Taking the Town - Florida Art Festivals

I admit it. I have looked down on arts and crafts street fairs as a kind of subspecies of the artworld. The fairs are fully acceptable as cultural phenomena if composed of truly local makers, especially with ethnic or migrant identity. But not acceptable as a place for the educated artist as was defined historically in the 20th century by New York museums and galleries.

Images from Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, Tampa, Florida, March 3 & 4, 2007

Yet every winter weekend in Florida, an arts festival of talented artists fills the downtown, central streets and parks of several towns. In the state, only downtown Miami has no significant event. Some draw hundreds of thousands of people filling the streets, bars and restaurants to capacity.

As placemaking, the arts festival replaces the automobile with crowds between repetitive white, 10 x 10 x 8 tents. Inside the narrow zone, the eye of the walker or shopper is contained until the abrupt end of the row. Only the wind, sun or rain give any geography as the surrounding city is ignored. You are not "anywhere", but you need to look up occasionally to remind yourself where you are.

The street fair does bring new sights on the city or park. Walkers turn and orient themselves from the less experienced locations in the center of the streets or "off the grass" park zones. Views of buildings emerge. Traffic islands are places, not dividers. A sense of enclosure is felt in center of the street that cannot be known on the typical edges with the moving cars in the middle. New self-initiated paths emerge across green and asphalt.

The view of the artist is a different view unknown to the tens of thousands of visitors. The artists learn the street intimately- its pitch, its potholes, its grease, its trash. Setting up at night, the artist leans psychologically and physically toward the dim electric bulbs of the streets or buildings. During the rain, the success or failure of the gutter brings relief or panic. The returning sun washes out colors or converts the artworks to dark silhouettes against the translucent plastic walls.

In general, the artists believe that sitting in the tent keeps the customer away, an attitude completely opposite of every other "in your face" pedestrian street market in the world. On closer observation, the larger the object, the more the artist disappears. Makers of jewelry assist all the lookers. Potters and glass blowers sit among their work. Painters peak out from behind a tent opening and only meet the people when approached and asked, "Are you the artist?" The difference seems related in part to theft as the painters of 10 x 6 canvases just abandon their tents completely after the judging for "best in show."

As the thousands pass each hour, only a tiny few stop to look at any one tent. The larger the artwork, the less the visitors. This axiom is a function of purchasing power of the customers and the standardization of the tent in which all the large works can be seen from the street.

Regarding the view down my nose, these artists are artists and quite a special breed. They travel from their homes in the eastern half of the USA to live out of a van for 8-12 weeks in January, February and March. They come to SELL their work. Each show is crapshoot that might mean nothing or thousands of dollars. Being seen is regular stuff. Sales make the difference.

Artwork of Maria Foladori Weiss

Unlike those artworld artists, they are empowered. Yet they carry a kind of benign pessimism based in the economic reality of their lives.

These artists don't wait to be discovered by a curator or picked up by a gallery. They act. They develop a direct relationship with their customers that can also become their collectors. They completely control the presentation of their work. And unlike the artworld artists - many of these artists might be seen by more than a million art-loving people a year.

At the end of the day, the 20th century artworld holds its trump card - the art is not art. If the artworld thinks so, then it is because they don't go EVERY gallery in NYC each month to be drowned by the repetition of forms and because they don't look at the art in the art festivals.

In the major Florida festivals, the artists are artists. Intense examination reveals the excellence in color, composition, materials and storytelling. Yes these artworks are not part of the contemporary artworld dialogue and therefore will not be a part of that conversation. Yes these artworks are not of the moment and could have been appreciated by different artlovers 20 years ago. Taking the long view - global warming and all - does that really matter beyond the momentary fun of the art conversation? These artists are tough and skilled.

I was proud to be among these artists as my wife attempted to directly find an audience and buyers for her paintings.