Fun & Successful Booth at 2024 Nederland Jazz & Wine Festival
This is the year that I have been working to complete my own home studio. I literally received my new kiln the day before setup for my booth at the 3rd Annual Nederland Jazz & Wine Festival, and it sits in my kitchen awaiting the completion of the kiln shed where it will reside, as we speak. And so, being completely dependent on working from the wonderful community program at the Gilpin Pottery Studio at their Recreation Center, I have only committed to doing this show and the Nederland Holiday Market on December 7 & 8, 2024 (see Shows & Events page for details).
A shared booth divided down the middle can still look beautiful and coherent! (But, yes, I need to find something better than my duct-taped sign, so room for improvement!). My work is the right-side of photo, and my fellow potter’s work, left.
My husband and I had attended this most excellent jazz festival in its previous two years and really enjoyed it! Good quality bands and a day in a beautiful town park, wandering the grounds and perusing so many finely-crafted foods, beverages and artworks, chatting with friends we may run into only every few months or even years in the waning sunshine of late summer, is a pretty divine day! So, this year, I decided to share a booth with another very good ceramic artist, Gabrielle Gewirtz of Gabart, and be a vendor participant!
The event happens on only one day, for about 6 hours, and my feeling was that the music was the “main act” of the festival, the vendor booths being secondary, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would people completely ignore our little booth once the music began?
Well, I was very pleasantly surprised! We had good booth traffic the whole day, and sales were good! My friend and I hadn’t practiced our booth setup prior to arriving, though we had discussed it. We were very happy that our work sat well together—we share a similar color palette with our different styles of work. The weather which had threatened some afternoon rain did us the favor of only clouding up a few times with no rain. As I said, I was happy with my sales, and also very happy to chat with prospective enthusiasts of my work and simply other creative people who shared what they created and their stories! I even had one person mention that they had just moved to the area, had run a gallery in their former location and planned to open a new gallery in the area in the coming year, expressing interest in my work. Who knows, but it was a compliment.
And I also learned a bit about booth setup and wind: do not try to set up your display fixtures right by the walls of the tent! At one point I was talking to a person about my work while nervously peering toward the back of my area where the wind started whipping the side of the tent into the shelves where I had vases displayed. I wanted to be fully attentive to the conversation, but how could I be as I was torn between it and excusing myself to rescue my work by moving the display! We did end up moving things away from the tent walls toward the interior, and I will remember that for future setups!
And so, I am learning that presenting your work, in person, where people can pick it up and interact with it is a very good thing. It is so different and, in my opinion, nicer than simply relying on a website or online store. And I think that people who have seen and touched my work will be more willing to take a chance on a future purchase online.
All-in-all it was a very nice experience. And if you are in the area next August 23rd (2025), don’t miss the 4th Annual Nederland Jazz & Wine Festival! You will not be disappointed!