By Cameron Meier,
SA Editor
An artist on the show circuit once told me that an exhibitor who doesn’t worry about his or her booth design is like a shop owner opening a store in an old warehouse, with no decoration on the walls, no carpet on the floor and no thought as to the arrangement of merchandise. In other words, the exhibitor is presenting a no-care attitude to his customers while limiting his sales potential. After all, there’s a reason most shows ask for slides or JPEGs of artists’ booths: The art itself is only part of the equation.
It didn’t used to be like that. As recently as the 1980s, many artists and crafters set up on card tables, most without canopies or any type of covering. There was no sense of entering a "booth" or "shop," and patrons rarely were able to fully appreciate the overall aesthetic of an artist’s work. Instead, artists relied more on one or two eye-catching pieces that would draw customers over to their displays, which in some cases consisted of nothing more than one or two big slabs of wood propped up on sawhorses.
"Lots of artists were using card tables right up to the early 80s," says SA Senior Writer Carl Buehler. "Bare wood planks on concrete blocks were used for pottery up to the mid 90s, though most artists were sprucing it up by the early 90s. Plastic sheeting and even blue tarps were not that uncommon during the 80s. I would say the transition to professional booths began in the 80s but was not fully implemented until the 90s."
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