In the years when artists and craftsmen had to stand on their spot in order to claim it, I found my first years at the Saint James Court Art Show as ones, not unlike the great gold rush days.
The first year, my paintings and easels were dropped out of the family car long before dawn. With many other individuals who unloaded their works along with dreams of making great sales during the first weekend of October, I stumbled around under the streetlights of the Court and tried to arrange my belongings in the area that would be my outdoor home for the next few days.
As the sun came up, the long object in the area just in back of my spot unzipped to reveal a young man crawling out of a sleeping bag, followed by his helper, a small dog.
It turned out the area next to me was shared by two fellows who had been exhibitors for years and over that first weekend, guided me through the beginning of my art career on the streets of Louisville and beyond.
These two friends sold three ears of Indian Corn tied up with a large bow of ribbon. One young man owned a florist shop and had access to fancy ribbons which I found to be the key to their incredible sales.
Those were the days before pop-up tents and we were operating in an open-air space blended with each other so much so that the Saint James crowds tromped over the top of me to get to that three ears of Indian Corn with its fancy bow.
More than once I lunged for a painting that was headed for the ground in that first year’s stampede for corn and bows. Saturday night my two neighbors headed for a farm in Indiana to buy more corn for their Sunday setup and I sat at home devising a plan for next year’s show.
I had learned I needed to secure my area in a fashion as other exhibitors had devised. Easels might be correct for a perimeter location, but not safe enough for the total viewing area.
Over the years I would graduate from a family car to a station wagon to a Volkswagen bus to a white Ford Van followed by a blue “Church Bus” Club Wagon. Inside each vehicle were various setups built to handle larger works for display.
I would wear out four pop-up tents and have the capability of mounting two booths at one location with enough gear to handle Indiana’s “Harvest Homecoming” for which was needed at one point a fuse box and fifty feet of thirteen gauge electrical cord to reach the electric supply mounted on poles along the streets.
My setups were sometimes made of chicken wire, then hardware cloth, then pegboard then my brightest idea-those white wire closet shelves which could be purchased at Home Depot. Mounting them downwards around the edges of my pop-up tent with electric ties gave me a secure display to be mounted and taken down quickly.
Fold-up tables served me in great fashion as well as shelves covered in black cloth. Plastic and tarps for bad weather had a special place in my art vehicles as well as drapery hooks and a box filled with various tools any artist or craftsman dared not leave home without.
Show visitors are never aware of the incredible building techniques that take place before they arrive for viewing and neither was I that first year on Saint James Court. Exhibitor parking is a fine-tuned agenda as explained by my Indian Corn friends. I look back on many years of packing vehicles so that all my show supplies fit back in somewhat the same order in which they were extracted. And I have to laugh at the comments made by one adult art student and one young grandchild.
The student looked in the window of the van on a Monday evening after a show and said, “I’ve never seen anything like that in my entire life.”
Little Clara echoed the comment when I cleared away a spot inside the sliding side door after she begged to sit in the van, “The most stuff in the whole world.”
When you are an artist, a loaded van is a prized possession and quite normal when you spend years in an outdoor exhibition circuit. And having the most stuff is insurance that you might be able to lend a fellow exhibitor an item left behind at his or her home. A nice lady from Chicago can testify to that when we covered her with an extra tarp during a rainstorm.
Yeah, the most stuff is important. Ask any exhibitor at Saint James Court.