Festival Canopy
 

I am not sure if this is really a question, or just a rant. Encouragement is just as welcome here as advice.

I've spent the last month, and absolutely all of my money, gathering a tent and gridwall, etc. and applying for outdoor festivals for this year. So far I have been accepted to a festival in May. Other applications requite a set-up picture, so I just went out to set up my tent and take the pic since my work will be off to a gallery Monday.

After putting on 2 walls, the tent flew away, got caught on a clothesline pole, and snapped in more than one place. I am so bummed. ;C

Anyone care to share some optimism?

Hi Lacy,

I am sorry to hear about your misfortune. I don't know what size of poles you have, but try a place like Home Depot and look at the long, white tubes ( PVC pipes) they use for the sprinkler system. They sell connectors as well.

We get the Santa Ana winds in California, where everything goes flying. My umbrellas have made the rounds through the yard as well, breaking in certain areas. I have purchased wooden dowels and forced them in between the original pieces that were broken. That works too.

Good luck!

Hey Enzie, thanks for the encouragement and ideas. I read your post, and after some down time and some thought I went out, partially opened the tent back up, and got a closer look at the damage.

3 areas are broken like in the picture below, one side having the pole leading to this joint bent up pretty well. This is on the zig-zag part on the sides between the legs. I see where I can put in a new screw and bolt, any ideas on how I can reinforce these at the same time?

Once I put the sides on, it was like I had a sail boat as opposed to a tent. Any way to reduce this effect?

I have no idea how you could reinforce this, other than using similar wide metal pieces, placing one over and the other under the main rod and screwing them together by means of nuts and bolts. If this is the place where the joints bend, than it will be difficult to fix it in such a manner that it can still open and close properly.

I would measure the piece and make a template. With that I would go to the hard ware store and see what options there are.

I am sorry that I can't be of more help.

Hi Lacey,
one way to reduce the wind effect is to place the opening away from the wind side,( at the lee side, I am not sure if this is the right word)

Alternatively, make an opening to let the wind through. Only the paintings will leave then, maybe. ;)
Allan

Actually, the walls were on the side where the wind was coming from. I think that the stakes in the ground were just not enough... I will have to try lots and lots of weight next time.

ACK! :o

Hi Lacey,
Bummer and I can sure relate. Had the same thing happen at my very first show. It was a 9 day show and the last night, the winds came through at over 50 miles per hour and destroyed the place. I had a 5 gallon bucket filled with rocks tied from the ceiling center rod, plus weights on all four corners. None held. Only lost about 4 pieces though, but when I saw it, we just packed up and left, as did most of the other artists.
Doing outdoor shows is a risk. It takes a little more time to set up and put away, but if you can put your work in waterproof containers overnight, that will cut down on damages. If you can sew, cut some "windows" near the top of the canvas on 3 sides and sew in some mesh screen to help let the wind blow through, similar to what Alan suggests.

Hi Lacey,

The grid walls have no weight to them so they will definitely behave like sails. My tent experience is pretty limited but 100% has been in horrible winds.

I have Armstong carpeted walls which are a lot heavier than grid. Also much more difficult to handle on your own.

I made weights for each corner of the tent, out of 4 foot lenghts of 4-5" PVC piping from Home Depot. Buy one PVC cap for the bottom of each 4 ft length. . Buy long augers with sturdy handles to set into the tubes. Cap the bottoms, mix up cement and fill the tubes with augers in place. Let the cement set.

Attach the handles of the tubes to the tent corners with ratchet straps and bungee cords.

In one VERY windy situation my tent neighbors bungee corded my tent to theirs to add to the weight . If it is really windy, you might be better with the walls up. But is it's that bad, I'm with Heidi, head for the hills. Tent shows are REALLY hard.

Tomorrow I will pull out my weights and take a picture to add to this post.

Enzie, Allan, Heidi, Chris, thank you all so much for all of the help and input (and keep it coming by all means!) I am starting to feel a bit better. My focus right now is just getting the whole thing set up to take pics BEFORE Saturday night. Then I can after that is done, I can think about if I just need to replace the tent, or what else creative I can do because I really need to get my work and myself out in the public. I'm determined!

The plan for now is this: I will get some nuts and bolts to put through the holes where the joints snapped, I'll brush off the dirt and such that ended up on the canvas part, and I will tie the tent down to some cinder blocks that I found I had right in my own yard. Then hopefully I can at least get a booth shot out of it! Winds for Saturday aren't expected to go above 5 mph, so my fingers are crossed.

Chris, actually I think my gridwall might be heavier than what you are thinking of. I bought some heavy-duty ones that are 2' x 6', and 3 panels come in a box. Each box weighs 40 lbs! I have a total of 14 2' x 6' panels, and 2 2' x 4' panels. I hope they don't budge!

Heidi, I remember reading on this forum about your experience. I am glad that this happened in my yard instead of at a show! Luckily the shows I am looking at are short, local shows with the longest being 2 1/2 days.

