On Sunday morning , while I was charging my phone and zettle card reader, I really wished there had been a charging point for me.
Open studios are exhausting .
There had been a community group session in the hall on the Friday, so we were told we could set up when they left – around 3.30.
I had, what I thought at the time, a huge amount of stuff with me – a large suitcase filled with small works, and several packages of larger works.
I’d also bought 2 packs of paper tablecloths.
Tables and a free standing board were provided, so I screwed the smaller paintings to the board and put larger ones on easels – also provided. The easels looked a bit naff ( for want of a better word) but it was the best I could do.
I turned round to look at what the other artists had and was shocked to see how much work they had. As regularly participants at art fairs , they had all of the professional display stands with large black cloths for the tables.
Being used to showing my work in exhibitions, with clean white gaps between the works, it was hard for me to adapt to showing in this environment.
My display was pretty pathetic looking in comparison- especially with the easels and some of my framed works on chairs.
I went home feeling totally dejected.
I didn’t sleep a wink that night, tossing and turning trying to think of how I could improve my display with the limited resources I had.
I had a large sheet of a textile print of trees, which used to be on a frame but I’d taken it off and shoved it aside while I thought of what to do with it. I grabbed that, along with a pile of smaller works, loads of my handmade books and some ‘props’ – a wooden house I’d used in an installation and 2 model hands. They were actually broken, but filled a gap and looked quirky enough to draw attention.
I got there ( by taxi) as the doors opened at 9 and completely rearranged my display – grabbing another table and taking the paintings off the chairs and easels / propping them up on the wall at the back of the table instead.
It looked a million times better and several people commented on it looking good.
I tried to count people that visited on Saturday and although I missed a few, I definitely got to 190.
I don’t think I’d ever seen that many people in one go visit work before. ( Well not in this country anyway!)
I sold a lot of cards by cash as they were pretty cheap and I had to run across the room with the card reader to ask for help, but I got the hang of it.
Sunday seemed quieter , but as people were coming in waves there were quiet gaps. I still counted the same amount of people as Saturday though.
There were more interest in my books than sales , but I was ok with that.
I was there for people to get to know me and looking at the hits on my website later on, that had worked .
So what did I learn?
- Display/ presentation is everything !
- More is better
- Learn from others
- Draw people to your work
- Where you stand/ sit is important
- Engage , Engage, Engage
