided for artists. I missed both because the hospitality tent was so far from my tent. Convenient, dry camping for RVs was provided in a separate parking lot in the park. The weather was hot, but not as hot as my native Texas.
I have to forgive one bad year at Columbia because I like this show and the people so much. But changes will have to be made to attract artists back. I hope organizers move the event back to Stephens College, but if for some reason they cannot, something will have to be done about the layout and the difficult setup. Eight out of eight artists I spoke to will not return unless those two points are somehow handled, and the same goes for me. "We’re just too old for this!" artists told me.
