Are Art Fairs Worth It?

As an artist, you’ll spend a lot of your time building up popularity and selling art pieces to new customers. One of the best ways to attract potential customers is by setting up a booth at a popular art fair. But, one of the major downsides with art fairs is that you have to pay for a spot!

So, are art fairs worth it? Art fairs might cost you upwards of $1,000 for a single trip. However, they can definitely be worth it if you’re clinching sales and building up a name for yourself. Yet, you need to be making an effort to make them worth it. Work on networking, choosing the right fairs, and cutting costs.

There are some situations where an art fair is definitely worth it for new and skilled artists! So, we’re going to be reviewing what art fairs are, how much they cost, and how to make them worth it for you.

What Are Art Fairs? 

An art fair is a trade show of sorts where skilled artists can display and sell their own artistic pieces. But, anyone with a role in the art industry can take part and set up their own art booths or secure spaces in the gallery. That includes gallery owners, collectors, and individual artists.

The goal of an art fair is to attract local customers to your artistic style. If you display your best pieces, you might be able to make some sales and secure yourself long-term customers. There’s also a pretty good chance that your work will be seen by local gallery owners and curators. This can be huge for your career. If you want to know more about the art fairs market you can find it here: https://marianacustodio.com/art-fairs/

The Cost of Attending an Art Fair

What you’ll be spending on a booth or gallery space will depend on the actual art fair and how much space you need. But, there’s no way to avoid costs altogether. Here’s a brief look at some of the fees associated with art fairs:

  • Application fee. This fee is usually somewhere around $50, though there are some art fairs that won’t cost you a dime. You can also get this fee covered by your gallery owner if you have one.
  • Booth or gallery space fee. This fee really depends on how much space you’re looking for. A smaller booth might be as low as $150, while a significantly larger booth will probably be closer to $1,000. Therefore bigger art fairs can cost up to 10.000$.
  • Travel and hotel fees. If you’re traveling a long distance, you’ll have to think about gas prices, tolls, hotel fees, and meals. This can cost you several hundred dollars for just a few days.

So, you might be spending around $1,000 for all the combined costs of attending an art fair. But, you also need to think about the possibility of paying commission. That means you’ll be giving a cut of each sale to the art fair creators. Sometimes, it’s as much as 50% of the final sale price.

If you’re spending a grand to take part in an art fair and not making sales, then it’s definitely not worth it! The good news is that there are ways to make art fairs worth it financially and career-wise.

Making Art Fairs Worth It

If art fairs weren’t at all worth it for artists, they wouldn’t still be around today. Yet, not every art fair will be lucrative for you and your artistic style. There are a lot of things to think about before deciding on a specific art fair to display your new work. Let’s go over how you can make sure that an art fair is worth the money you’ll be shelling out!

JD Malat Gallery – Contemporary Istanbul 2019

The Fees

The fees are unavoidable when it comes to art fairs, but there are some ways that you can cut some costs. For example, your gallery owner might pay the application fee for you if you’re currently with a gallery. That’s about $50 that you get to keep in your own pocket. You can also stick to local shows to avoid the fees that come with travel and hotel stays.

One of the best ways to guarantee that you’re pulling in some income at the end of the day is by doing a few calculations. Take into account how much you’re spending on fees (in total) and how many pieces of your work you’d have to sell to get income. If you have to sell dozens of pieces to break even, you might want to wait a few years before trying that specific fair.

So, make sure an art fair is within your budget. Even though you want to make huge sales right now, it might be a better idea to focus on smaller fairs for right now. This can help you to make a name for yourself, make sales, and save money.

The Number of Visitors

You want to be sure that tons of people will be exposed to your art and style at an art fair. Spending $1,000 for a few days sounds like a lot right now. Yet, some art fairs recruit thousands of unique visitors every day. That’s a much greater chance of exposure and art sales.

The goal is to get as many pairs of eyes on your artwork as possible. Remember, you’re somewhat competing with the other attendees of the art fair. There’s a better chance of getting some bites with 10,000 visitors a day rather than just 80.

