Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival Reviews,

Show Name: Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival
City and State: Reston, Va
Your Medium: Wood
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2013
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: Rather not say
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show: 5-10 times
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 2
Location: 5 (great)
Facilities: 5 (great)
Ease of Participating: 5 (great)
Sales: 5 (great)
Overall: 5 (great)
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Good
Estimated Attendance: Not really sure.

Good Things about this Art Fair: Government employees always seem to have money. Good possibility of making big sales. Sophisticated shoppers. We always have repeat customers,
Show is normally well attended. We had rain this year on Saturday and a forecast for rain on Sunday which never came. Crowd was down.
Good hotels in area available on Priceline and Hotwire for reasonable rates.

Bad Things about this Art Fair: It is linear with dead end side streets. Expensive. Booth fee $500. Corners are an additional $250. Location request is $100.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show: If you get in you should try it for yourself. It is a not shelf show.

Posted by: Vicki Munn | 05/25/2013 at 09:02 PM

Show Name: Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival
City and State: Reston, VA
Your Medium: Drawing
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2012
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) 3
Location: 3
Facilities: 3
Ease of Participating: 3
Sales: 3
Overall: 3
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 10,001-50,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair: This art fair used to be really good and 5 years ago I would have been saying it was all A+, but sales have been down for the last 3 years in a row...I may take a break in 2013

Bad Things about this Art Fair: 1-Sales are down
2-they added an extra day to the show making it a 3 day show which is too long for not many sales...

I wish they would switch back to 2 days!!!

Posted by: Name Withheld By Request | 01/12/2013 at 10:45 AM

Show Name: Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival
City and State: Reston, VA
Your Medium: 3D mixed media
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2011
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $7501-10,000
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show: 2-3 times
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 4
Location: 5 (great)
Facilities: 5 (great)
Ease of Participating: 4
Sales: 5 (great)
Overall: 5 (great)
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Great
Estimated Attendance: 10,001-25,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Although this may not have the highest attendance of the shows we've done, the people are there to BUY. Almost no haggling, and an educated, affluent, sophisticated crowd make this one of my favorite shows ever.

The children were remarkably well-behaved, set-up and tear-down were easy and well-organized, and the weather cooperated this year.

Plenty of space behind most booths, and thanks to the elimination of last year's "Democracy Drive" orphan location, there are no bad spots.

Top-notch art, and no buy-sell that I could see. And for once, we were selling mostly from our mid to upper range.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
Not sure if this has always been the case, but this year the booth spaces were exactly 10' wide. By the time we set up in the second spot from the end of our row, our neighbor's booth was 9" into our space. Mercifully, the guys whose space we in turn invaded were understanding and on a corner, but if they had set up before us, we would not have been able to squeeze in.

No artist party, and you should have heard the kvetching when the microscopic lunch was delivered on Saturday!

Also, there were a lot of hard feelings when the organizers requested an additional $100 for the privilege of specifying your location. But don't get me wrong--a great show, and well worth doing.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
This show has a reputation (well-deserved last year) for being windy, so bring plenty of weight and brace your tent well.

Additional Commentary on this Show:
There were so many people in this downtown area after work on Friday who probably went home and didn't return until Monday, that it would be nice if we had the option of opening Friday night from 4-7.

Posted by: Amy Flynn | 06/17/2011 at 01:40 PM

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