You know all about the glamorous life of the art-show exhibitor, right? Easy summer days spent lounging around your booth, collecting huge sums of money for your work from fawning patrons, stopping every once in a while to drop a freshly peeled grape into your mouth. Ah, the life.
OK, it's not exactly like that.
A similar perception may exist of artists' lives during the off-season. Some people must think, "Oh, sure. They work hard while the festival season is in full swing, but they get the entire winter (or summer) off."
Again, not exactly.
Art-show exhibitors, by and large, work year-round, even during those periods not dominated by shows. One artist, in turning down my request for an interview about his off-season, responded, "Off-season? What off-season?"
So, if an artist's "off-season" isn't spent carousing around the Mediterranean or sipping a Mai Tai in the Caribbean or sitting on his posterior in Hoboken, what is he doing? My topic for this month's installment of my bi-monthly column is the artist's off-season, what it consists of and what it means to those who spend a good portion of their year selling their work at art shows.
Matt Naftzger, a jeweler and metalworker from Philadelphia, falls squarely into the "what off-season?" category. Naftzger, who has been an art-show exhibitor for seven years, says, "I've been accused of following 70 degrees around most of the country. I really don't take much time off in a year."
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