Sunday, 9/2/07

Empty streets in downtown Fayetteville on Sunday morning.

Slow Day at the Art Festival

The show started out slow, built to almost fair and then fizzled out altogether. The main problem was: Nothing else was happening in downtown Fayetteville on a Sunday. All the banks, offices and associated businesses were closed. Folks had to make a special trip just to attend the art festival.

Tear Down: The show closed at 4 PM. It took us a little over three hours to tear down and load the van. (It usually does take us that long.) Jo and I were the last artists to leave the hall. (We usually are.) As with set up, Jo did the majority of the tearing down and packing up while I did most of the transporting and loading. When we can get the van closer, I usually have more time to help with tearing down.

Freight Elevators: In addition to the two regular passenger elevators we used to get between the lobby and parking garage, the Town Center building also has two huge freight elevators. How huge? Large enough that I could have used one of them to bring the entire loaded van up to the lobby -- could have, but the folks running the show didn't offer us that option. The freight elevators didn't go to the parking garage, but to a loading dock area instead, an area that provided very few places to park the van, especially on Friday. When we arrived, there was an 18-wheeler unloading at one of the docks and the whole area was fairly congested with normal workday activities. That's why we chose to use the parking garage and its elevators. There were more parking opportunities in the loading dock area on Sunday, but our only means of transport was a two-wheel dolly. If we'd had a larger platform dolly, we could have benefited from the extra space in the freight elevators, but since we didn't, the passenger elevators worked just fine.

Poor Paul: A potter friend of ours from Oklahoma had even more problems with having to use the elevators. He has problems with his equilibrium, problems that can throw his sense of balance completely out of whack if he rides on an elevator. Paul said it would take him a couple of hours to recover from one elevator trip up to the lobby -- recover enough balance to stand and walk unaided. Paul had to load his cart containing his fixtures/pots onto the elevator and then hustle to the front of the parking garage and up the stairs to the lobby level. He usually asked someone else making the trip to pull his cart off the elevator so it wouldn't keep taking up space riding up and down.

(Note: There are a few more photos taken in Fayetteville here if you want to have a look.)

Sunday, 9/2/07

Watch Your Step!

That first step out of the door is a real killer, but fortunately, your grave is already dug.

There's a lot of new construction and renovation of old buildings in downtown Fayetteville.

Watch Your Step!

Saturday, 9/1/07

Entrance to the art fair from the town square.

Farmers' Market A Big Help

Attendance at the air fair on Saturday was pretty good through mid-afternoon. A Farmers' Market that includes everything from produce to flowers to pottery and other crafts is held on the square every Saturday morning throughout the summer. Spill over from the Farmers' Market greatly helped attendance at the art festival. Our sales were pretty good too.

After the Market closed and especially as the kickoff time for the UA Razorbacks' football game drew near, our crowd declined to virtually non-existent. We did have our largest sale of the weekend around closing time, though. You just never know so it pays to stay both in your booth and awake until the show closes. Late Saturday afternoon, I was having problems doing either.

Saturday, 9/1/07

Friday, 8/31/07

Peace Globe sculpture in front of the Fayetteville Town Center building.

Drove Over to Fayetteville, AR, And Set Up For Show

We arrived at the show site at noon. It's around a four hour trip from our place over to Fayetteville, plus time for dropping the dogs off at the vet's in Western Grove and stopping at the Wally World in Harrison to buy flowers to display in Jo's vases.

Location: I was wrong about the location of the show. It was held in the Fayetteville Town Center building, not the Walton Art Center. (A good thing Jo knew where we were going, huh?) Town Center is a multi-purpose venue for meetings, conventions and, of course, art fairs. It's on the "Courthouse Square", except the current Washington County courthouse is actually located a couple of blocks away. Private businesses occupy the old courthouse building.

Elevators: Unfortunately, I wasn't wrong about having to transport all our fixtures and merchandise from the van to our booth via an elevator. We parked in the lower level of the parking garage and the show was three levels above on the lobby level. Transporting via an elevator wasn't really any harder than usual, but certainly consumed a lot of time. Setting up took until 5 PM. Then, we left, checked into the Sleep Inn, cleaned up and changed clothes and were back at the show by seven o'clock.

Patron Preview Party: Free entertainment, beer, wine and hors d'oeuvres for the patrons (i. e. folks who paid fifty bucks to attend) and artists. Sales were modest as they usually are for such events. A couple of relatively large sales made it worth our time, I reckon. The party lasted until ten o'clock. By the time Jo and I made it back to the motel, we were more than ready for bed. Could it be that we're getting old?

Friday, 8/31/07