Well, it’s that time again: July rolls around and I just have to rant about the Annual Ann Arbor Art Fair(s).
It’s not that I mind the hordes of clueless tourists wandering around, driving the wrong way down one way streets and allowing their wee children to get sun poisoning (I did go to college in Colonial Williamsburg after all).
No, the thing that bugs me is that its not an art fair at all. It’s a craft fair. Pehaps 10% of the offerings can be called “art” (decorative items whose only purpose is aesthetic value). Heck, only 50% of the offerings can even be called “craft” (decorative items that have a function in addition to their aesthetic value). The rest can safely be relagated to the category of kitsch. Crap on a stick! Scrying balls! birdhouses made of old license plates! this is not Art, people.
Down with the Art fair! Craft fair! Yes! Kitsch fair! Yes! Art fair… Never!
Look, you raving redhead, I take issue with the 10% figure. Let’s take your rather draconian definition. That gets rid of all pottery (could be used for a vase!) and fiber arts (could be a rug, could be clothes; you get the wall hangings as a freebie) and definitely all jewelry. That leaves the sculpture and the painting and photography. You’re trying to tell me that only one out of every ten booths is painting/sculpture/photography?
Now get your lazy ass out of that comfy corporate headquarters south of town and haul it down here to Store #1 and walk around some. I don’t think your 10% figure holds water.
This is the one weekend a year I’m glad I lost my job in A2. The art fair was definitely cooler in days gone by. As the saying goes "It’s not Art - It’s not Fair"
Personally, whenever someone else tries to fix a definition of what “art” is (especially when it involves snobbily excluding folk art (or “kitsch” as the OP calls it)) I tend to go on mental auto-ignore. Admittedly, 2d wooden tulips on sticks and plaster ducks with trailing ducklings are, indeed, kitsch. But birdhouses made of license plates sounds more like a clever use of found objects in (what could be) an aesthetically tickling way.
And I’ve never heard of that definition of art and craft anyway…I’ve always considered the string-picture kits I made as a kid as crafts. But they served no purpose other than to look good. I KNOW that the quillling sets I used to do actually called themselves crafts. And again, they served no purpose other than decoration.
But you said “decorative items whose only purpose is aesthetic value”. So neither furniture nor jewelry cases can be ‘art’, and Cranky has indeed nailed the only things left as ‘art’ under your definition.
I always referred to that kind of shit as “glue gun art,” but Crap on a Stick is a much better term.
Don’t forget the variations:
Crap in a Wreath
Crap in a Basket
Crap on a Plaque
Crap on a String
Crap in a Balloon
Crap on a Flowerpot
Crap on a Frame
Crap in a Candle
(Gee, guess who’s been to too many second-rate craft fairs lately?)
Hello Again and Cranky, you’re forgetting my personal favorite bit of the A2 Art Fair: the crackpot political booths! Hooray! They’re not art, they don’t have crafts, they don’t even have kitsch. But they do have some interesting reading material, would you like some pamphlets?
Quilling is the art of scrolling strips of paper into design elements and using them to make larger pieces. I did a couple of kits when I was 10 or so. I had a tendency to go through various categories of crafts at a fairly rapid rate. I remember doing a lot of string art, though…
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Kyla *
the crackpot political booths! Hooray! They’re not art, they don’t have crafts, they don’t even have kitsch. But they do have some interesting reading material, would you like some pamphlets?/QUOTE]Oh, gosh, some years those booths were the best part of the fair!!!
I used to go down there and start arguments with people, argue both sides of an issue… sort of like a pre-Internet Dope board.
And ya’ll have forgotten to mention the wandering street performers - guys juggling lit torches and stuff.
Sure, a lot of the stuff IS crap on a stick, but if you didn’t have it for comparison how could you appreciate the really nice stuff?
Thank you Hello Again and Green Bean, you absolutely made my day!
