FEATURED SHOW REVIEW
October 2006
Kansas
June 16-18, Town Art Show, Leawood. Contact: Town Art Show, 5925 State Line Road, Kansas City, MO 64113; phone 816-444-4284. E-mail: shunter1@kc.rr.com. Web site: www.townart.org Application fee: $15. Space fee: $235. Space size: 10x10. 100% outdoors. Exhibitors: 130. Hours: 4-8 Friday, 10-8 Saturday, 10-5 Sunday.
By Brad Foster
Texas Reporter
E-mail: jabberwocky2000@hotmail.com
Medium: Pen-and-ink drawing
The eighth annual Town Art Show was held around the Town Center Plaza in Leawood, just south of Kansas City. This was my first time here, and as usual, I was a bit nervous about what I had gotten into. But I had a good feeling on arrival, as the neighborhoods I drove through clearly had an affluent feel, and the Plaza itself housed a number of high-class stores. An even more positive indicator, I thought, was the presence, in the Plaza’s parking lot, of a large metal sculpture of an artist busy at his easel. I took that as a good sign for the weekend!
The Plaza has three large groups of shops, all facing the outside, and the tents were lined up in single file, facing in, toward the shop entrances from the parking lot. Two small sections of tents were arranged between the shops, along narrower side streets. The overall Show layout essentially created one large circle around the central grouping of shops, and this made it particularly nice for patrons, who had to walk only one complete circle to know they had seen every tent. The single-row layout also meant artists didn’t have to worry about a potential buyer being distracted by someone across from them.
My paperwork noted that my location was in one of those narrow areas, and the Show staff recommended coming a bit earlier to make setup easier, before it got too crowded. So I got there first thing Friday morning, and that did make it easy to unload. Several other artists around me did a quick tent-raising, then returned later in the day for final display setup, as the show was not scheduled to start until 4 p.m. With temperatures moving steadily into the upper 90s, I did as much work as I could in the morning, then just sat quietly, soaking up what breezes I could as the afternoon wore on.
While the show staff promised only the basic 10x10 space, they noted that most spots would be more like 12x12. And some locations were spread out a bit more, creating close to a 20-foot frontage! Many artists opened up their tent sides and spread their walls out to widen their display area. On top of that, every tent had plenty of space behind it, which allowed more air circulation.
The show paperwork also mentioned that although things would officially start at 4 p.m. on Friday, the crowds wouldn’t really start until around 6:30. While Friday evening did produce a slight increase from the minimal afternoon crowds, after a long slow day on Saturday, things actually died off to nothing after 6:30.
Everyone was required to stay open until 8, whatever the size of the crowd. Because there was no electricity for lights, that was either good or bad news depending on your location and whether you were able to capture the final light of the afternoon. I was lucky: While my tent ended up in the shadow of the buildings behind me (nice to cool down with, but tougher to see anything inside the tent), the sun coming over the top of the building behind me was reflected off the tall blank wall opposite. That actually created a sort of nice ambient light at the end of each day. It’s just too bad there were not enough people around to take advantage of it!
Free water for the artists was available whenever you liked, and volunteers brought carts around the circle all day, offering more to drink. Each morning there was a nice spread of bagels, and on Sunday, there were even Krispy Kreme doughnuts (aaah). But I was just starting a diet, so I could feast on only one. And as everyone knows, it’s almost a sin to eat only one Krispy Kreme.
Sunday dawned with blue skies, fluffy clouds and an early show opening of 10 a.m. There were a few folks wandering around by noon, but not many, and temperatures continued to bake us all. (When the kettle-corn folks are having a hard time giving away free samples, you know things are dragging!) I had plenty of time to do a head count of patrons and found that only two or three out of 100 were carrying any sort of package. And sometimes it took me 15 minutes or more to count 100 people passing my tent — all very slow moving. I did see the occasional large item being carried, but in general, the few people who came out didn’t seem to be picking up much art.
I was impressed by the quality of art and the mix of styles, and some artists had things I’d not seen before. (Serigraphy as filtered through digital art, anyone?) It seemed oddly quiet much of the time with so few people coming out, but seeing such high-quality art, I felt this just had to be an off year. Speaking to artists who had done the show in the past, I found they all agreed that the size of the crowd was not simply down, it was an amazingly small turnout.
My expenses are quite high for a show such as this (about 500 miles from home), so my breaking even was actually good luck. Indeed, if I was able to cover my costs with such a small crowd, I might do well here in the future if the crowds are as large as I was told they usually are. The bottom line is, I feel it is worth giving it another shot.
With the show over, I went to say goodbye to that big metal artist. It was only then I realized that although he was all set to paint, there was no canvas on his easel. Maybe that was a subtle clue I missed the first time I saw him!
