Vending at Art in the Courtyard, Lowell Folk Festival 2009

Thanks to handsome Roberto of Junk Culture for taking this nice snap of me.

The Lowell Folk Festival takes over downtown Lowell, Massachusetts the last weekend in July every year. It's like our Mardi Gras but instead of parades, drinking and plastic beads, we have music, drinking and crafts. (Oh, and meat on a stick.) I was lucky enough to be juried into the Art in the Courtyard show again this year. We live right around the corner so it's old home week for me when I do it. The show sets up on Friday afternoon to vend for 3 hours. Then we break down, set it all up again Saturday and Sunday. The set-up-break-down times three is hard, but the crowds on Saturday make it worth it. If the weather holds. And we started out nice and sunny after several days of rain:


I shared with Amanda of Brick Mill Studio again, and we even had the same location as last year! There she is on the left:


Here is Amanda's table hopping with interested customers)


Tarja, a fiber artist at Western Avenue Studios, sat in the booth to my left, she was able to get some work done for her upcoming show at the Loading Dock Gallery.


I set my table up thusly:


I looked at pictures of last year's setup and though the look is very similar, I can see that a year of tweaking helped me get a nice cohesive look to my displays this time around. Also, it's so interesting to see how many new products I have developed!


I know I had talked about making goods for this show in my last post, and I'm glad to report I have never felt more prepared for a show. And as predicted, I sold a few of everything making a nice sales total for the weekend.

A huge fun part of doing shows is people watching and there were tons of people to watch. Everyone, guys especially, got a huge kick out of my felted rocks and everyone wanted to pick them up. When they realized they were wool covered rocks with some real heft they all said "Whoa!"


The scene from my booth:


Western Avenue Studios was well represented. The other Western Ave group was situated further up the Courtyard on the right:



Liz of Lush Beads and Peter Zimmerman Art Glass, (Peter shows a potential future Open Studios attendee how to get to WAS)


Heather Wang Jewelry:


and Vicki Green of Art by Verde:


Overall a wonderful if hot and exhausting weekend. The only trouble spot was the last ten minutes on Sunday when a sudden, violent thunderstorm blew in throwing lightening bolts at us and sheets of wind driven rain. Yeah, that was terrifying and made me really mad. Because the same thing happened last year! ??? Luckily I was able to pack up quickly without losing product, just a little bit of my sanity.

Now that I am recovered from the weekend, I have been working on special orders and getting ready for Open Studios this weekend. If you missed us at the Folk Festival, or if you just can't get enough of Western Avenue Art, come by and see us Saturday August first, from 12-5.