RAW provides independent artists with the exposure needed to inspire and cultivate creativity within their local area and provides a platform for the artists to be seen, heard and loved. RAW currently operates in over 60 cities across the United States, Australia, Canada and the UK!
Every other month, the RAW Directors in cities across the world hand-pick and spotlight local artistic talent in visual art, fashion design, film, music, performance art, hair & makeup artistry and photography. We were fortunate enough to be selected as one of three photographers featured at the Edmonton show, Verve.
The show was held at Union Hall and the entire space was transformed into a trendy, eclectic art scene. We were given about a five foot space in which we hung our prints and displayed our 2017 River City Revue Burlesque Calendar, cheeky prints, metal art and postcards. We were given the opportunity to sell our work for the first time ever at an art show. We also offered gift certificates for our photography packages.
As it was our first ever show, we did not know what to expect. I thought I would share with you some quick tips of things we learned. If we can assist any new and upcoming artists to be better prepared for their first show, we are more than happy to share some lessons learned!
1. Order your art mediums early! I gave myself about 2 months to design and order all of our art. We had made postcards, calendars, prints and metal art to sell at the show. I thought that would be plenty of time to get everything we needed to present at the show and often went off of the websites' advertised turnaround time. Unfortunately, we were trying out a few new print companies and they did not deliver as promised. We were down to three days before the show waiting for our final pieces to arrive. We ordered everything within Canada, but learned that we are not only dealing with printing times but also shipping time as well. Lesson One, order well in advance. It is better to be safe than sorry.
2. Do a dry run of your ENTIRE display. The weekend prior to the show, Chad and I set up our display table and set everything out to ensure we had enough space. We also wanted to ensure our table was eye-catching to draw customers to our table. Our main priority was to ensure customers could go through our cheeky prints with ease and flip through the 2017 Pin-Up calendar. RAW also gave you a list of suggested items to bring. They informed us to bring S curved hangers to hang our art on their backdrop. Unfortunately they didn't tell us what size and the ones we brought were too large to hang our metal prints. Lesson Two, a dry run is good, but make sure you test out everything! Had we tried to hang our metal prints with our hangers, we would have known we needed smaller ones. Luckily we had other art to hang that did work, but it was not our original plan.
3. Attend the walk through of the space. RAW scheduled only one walk through for their show and unfortunately it was on a night we already had a photo shoot scheduled. When we arrived, the location and size of booth we were told we had was not the case. We had planned for a 7 foot space with easy foot traffic access to our table. Due to their supplier shorting them on their backdrops, we were moved to another location with art displays on both sides. Our table ended up taking the entire space of our booth. We had very little room to stand without blocking other artists and the traffic flow became congested quickly when the guests arrived. Had we done the walk through, we would have been able to understand or claim our space at the show. Lesson Three, make arrangements to ensure a representative can attend the walk through.
4. Engage your audience. RAW had suggested making our display interactive. We set out vintage cameras and a box of cookies to draw customers in to our booth. We also displayed our prints with the cheeky sayings. We had many people stop and photograph our work, laugh and flip through all of our prints. This drew a lot of attention to our booth and also drove sales! Lesson Four, cookies are yummy and people like them!
5. Price your work fairly. We had a little bit of opportunity to walk around the show to view other artists and their work. We were likely one of the more modest priced showcases at the show. We priced our work fairly and we purposefully chose pieces that were varied in pricing. We seemed to get a lot of traffic to our booth and we did quite well in sales that evening. We noted that we did better than some of the artists in the area who only priced their work $100 or more. Lesson Five, bring a variety of pieces of your work at low, mid and high price points. Price your work to sell.
Of course none of this would be possible without the support of our models and clients who allowed us to create works of art on metal, postcards and prints. We want to extend our deepest gratitude to Cassidy, Chantel, Julie, Cass, Jess, Kiki, Layla, Lilly, Portia, Betsy, Lady, Danielle and Susanne who allowed us to feature them in one of our various mediums that we sold at the show! You are all stars in our eyes!
We also want to say a very special thank you to our friends and family who came to the show to support us. THANK YOU! Your presence meant the world to us!
If you are interested in purchasing any of the work we displayed at the show, please feel free to email us at info@vintage-photography.ca
Chad & Dre
Vintage Photography
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