You need to also think about the qualities of the local community. Try to choose art fairs that lure visitors that are interested in your particular style of art. This is a great way to guarantee at least some interest in your pieces.

The Possible Name Recognition & Networking Opportunities

Art fairs are a great way to sell your pieces to the public and art aficionados. At the same time, art fairs are often visited by some of the biggest names in the industry. That means you might be able to connect with a gallery owner or a curator that’s impressed by your artwork. This can lead to tons of future opportunities and greater sales.

It might also be a good idea to focus on a certain area for a little while. Focus on art fairs in a certain state or states in hopes that the same people will see your work repeatedly. Once people see you at plenty of local shows, they’ll be much more interested and value you as a professional in your industry.

Even if you’re not making a lot of income at your first art fair, that doesn’t mean you’re leaving empty-handed. Art fairs are a great way to build relationships with others in the art community. You can learn about other styles of art and how popular artists have built a customer base.

You might even make some friends and learn about some upcoming art fairs. You might eventually be the artist that newcomers turn to for a little career advice! So, take the time to talk to the other attendees.

Conclusion

Strategically showing your art at art fairs can cause your art career to skyrocket. Though you’ll be spending a lot of money, you’ll be showing your art to likely thousands of people and making some sales. Here are some tips for making an art fair worth it:

  • Work on networking and building relationships at the fair
  • Choose low-fee and local fairs when you’re just starting out
  • Consider the number of pieces you’d have to sell to break even
  • Choose art fairs that bring in a ton of visitors

Sources

The Different Art forms:From Ancient Greece To Modern Days

If you are new to the art world, you may wonder what are the different art forms out there. From architecture to performance art

The Different Art forms:From Ancient Greece To Modern Days article aims to give you a brief explanation about each art form and its subdivisions.

The Different Art forms

The 7 traditional subdivision of the ArtsArchitecture
Sculpture
Painting
Literature
Music
Performing
Film
The 7 art forms in the visual artsArchitecture
Sculpture
Painting
Ceramics
Conceptual art
Drawing
Photography
The seven liberal artsGrammar
Logic
Rhetoric
Arithmetic
Geometry
Astronomy
Music

This division started during the Ancient Greece. All art and craft were referred to by the same word “Techne”. During that times, art most basic definition was as a documented expression on an accessible medium that anyone could view, hear or experience it.

The traditional subdivision of the Arts:

Architecture

architecture london
Liverpool Street – London

Architecture is the art and science of designing buildings and structures, especially habitable ones. Architectural success was the product of a process of trial and error with progressively less trial and more replication as the results of the process proved increasingly satisfactory. In modern usage, architecture is the art and discipline of creating a complex object or system.

Sculpture

The Different Art forms, sculpture
National Portrait Gallery – London

Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving (the removal of material) and modelling (the addition of material, as clay), in wood, ceramics, metal, stone and other materials. Since modernism, shifts in this process led to an almost complete freedom of materials and process.

Painting

The Different Art forms, abstract expressionism
Untitled – Nikki Hill Smith
http://www.nikkihillsmith.art/portfolio/

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. Likewise the medium is usually applied to the base with a brush. Therefore can also be applied with knives, sponges, airbrushes, among others. Painting is the name of the final work.

Modern painters have extended the practice considerably to include, for example, collage. Therefore, this art form is not painting in the strict sense since it includes other materials. New artists also incorporate different materials such as cement, straw, wood among others. Examples of this are the works of Anselm Kiefer or Jean Dubuffet. 

Literature

Literature refers to writing as an art form that contains artistic or intellectual value. In addition it can be classified according to whether it is fiction or non-fiction, prose or poetry. Academics often characterise literature works according to historical periods or their adherence to certain genres or aesthetic features.  Developments in printing technology have allowed an ever-growing distribution and proliferation of written works, culminating in electronic literature.

