Avondale Art Fair - June 15th, 2013 - Avondale, Nova Scotia

We did it! Scott and I attended our first outdoor art fair together. I have to say I am a lucky girl to have such an amazing man in my life. It would have been an utter disaster without him! He towelled off the tent roof when water was leaking all over my work, he held on to the tent posts when the wind was tossing over other people's tents near us. He ran up and down our stairs at home a million times carrying art and tables and easels at 4:30 AM and then again at 7:30 PM when we got home. All in all! THANK YOU! What an adventure!

Overall we were very lucky with the weather, after the forecast had been indecisive for a week of rain and a questionable weekend, it was a miracle that it ended up being a beautiful and sunny day.  We had many visitors throughout the day including a lovely woman who overheard us speak to a set of customers about the print course that I will be teaching at NSCAD this fall. Turned out that she was one of my soon-to-be students!

We met the lovely Bob Morouney from Hidden House Press and I traded one of my little pieces for a gorgeous tumbler by Suzanne at La P'tite Poterie, whose Miro Series I completely fell in love with. She had travelled all the way from New Brunswick to share her work.

After the weather, a week of rain, the grounds at the Avondale Sky Winery were quite soaked and being a corner tent the walkway past us was very muddy. Luckily we went the night before the art fair to get an idea of what to expect. This was the perfect move, we got the inspiration to cover the muddy inside of our tent with a cheap carpet, and came prepared with waterproof shoes. Kathy, the lovely organizer, provided wood-shaving pellets to soak up most of the walkway mud. So everything was resolved beautifully. 

We learned a lot from this experience, here a few points to share:
- Get weights for your tent, the lines and stakes are not enough.
- If everything is holding up with the zip-ties you used, double the amount, we had one of our wood beams crash down on us during the very windy moments. SO there is no such thing as too many zip-ties!
- If another tent is right next to you zip-tie them together.
- Using display grids is great, but zip-tie them together and then also to the tent pole to reduce swaying and movement in the wind.
- Transport all art and water/mud sensitive items in plastic containers. When we arrived the ground was wet which made unpacking very difficult using the cardboard boxes.
- Avoid bubble-wrap and foam for protecting your pieces, on a windy exhausting day, having to find the pieces that fit to re-wrap can be frustrating. The best solutions are the special made sleeves and bags to slide your artwork in. Makes packing up much quicker.