I’ve started calling them “Crap Fairs” in my own mind. I do quick-sketch portraits of people (& their children, most frequently) so I’m doing the Crap Fair circuit & I think it’s hysterical what people will buy. Glue some shit on some shit & people will buy it! Especially if there’s a flag incorporated somehow.
At one show I did this spring they had a “Pampered Chef” representative present selling pots & pans. And although most of the applications clearly say “no buy-sell” items, I always see stuff the vendors couldn’t possibly have made (unless they have a second address in China).
The ones I really feel sorry for are the occasional good fine artists who sign up for these fairs by mistake. 10% real art (as in, made by someone who went to art school & not someone who took a class at Hobby Lobby) is a really generous figure in my experience; I think it’s more like 5% & that’s including the potters (I love pottery). I met a nice man from Sweden in Rockford, IL, who did terrific work & didn’t sell a doggone thing. He was quite confused, “I thought this was going to be an art fair”. I do pretty well b/c portraits of children are an easy sell, but if it weren’t for that it would be terribly depressing.
That’s not to say that all craft is bad or anything - it’s just that if they’re going to call something an “Art and Craft” fair you’d expect to see a fair amount of art. And you’d think “craft” might indicate some craftsmanship would be involved. Sometimes it is - another person I met in Rockford was a basket weaver who split the wood himself & made baskets all day while his wife tended sales. They were lovely.
I went to A2 Art festival (for the first time by myself and, wow, that is a liberating feeling.) and thought that the vendors this year were really pandering down to the kitchen clutter look, garden decorations and, what I call Dentist Office Decor Pictures. But, I digress.)
I figured they figured that everyone was still a little tight with their money and went for household sellers rather than big ticket items and that the real vendors of art were somewhere else this year. There were maybe 4 booths of paintings that I liked, that had talent, real talent, but way over priced.
There were loads of jewelry booths. 90% hawking stuff that I just can’t see any Average Person wearing more than once a year for a fancy/festive occasion. Or geared towards the younger teen/college market, which was very nice and somewhat reasonable in price.
But, what was popular, I noticed by the tons were:
Amber jewelry booths were constantly surrounded by women looking for fun, relatively inexpensive jewelry. Amber jewelry is not your Old World Grandma’ jewelry anymore,people. It’s making a comeback. mark my words. I bought a wonderfully gaudy amber ring for myself that is just so purty. And if it were a diamond in size and purty-ness it would be about a $20k worth of one.
Kids things. Not the over priced hand cut wood puzzles/pull along duck toys and other natural themed wooded toys that are nice, but essentially the gifts that Grandparents give, but there was one booth that sold just Princess Wreaths ( a garland of sparkly things with trailing ribbons) and Magic Fairy Wands. Holy Christ, this booth was more popular than cigerettes at an AA (ha) meeting.
The art that I did see - very few and far between this year - was phenom. but WAAAAY over priced. $450 for an 8’‘x11’’ oil painting of a nearly naked woman draped in red was a bit much. I would have bought it for about 200. I can just buy Maxim That artist was my favorite booth over all.
There was one vendor that had something really, really cool of body sculptures and face thingies that looked life like. It was absolutely stunning. That booth was constantly packed and I wish I had gotten a closer look. It was stunning. I wonder what the price was.
I blew more money at the town merchants and the street performers selling their music than the vendors.
All in all, I give it a 6.5.
I’ve got to go with jayjay here and challenge the definition of ‘art’ I’m seeing him.
Folk art has a fine tradition in american culture. Frankly, a longer and deeper one than most other forms that I’m seeing respect for in this thread.
Is a lot of folk art bad? Sure. But so is a lot of photography and painting and such like. What would you rather see? Bad painting or good birdhouses.
This strikes me as similar to people to insist that jazz is the only proper music form because it takes time and discipline to learn. And I pity those people because they will never feel the joy of Woody Guthrie.
There is nothing wrong with craft AT ALL. Some people feel that when I say “it’s not not, its craft” that that is an insult of some kind. Absolutely not. I love craft that displays craftmanship (and BTW, I meant to lump woodworking in with the crafts section, it wasn’t very clear). Most potters, etc I know are proud to describe themselves as craftpeople.
