I wanted to let everyone know how the Jacksonville Beach Art Festival went.

The show was held on Saturday, Oct 20th and Sunday, Oct 21st from 10:00am to 5:00pm at Jacksonville Beach. The booths were set up in Latham Plaza, which is a 1.5-block wide open space between City Hall and the beach.

The art festival website said there were spaces for 170 artists and I later found out that about 60 artists were attending.
I counted the number of booths on Saturday and the total came to about 50: there were roughly 45 artist booths, 2 food booths, 1 "window darkening" booth (why were they at an art festival? I don't know), and 1 double-booth by a teeth-whitening company (again, why were they at an art festival?).
There were a lot of empty spaces, including the space next to mine.

(As an aside, the event organizers had poor communication: I never actually received a welcome packet letting me know that I was accepted. I found out when I checked the website where I had submitted the application and then called the art festival organizers. I'm wondering if this happened to a lot of other artists: they never received their packet, so they never knew they had been accepted.)

Saturday was bright and sunny... I think I may have even gotten a sunburn! My artwork included four 24x36 inch prints (including the "Tabby Portrait 3", which was displayed at the Otronicon show), a good number of 13x16 and 15x19 framed and matted prints, and about ten 8.5x11 framed pieces.
And, yes, all of the artwork for sale was of Tabby.

As people walked by my booth, they made comments about how unique my artwork was. In fact, a number of them commented on the "Potrait With a Ladybug" image- the one that I almost made as a joke. ;)
Some people asked what programs I used, but most people were only interested in the fact that my images were digital. I tried to gauge how computer-literate they were: when some teenage girls came by, I explained that I used a 3d model and rendered the image. Some them even said my artwork reminded them of anime artwork!
But when some older people came by, I changed my description slighty and I simply said that I used computer software to make the artwork. I think my talk of "Poser" and "Lightwave" and "rendering" would have bored them as if a painter told me about his "red #10 paint" or "sable fine brush". ;)

The visitor attendance was extremely low. By the end of the day, not many people had stopped to look at my booth and I hadn't sold anything. I talked to some of the other artists (including ones who exhibit at art festivals almost full-time) and they said the show was fairly dead compared to other shows. Most of them weren't selling anything either, except for some smaller pieces.

The weather on Sunday wasn't as good: it was very windy in the morning and started raining. I had a hard time getting set up since the wind kept blowing my larger images over! I also had to get a little more creative with my display and keep all my artwork inside the booth so nothing would get rained on.
As the day went on, it drizzled off-and-on almost the entire day... finally clearing up in the late afternoon.

Around 1:30, a lady came by and spent about half an hour looking through my artwork. She also purchased the "In Blue Portrait" as a 8.5x11 framed image. She also said that my Tabby character looked very similar to her daughter, who had passed away a number of years ago due to cancer.
Unfortunately, I was getting lunch at the time and my Dad was the one who actually talked to her!

That was the end of the excitement for the day though- a few people walked by, but the show was basically done by 3:30pm. In fact, a number of artists gave in and started packing up between 4:00 and 4:15.

In the end, it was definitely a learning experience. Will I do more shows? Definitely. Will I do another show in Jacksonville with this company? Probably not.

(This image shows my booth as it looked on Saturday.)

VanishingPoint... Advanced 3D Modeling Solutions