This past weekend, June 7th-8th, I had a booth at a festival called The Good Ol Days. It's an annual event that brings thousands of spectators. My wife and I usually go to the event - this is the first time being part of it. There was approximately 450 vendor booths, a few live bands, food vendors, and other live performances. I was originally given a booth in the middle of a row, but once the chairlady found out what I did she 'upgraded me' to one of the best spots in the festival. She said she realized that I would be more of an attraction than just a regular vendor. Yeah - no pressure there for my first live show! :p
But unfortunately it ended up being one of the windiest Good Ol Days in the festival's history, and I only got to paint once out of both days. It was so windy that some of the vendors' ez-ups were getting ripped apart or broken up. Vendors were losing their crafts and goods to the wind, and some vendors even left the show a day early because of the weather conditions. My family and I spent a majority of the weekend holding down our display so it wouldn't fly across the street! I had cinder blocks on all 4 corners of my ez-up and there were a couple times where they still lifted off the ground. It was nuts! And I had a couple of paintings fly off of my display boards and jack up the corners here and there.
Early Saturday afternoon I was hiding in my booth and I realized that I didn't have a sign for my stuff, so i crouched down between my tables with the intent of making a quick 20x30 sign with a planet, mountains & trees on the right side and then my name on the left side... I started doing the planet, looked up and realized there was about 10 ppl watching me. I kinda smiled a half smile, and started adding stars... looked up and there were a few more ppl... then I started adding mountains & water - still just kind of halfa$$ working 1 side of the board... when I was ready to add the text on the left I looked up and there was close to twenty ppl crowded into my ezup and staring down at me. I kind of made a joke about how I was just making a sign for my booth and there were a few smiles... but I liked the fact that I was finally painting - so I added another planet on the left side w/ more mountains, water, stars etc and blended the 2 sides into each other making one unified painting. Then the wind picked up my booth and blew a couple of my paintings off the table - I jumped up to grab my stuff and everyone kind of dispersed. BUT about an hour later a guy and his wife came back around and asked to purchase the painting that I had done in front of everyone, and they also bought an 11x14 'cross' painting to go with it. That was my first sale. =)
Oh and also by the way - we started the festival with 2 walls up on the ezup to help block the wind, but it actually made things WORSE and turned my ezup into more of a big sailboat, so we ended up taking the walls down.
Anyway - all in all I sold 5 paintings: (3)-20x30 paintings and (2)-11x14.
Here's some pics of my booth...
----------
I still have a lot to learn... but I'm trying.
Click here to see my site!
Click here for my FEATURED ARTIST page!
Also check out: www.MySpacePaintings.com !