Music

Music is an art form and cultural activity, whose medium is sound. It is performed with a vast range of instruments and vocal techniques. Can range from singing to rapping; there are solely instrumental pieces, solely vocal pieces, and pieces that combine singing and instruments.

Performance

The Different Art forms, performance art
Antonio Branco & Riccardo T.
https://www.antonioandriccardo.com/

Performing arts refers to forms of art in which artists use their voices, bodies or inanimate objects to convey artistic expression. However it is different from visual arts, once doesn’t use paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects.

Film

Film or movie, is a visual art-form used to simulate experiences that communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty or atmosphere. It works by recording moving images, along with sound (and more rarely) other sensory stimulations. In conclusion the word “cinema”, is often used to refer to filmmaking.

The 7 art forms in the visual arts are divided in: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Ceramics, Conceptual art, Drawing and Photography.

To sumarize, once Architecture, Sculpture and Painting were already explaining in the traditional subdivision of the arts, let’s go ahead only with Ceramics, Conceptual Art, Drawing and Photography.

Ceramics

Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials, which may take forms such as tile, pottery, figurines, sculpture and tableware. While some of these products are considered fine art some are considered to be industrial or decorative.

Ceramic art can be made by one person or by a group of people. In a pottery or ceramic factory, a group of people design, manufacture, and decorate the pottery.

Conceptual art

The Different Art forms, conceptual art
The National Museum of Contemporary Art – Lisbon
http://www.museuartecontemporanea.gov.pt/en

Conceptual art is art in which the ideas or concepts involved in the work takes precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. The inception of the term in the 1960s referred to a strict and focused practice of idea-based art that often defied traditional visual criteria associated with the visual arts in its presentation as text.

During the 1990’s, in particularly in the United Kingdom, conceptual art developed as a synonym for all contemporary art, once doesn’t practice the traditional skills of painting and sculpture.

Drawing     

Drawing is a form of visual art in which a person with the help of a drawing instrument makes an image on a surface by applying pressure or moving a tool across the surface. Common tools are graphite pencils, pen and ink, pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers. Even if the most common support for drawing is paper, other materials such as cardboard, wood, plastic, leather, canvas and bord may be used. Nowadays with the develop of the technology digital tools can also make such effects with the help of proper software.

Drawing is frequently used in: commercial illustration, animation, architecture, engineering, design and technical drawing.

Photography

Photography as an art form refers to photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer. Art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism,  which provides a visual account for news events, and commercial photography, the primary focus of which is to advertise products or services.

The seven liberal arts

During the Middle ages, The liberal arts were central to university education. The seven liberal arts were taught in two groups: the trivium and the quadrivium. The area and range of the liberal arts evolved in time. Eventually, the meaning of “liberal arts” nowadays include both humanities and science.

TriviumQuadrivium
Grammar
Logic
Rhetoric
Arithmetic
Geometry
Astronomy
Music
Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules governing the composition of phrases, clauses and words in a natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules and this field includes phonology, morphology and syntax.  

Logic

Logic is the systematic study of the forms of inference,  the relations that lead to the acceptance of one proposition, the conclusion, on the basis of a set of other propositions. More broadly, logic is the analysis and appraisal of arguments.  

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic  is one of the three ancient arts of. This area aims to study the capacities of writers or speakers needed to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations.

Arithmetic

Arithmetic is a branch of mathematics that consists of the study of numbers, especially the properties of the traditional operation on them. It is an elementary part of number theory. It is considered to be one of the top-level divisions of moderns mathematics, along with algebra, geometry, and analysis.

Geometry   

Geometry is a branch of mathematics concerned with questions of shape, size, relative position of figures, and the properties of space.

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. In other words this field studies everything that originates outside Earth’s atmosphere.

This arts can be considered one of man’s most noble opportunities to experience confirmation of his origins and destiny. Different from the humanities (philosophy, theology, etc.), this field makes it possible to more closely experience spiritual reality as well as to directly discover metaphysical truth.

I hope this article helped you to discover a bit more about the 7 art forms,and its divisions / subdivisions.

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