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| Our chosen business is fragile. Even a
simple thing like the weather can affect our income. Having to face rising
show and transportation costs, as well as overall reduction in sales, a
lot of artists are canceling, or considering canceling shows. This may be
especially true for artists having to drive across country for winter
shows in Florida. For example, I cancelled Mt Dora and turned down the
wait list for Gaspiralla this past winter because I couldn't justify the
48 hour round trips and didn't have any back to back shows to help offset
expenses.
I’m going to propose a novel idea. What if a few shows
within a geographic vicinity get together and allocate a percentage of
their spaces to a common jury, open to artists who live more than (for
example) 1,500 miles away. That would let artists come from a long
distance away and know that they had more than one show to share their
expenses.
A lot of artists, if they haven’t started already, are
going to be limiting the driving distance to shows that they apply to. As
a result the shows are going to receive more local applications. My
concept can have a twofold benefit of allowing the shows to maintain their
current level of quality of applicants and the good artists to continue to
apply.
But of course, ideas like this won’t make it past this
page because it’s very difficult to get shows to cooperate with each
other. Examples of shows that do cooperate would be Old Town, Lakefront,
Des Moines and Cherry Creek, which run on back to back weekends and allow
some fortunate artists to have a series of shows to attend. Then there’s
Cincinnati and Columbus, though 90 miles apart, run on the same weekends
and compete with the artists they draw. Or any number of shows that feel
they need to be on the same weekend prior to Ann Arbor when there are
hardly any (if any at all) shows on the weekend after Ann Arbor. Maybe one
of those shows that complain about the number of cancellations could be
adventurous and move up a weekend and compete with Ann Arbor, giving
artists an alternative. I’ll bet they wouldn’t have any trouble filling
that show with high quality work. |
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