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The Making of a Craft Festival
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12915 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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5 / 1987 |
2,237 Words |
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Deann Verdier
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Having grown up and lived in the suburbs of Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C., my husband George and I considered an obvious location for our annual Sugarloaf Craft Festivals - the Montgomery County Fairgrounds. This country setting in Gaithersburg, Maryland, sits on sixty-four privately owned acres, with three nice exhibition buildings and plenty of space for parking. Our first craft fair was held in April 1976.
In our travels to other shows, we observed that art shows were always limited to two-dimensional art, although sometimes a metal sculptor was permitted. On the other hand, craft shows were restricted to three-dimensional pieces, with exceptions sometimes made for photographers and batik artists. We had always enjoyed attending both types of shows and decided to mix the art and craft shows, bringing more variety and depth to the overall event and helping to make Sugarloaf festivals unique.
Regulating Success
There were many guidelines that we felt were important to ensure the success of our show. One of the most important rules for exhibiting in a Sugarloaf show is that the artist or craftsperson be present to sell their own work. Even the smallest purchases we had made at other shows were special because we had met the person who created the piece. It added a special dimension since you were actually taking a part of that person home with you, a feeling you don't get when you shop at a department store and deal with indifferent sales clerks.
To ensure that only the highest quality of art and craft work would be displayed and sold, we required each person wishing to participate to submit several slides representing the type of work they created. With my art minor, I felt comfortable selecting the participants for the fair. The applications came in slowly but steadily for the first show, and by April, all the allotted spaces had been filled. It wasn't an easy task since no one had heard of Sugarloaf Mountain Works. But we were sincere and the exhibitors felt it and trusted us. In addition to the crafts, we contracted with some friends to run a small food concession and hired a local bluegrass band to play.
The time required to plan the first show, prepare the mailings, and select the exhibitors filled up my evenings. I enjoyed the challenge and found my energy level increasing and my attitude improving, even though my time in the studio working at my own craft (thrown-wheel pottery) was diminished substantially. I soon reached a crossroads and compared my life to the Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken." I decided to take that untraveled road and to quit my teaching job.
This was just the beginning of an exciting and permanent change in my career and life-style. A few months later, George gave up his engineering job. We looked at our new business as an opportunity that might never return again if we did not take it. Life is full of choices, and even though our personal income would be greatly reduced until we got our new business off the ground, the personal satisfaction gained would make us far richer. We had learned from our former jobs that money does not buy happiness.
Craft shows in general have grown over the past eleven years in size and popularity among both the exhibitors and the public. Many
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