Welcome to part 1 (of 4) on my art fair prep info dump extravaganza!! I'm going to be covering everything I did to get ready for my fair in three weeks and, in today's article, I'll be covering content selection!
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Mental Prepping & Plan of Attack
Before I go over content, I did want to quickly introduce my project setup and plan of attack because that really dictated how everything else went.
The very first thing I did after getting into my show was to open up the Freeform app and start trying to cram every thought I had in my head onto the page. It was not organized and it was certainly not pretty, but I was able to at least make sure everything reasonably transitioned from mental --> written format. I took my iPad everywhere I went so I could add ideas as I had them and start to formulate my 4 branch approach. While it would be great to magically get all 4 branches moving simultaneously, that's not really possible unless you're a practicing witch or wizard. Since I never got my Hogwarts acceptance letter, I knew I needed to prioritize getting content sorted first.
I had a booth to fill, so I knew I needed to select 1) art for the wall: large canvas and metal prints, and 2) art for the table: smaller giclee prints and stickers. Ok, good! We've got this broken down into 2 categories.
Large Format Content Selection
I think it's safe to say that content and inventory decisions were probably the hardest parts in getting ready for this fair. That being said, I think these would have been the most challenging regardless of lead time, so there was no escaping my fate on this one. Looking at my work and trying to decide the most "sellable" pieces was not an intuitive process. The added complication for me was that I'd painted a lot of my artwork for the purposes of practicing new skills or learning a new technique. So, with a few exceptions, I was basically trying to pick art to sell that was not necessarily designed with selling in mind.
When selecting large art pieces, there's another "cart before the horse" conundrum with which I had to contend. In essence, I just needed to pick the art I wanted on my walls. Seems simple, I'll go ahead and pick my best/favorite pieces. Done!
WRONG!! I couldn't pick the art pieces until I knew how many large prints I would need for the walls. And I couldn't know how many pieces I'd need until I knew how much wall surface area I was going to set up. And then, I didn't know how much wall space I'd have because I didn't even have walls, nor did I even really understand what my options were. Furthermore, I couldn't wait until I researched walls, bought the walls, set up the walls, and experimented with mock layouts to decide how many pieces could fit on said walls, because that all ended up coming together 1 week before the show which was, let me check...oh yeah, WAY after the drop date for when I needed to get art prints ordered. *Takes deep breath of air*.
Because of this issue, I went with the tried and true "ready, shoot, aim" strategy, seasoned with some back of the napkin math, a hope and a prayer and picked 13 pieces of art for the large canvas/metal prints. Long story short, I got lucky. Very lucky. I'm writing this now so you won't have to rely on the capricious luck machine to succeed.
The first pieces I picked were easy because there was at least one project on which I was working for the express purpose of selling: my mineralogy series (side note, my day job is as a geologist). The only downside was that, because I'd jumped the gun, I only had 2 complete pieces. Thankfully, I was able to race and get a 3rd out. Ideally, I'd have liked to have 5 but, as they say, beggars and poor planners can't be choosers. It was pencils down, so I had to work with what I had. Ok, 3 down. Just need 10 more.
Since I'm a portrait artist, my assumption is that most people wouldn't want a portrait of a random face in their house, no matter how well painted. People need a hook. They need something that connects them to your art. With this in mind, I focused on pieces that had a point to make outside of just being a portrait. The selection format was essentially:
person +
mineral (as mentioned above)
fantasy
abstract elements
bold colors
statement jewelry
This strategy should work well with non-portrait artists too. For example, if you're a landscape artist, it might not be good enough to say "here's a mountain, buy it". What's the hook? Maybe it's a landscape of an area people locally would recognize. Maybe you paint with unusual color palettes or techniques. Maybe you combine real locations with fantasy or sci-fi elements? For all subject matters, I think it's important to try and put oneself in the shoes of a potential buyer and see if there's something relatable about it. In my case, I was hoping that people would want to pair earthy/natural interior design with a bold geology statement piece. Part of this also involves figuring out your target demographic, but that's a conversation for another time.
Some artists will advise you to consider art cohesion, i.e. do all my displayed pieces go well together? I'm here to tell you to throw that advice out the window for the time being. If it's your first show, you've got enough to worry about. Even if you make digital mockups in advance, it's really hard to get a sense for how pieces will look displayed together in person. My advice is to hope that your work will all possess that similar "je ne sais quoi" element as a result of having been created from the same mind and hands.
With all 13 pieces selected, I was ready to move onto phase 2.
Small Format Content Selection
The easy part about phase 2 was that I knew I wanted to print smaller versions of all the larger pieces I'd already selected. Ok, 13 pieces picked! For the remaining pieces, I ran into a similar quandary as I did with the large prints, wherein it was hard to pick which art to print when I didn't know how many of each I needed, nor how many total I wanted altogether.
There were a few extra criteria I used for picking my small print items:
Person +
Pop culture* (Star Wars, Game of Thrones, etc. - IP people recognize)
Another person (I made a few combo posters that combined several subjects into one)
"I don't know but this just looks neat?" factor
Dynamic outline shape (for stickers specifically)
I ended up selecting another 12 pieces of artwork for a total of 25. I think this is a bit high on the total count but, for a first time show, I felt it was important to get variety out there. I used this show as a fact-finding mission. I wanted to buy small numbers of a large variety of items to see what subject matter sold best. I'll get into what I specifically ordered for each in the next article but these 25 pieces made up my library of work.
Ok, I think I did a good job exclusively discussing content here without diving too far into inventory. They are intertwined issues, but hopefully this section helped you get a sense for how I selected my catalogue of art. In the next section, we'll dig into how much I bought of each!
*Note: selling pop culture related art is a bit of a complicated issue. Do your own research! I am not a lawyer, but my first recommendation would be to avoid selling this type of work online, especially if you're using a 3rd party platform like Printful, Redbubble or Etsy. I do see people selling pop culture online all the time, so I guess they just like to live on the edge? Personally, as a goody two-shoes, the thought of getting a cease-and-desist or takedown notice makes 10 year old Emily sweat in her jelly shoes, so I don't mess with that. In person is a bit of a different story, but if you want to really play it safe then I would leave these items in your portfolio only.
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