Open Studios San Francisco 2007 Report

It's Monday morning after a weekend of Open Studios. What an experience. I think, foot traffic wise, it was the worst of any of the 5 years I've shown down at Fort Mason. Every year, it seems to get worse and worse - because I don't think Fort Mason really cares if Open Studios is held down there or not and they don't promote it or make it visible. Every year I tell myself I am not going to do it again next year there, but then I do. Fort Mason keeps raising the prices by large leaps every year and provides less and less service for it. It really is time to find another alternative place but the choices are very few and far between in the city and in a group large enough to attract visitors to come to it.

Saturday was just bizarre down at Fort Mason. In a larger pavilion building there, they were also hosting the Oktoberfest. And different than other years of the Oktoberfest, this year there were tons of twenty-something kids who were *way* too drunk, and while they didn't come into our building where all the artists were holding Open Studios, they were loud and yelling in the parking lot, peeing against the other buildings, being generally scary, and twice during the day we saw 6 police cars, 3 ambulances and a fire engine, and sirens over at that building (we could see the entrance from our windows). As I was driving out of the Fort Mason parking lot at the end of Saturday, it was almost dangerous, with drunk kids leaping out in front of cars and yelling at the drivers and knocking into one another and streaming out of the parking lot on to the city streets nearby. It was just bizarre.

Sunday was also Oktoberfest but it seemed a lot calmer and more family-oriented. And more people (who did not seem drunk like the day before) did come into our building to view the art and artists did make more sales on Sunday than Saturday. I did horribly - only selling 5 miniature paintings the whole weekend and not even making the cost to rent the room (but fortunately had sold a bunch before the show in Indiana so in the end it was fine for me). On the good side, some friends did stop by to visit, and some people I had not seen in awhile which was fun, and other visitors who were very interested in my encaustics and wanted to know all about the process, so it was enjoyable educating more people on what makes encaustic beeswax so interesting to work with.

My legs are quite sore this morning from standing for two days and I'm feeling my back ache from the setup and take-down, but another Open Studios has come and gone and now its on to the next thing. I have a juried exhibition to get ready to enter on October 28th.





This is a shot of my setup. It does not include all of my setup - as there are some oil paintings off to the left and a larger encaustic painting off to the right... but it shows most of it.





Here are a couple of "roommates" (five artists shared our room), with Peggie MacDonald talking back at Sandra Riker's table. The very last hour of Sunday, Sandra had a customer buy the $800 bronze sculpture you can see in the upper right part of her table in the photo. In total she sold 7 sculptures so she did very well in the end.

Now I get to go visit my artist friends who are holding their Open Studios on the remaining weekends of October (in other parts of the city) and the Hunter's Point artist collective (which still remains the largest collection of artist studios in the city) has theirs the first weekend of November.





Technorati tags: art , oil painting , miniature painting , Open Studios