Festival Recap: Brandywine Festival of the Arts 2011

This past weekend I took part in the Brandywine Festival of the Arts held at Brandywine Park in Wilmington, DE on September 10-11, 2011. This is something like the 54th year for the festival, and my second. Outdoor festivals can be a lot of fun, but they are also pretty grueling, because of all the logistics and long hours associated with making them happen.

 Since my car was destroyed in the flash flooding in my area earlier in the week (see earlier post), I rented an SUV and we managed to fill every nook and cranny of it with original paintings, prints, tents, tables, easels, display stands, tablecloths, tent gear, hammers and other associated tools and miscellaneous gear. Then we drove to the Brandywine on the evening previous to the festival start and had to unpack and set up everything to it would be ready for the next morning. My dad showed up to help my husband and I get the tent sorted (He's an engineer, and is good with that type of thing).


There is no area to park your car immediately by where your tent will be (the ground was too soft due to recent rains and they did not want cars tearing up the grass) so we had to walk the gear over from the side of the road. Luckily, my space was located near the entrance so it was not too bad of a hike. But I still think I am going to have to invest in a hand truck or something in the near future. As another vendor told me was we were huffing and puffing around with loads of gear, "It keeps ya young!". lol.


I realized at this point that one of my frames had gotten slightly chipped in the car ride over, and had to run out to a frame shop to pick up a ready-made frame in the same size and then re-frame and re-wire the piece.

By 7:30 AM the next morning we were at the festival, putting up the original artwork and prints for display and generally preparing the tent for the 9 AM kick-off.

Despite warnings of rain from the weathermen, Saturday was brutally hot and humid and the festival was crowded with people. The vendors in my row had no shade from trees so we were in the direct path of the sun during the afternoon and we cooked in our tents. however, despite this, the festival was very well attended and while my sales were initially slow, they really kicked into high gear by late afternoon. Besides print sales, I ended up getting new homes for the original "Arabesque", "The Fox Maiden" and "Ornamental". See below.




Day two of the festival was more overcast but then got sunnier as the day progressed.  Overall it was slower on Day 2 but still good. We still managed to avoid any rain, for which I am thankful. The festival runs rain or shine, but attendance would have been dampened.  Overall I am pretty pleased with the type of art and craft being sold at the festival. It was all high quality and there was a good variety. I bought a glass sculpture from another artist I had seen there the previous year, but if I had the time to shop (which I did not!), there were quite a few vendors I would have frequented.

I took some photos of my tent set up on Saturday morning and posted below. Please click on images to enlarge.

















Comments

MoonSpiral said…
Sounds a lot like the festival I did a couple of weeks ago. I swear I got dizzy and almost passed out at one point from the heat. Congratulations on the original sales, you rock girlfriend :)
Yeah, I much prefer the fall festivals. I had to lather on the sunscreen but I swear I sweated most of it off. Very unladylike (lol). Hope you did well at your show.