Anyone defending “folk art” has CLEARLY never been to AA Art fair. It is not “found object art” nor granny’s quilting. This stuff is PURE crass commercialism from start to finish. You’re going to tell me that purple scrying balls are some form of folk art? If that’s the case, then I’m going to ask if McDonald’s collector glasses are a form of folk art.
A brief history of stuff on a stick. Basically about 5 years ago some lady welded some charming copper hummingbirds onto thin copper stakes, so you could drive them into the dirt in your garden for decoration. They were affordable and people went crazy over them. Every year since then, the percentage of vendors selling “things on sticks” has grown exponentially, never showing a fraction of the skill demonstrated in the original booth. I refuse to accept that derivative and inept copying of last year’s most popular item is a form of “folk art.”
I for one would love to see good birdhouses over bad painting anyday. But crappy copies of crappy birdhouses don’t belong in an “art fair.” Honestly they don’t belong in a craft fair either. They’re just crap.
My point is, an art fair should contain primarily art. Ann Arbor Art fair doesn’t.
Most of the Ann Arbor Art Fair is juried, which cuts down somewhat on the stuff you’d find at, say, a craft fair. However, people who sell that sort of thing aren’t dummies–they started selling stuff on sidewalks and in other knockoff fairs closeby, ones which simply charge for a table but don’t judge the wares beforehand. Like the princess crowns–those are outside of the actual Art Fairs.
That said, I’m surprised by some of the stuff that makes it in, because I can’t imagine many of these artists ever getting gallery representation. There are some genuinely talented and original people here, but they seem like exceptions.
Anyone who comes this year–you simply must go check out the garden kaleidoscopes on Washington near Thayer. You won’t be buying one (they’re $3800-4500) but they’re beautiful. Kaleidoscopes are mounted in large sculpture-like bases which include a rotating basket to plant flowers in. You rotate the flowers underneath the scope–really cool.
Overall, however, I am highly in favor of people buying stuff that is handcrafted by an artist, artisan, or craftsperson that they can meet and deal with face-to-face. There is something about that which feels good to me, even if what they are buying leaves me aghast.
I make glass bead jewelry and did indeed exhibit at crap fairs, I mean craft fairs, before I got wise. (Hey, they were cheap to get into and I didn’t need photos for jurying.)
A friend who makes willow baskets was telling me what she’d observed about some juried shows: They would jury the artists, accept some and reject some. And then if there was space left over, they’d just start letting the resale/import/crap-craft people in, instead of reconsidering some of the folks they’d rejected in jury – thus lowering the quality of the whole show and pissing off the juried artists who’d made it in.
I’ve been learning a lot about the psychology of selling. My stuff just doesn’t sell among the painted-wood-and-rust crowd; it’s too bold and colorful for the “crabby grandmas” to wear on their person. And I’ve read about crafters who’ve found they can sell more by lowering the quality of their work – making their product more “rustic,” which is what these people seem to like. It’s sad. Here I am trying to improve the quality of my work, and others are dumbing down for the masses.
I have to say that my definition of art versus craft has to do with whether you’re cranking out copies or designing one-of-a-kind pieces. I do both – some repetitive items are good sellers, but a few discerning buyers like the idea of owning a piece of jewelry that’s nothing like anything they’ve ever seen before. And from a seller’s point of view, the small-effort, big-profit items that sell easily to the masses often enable us to take a smaller profit on the more time-consuming, expensive, and creative pieces that we’d rather make. And sometimes I’m not in the mood to be creative – I’d rather sit and crank out wire-link bracelets while watching TV. Nothing wrong with that – there’s a market for them.
Be kind to the crap fair folks – everyone has to start somewhere. And if they’re making money, more power to them. I didn’t turn a profit until Year 4, and even then it was a very small one.
That artist was my favorite booth over all.