Midwest Salute to the Arts Reviews.

Medium: Glass
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2014
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $501-$2000
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show:
1st time
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 3
Location: 4
Facilities: 5
Ease of Participating: 5
Sales: 4
Overall: 4
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Okay
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Easy load in and out. Very well organized.
Wonderful care of artists: food, beverages, party. Felt very pampered.

Nice big tents with no upcharge for being in them. Large fans for cooling. Covered walkways for patrons.

Good advertising. Lots of parking. Children's Gallery. Good food booths. Excellent security.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
Only one bad thing: held at the end of August in the St. Louis area = HOT! With the fans and the tents, it really wasn't so bad, but with temps approaching 100, it kept the buyers away.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
Make sure you're up to high heat and humidity, and that your artwork is, too - my next door neighbor had to remove all his framed drawings each night.

Additional Commentary on this Show:
I would say that those who braved the heat were serious buyers, but leaned toward more conservative artwork - not the avant garde.

Posted by: Nina Miller | 04/13/2019 at 11:11 PM

Medium: Painting
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2016
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $500
Price Range of your Work: $250 to $4,800
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show:
1st time
Number of Years You have been doing Art Fairs overall:
Forever...
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 1
Location: 4
Facilities: 3
Ease of Participating: 4
Sales: 1
Overall: 1
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
The show is super artist friendly and well run, they bring you water, fruit and food. Very nice Breakfast.

Setup and tear down is easy, you can drive to your space.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
2016 Midwest Salute to the Arts was a bad experience for me. Friday preview had a decent crowd, but then a very bad rainstorm came and the night was cancelled.

Saturday and Sunday was brutally hot,98 degrees, the tents made it even worse. I got sick around 4 Saturday and went to Barnes and Nobles to cool off. I was told I didn't miss anything. Very small uninterested crowd.

Way too many artist for the number of people attending. I talked to 8 painters, one had 1 sale, but it was a show maker. The other seven painters didn't sell anything to speak of. Nobody in my vicinity with various mediums did well. A lot of the painters were within a few hours or local.

I have all originals and I didn't even have a single person even consider buying anything. I was warned by a local artist who no longer does the show that the show just doesn't draw that many people, but I had already paid my booth fee.

So my feeling is that the heat wasn't the only reason for the small turnout. There was a very large crowd that came for a military band, but they didn't come to see the art art.

I would be surprised if more than 5,000 people attended

Posted by: Derek Collins | 02/19/2017 at 10:46 PM

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