Scottsdale Arts Festival Reviews..

Medium: Photography
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2017
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: < $500
Price Range of your Work: $25 - $400
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show:
2-3 times
Number of Years You have been doing Art Fairs overall:
Forever...
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 4
Location: 4
Facilities: 4
Ease of Participating: 4
Sales: 1
Overall: 3
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 10,001-50,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Artist amenities, early am coffee and fruit, full lunch. Booth sitters available by phone or just see them there. Nearby parking. Great art.

What could this Art Fair have done better?:
It is not the "fault" of the fair but people were not buying. Some may have been due, as my wife pointed out, to the music taking precedence over the visual art. If the musical act was good more people were sitting on the hill then milling about.

Also, the weather was very hot this weekend which caused people to disappear.

This show was over an hour before closing time, even though the weather was the nicest at the later hours.

They did not bring water bottles to the artists which could have helped those solo artists survive the heat.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
Just like Cherry Creek in Colorado is not Colorado friendly, Scottsdale is not particularly for Arizona artists. It was 6 years between my 2 appearances at this show, I was very patient.

Additional Commentary on this Show:
Buying energy was very low this year but appears to have been so for some time. See AFSB for more reviews about it.

See my blog on ArtFairInsiders.com for additional commentary on this Show

Posted by: S B Berkun | 03/25/2017 at 01:31 PM

We did the show for the first time this year. It was extremely hot and our booth was on the black top. I was told by several regular artist that do the show year after year it was down by half. If my sales were half of what I can make I will do it again. It was a long two day drive with high expenses.

Posted by: R | 05/08/2015 at 10:21 AM

Medium: Sculpture
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show:
2015
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $501-$2000
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show:
5-10 times
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 2
Location: 5
Facilities: 5
Ease of Participating: 5
Sales: 1
Overall: 2
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Show takes place in a beautiful setting on the landscaped grounds of the Scottsdale Center for the Arts. The show is very well organized, very easy to do and the artists are treated very well.

A free lunch (this year catered by Pita Jungle) is provided every day as well as a breakfast of sorts.

The quality of art exhibited is very good.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
Scottsdale and the whole surrounding area is completely saturated with art shows. The Scottsdale Art Festival is by far the best quality art of any of them, but the over-saturation has just made this show no longer viable.

I have done it for many years with diminishing returns and have decided that this year will be my last.

I think that the show organizers have done everything right..... but there's just no longer the same customers coming to the event that came in years past. The overall attendance for the show seemed to be way down from what I've seen in the past as well. Too bad.

Other than bad sales it's a really great event!

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
I spoke to many exhibitor friends at the show this year. Almost all of them had a mediocre to very bad (several zeros) show this year.

There WERE some second hand tales of people doing great, but no one that I knew. From what I've heard, outdoor sculpture seems to sell best here.

If you haven't done it before it might be worth trying. Maybe your work will sell well. As I said, it's a beautiful, well run event.

Posted by: Sharon Brush | 04/14/2015 at 05:36 PM

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