When I was a child, I used to do all of this stuff with my dad. He sold merch at carnivals, and I remember standing in his large, sturdy tent while we watched the kind of tents I have fly away. ;)

Update: I managed to get the tent set up to take pics, but I will need to buy a new tent for the actual fairs, the 1st of which is May 7th. For this picture, I put new nuts and bolts throuhg the joints, and since the sides were so bent up I tied some twine to the joints from the inside, strung it out through the side wall, and tied it to a fence. The side appears straight in the pic, and I don't think that you'd see the string unless I pointed it out.

Luckily the bright sun also blew out the dirt, grass, and rust stains on the cover! :sunnysmil

I am looking at some of what they have at Dick Blick, so if anyone has any reccomandations about tents available there please let me know.

Also, Chris, how much would you say each of your home-made weights weighs?

Hi Lacey,

The tent looks just fine and there are no signs of the trauma sustained.

I am sure you have no problem getting accepted with this preliminary set up. I wish you the best of luck and hope that the show will bring you many new commissions.

Thanks Enzie! I am rather impressed with how well the picture turned out, considering the condition that the tent is really in.

Now I wish I would have taken a picture when it was caught in the clothesline, bending and twisting, just for fun. I could've joked about submitting that photo! :oops:

Lacey so sorry for the delay- I just took the scale down to the weight. The weight I picked was 20.5 pounds.

Carrying two of the weights at a time is a comfortable thing on my own. Maybe I could go 35 pounds, but there is alot of stuff I have to carry otherwise..a single woman putting up a tent is not easy.

ps Before I bought my tent I talked to a quite a few exhibitors. Costco had the Caravan which was really inexpensive. EVeryone said that The Caravan was heavy and unweildy and that EZ- UPwas easier.

I don't doubt it but there is nothing easy about EZup.At least for me.

I got my tent on EBAY -a great deal.An EZ tent with 4 walls and a canopy for ( guessing here) about $450

I would not mind NEVER setting it up again.

Thanks, Chris! Your weights are nice looking, do you use more than one on a corner? I am so paranoid now, I think I'll aim for 40-50 lbs per pole! :oops: I weighed one of my cinder blocks, and it was almost 50 lbs, but not as attractive.

Now I'll just have to find some beefy guys to haul it all around for me. I'm not very muscley myself. :bewildere

Thanks for the info! Anyone heard anything about "King Canopy?"

My PVC tubes were actually 3" - you could go 4 or 5 inches but the question is, could you carry them. I used one per pole and I liked that they are very slim and I could attach them to each corner very unobtrusively,

My very limited experience here was that I had about 1.5 hours of daylight to setup. I hired a boy scout to help me. Depending upon the venue the set up time can be very short.

pps All this thought makes me have to sign off to go to the gym. Sigh.

Maybe I will just make double the number of weights and attach two to each pole. It would mean more trips, but I do not want another tent flying away!

Yeah, I'm off to put in my Pilates video. :oops:

One reason I like these weights is that I can still zip up the tent when they are attached. I do think you could double them and leave one of the two inside the tent, per corner.

I also thnk that is a good idea to remove paintings from the walls each night, if you have any doubt whatsoever as to the coming night.

Also depending on the climate, works under glass may tend to condense. They will need to be covered or placed under a table.

Update
 

Yesterday was my 1st art fair! I replaced the tent that flew away with an EZ-Up, and it came with sandbags so I filled them up with 30lbs of sand each. I decided 30lbs per leg wasn't enough, so I added a 20lb concrete brick on top of that! Needless to say, I still have my tent. ;)

I had a good time out there and did a live demo throughout the day. I also won 3rd place in the 2D category! It was a lot of work, and I hope that a couple of commissions will follow, and I will be doing at least one more art fair this year depending on what applications are accepted.

Cris, or anyone else with an answer, when I do an art fair that lasts more than one day is it generally OK to leave up the walls and the tent? I am just not sure about setting up and tearing down 3 days in a row.

Congratulations!

I would rather shoot myself than take down and set-up the tent every day. As to whether you leave your artwork in the tent at night - you'll have to decide how you feel about the security of any given show. I would prefer to leave the art on the walls and zip up the tent, and I have done that several times.

If you think that there might be a lot of wind, you would not want to zip the walls, just leave them open so the wind can move through - and do take the art off the walls - you can lay it flat in protective covering or take it to your car - depends on the situation. In one really windy situation, several of us lashed our tents together for extra weight. I don't know whether that was a good idea, but they were all more experienced fair-goers than I.

Yes, I think I would bring home my artwork everyday, but I didn't know if I should be worried about someone swapping my gridwall or tent! :cool:

Lacy,

Can you please tell me where you got the display panels from? Even though I had decided not to do shows any more, I decided it's time to dig out the tent and start generating more business.

My old set up just takes to long to assemble and I like the larger panels that you have. How did the tent hold up with the added weight?
One of the shows will be in September and we get those nasty Santa Ana winds that send everything flying.

Any other suggestions you might have are appreciated.

Sure! Actually, I got the panels locally here: KC Store Fixtures . They had better prices than I found elsewhere, and the delivered it free. I don't have any idea what shipping charges would be, but these are heavy; 3 2ft x 6ft panels together weigh 60lbs.

The tent held up awesome and didn't budge an inch. I filled up the sandbags that came with the tent with 30lbs of sand each (I had an issue with trying to get PVC home in my little car) and then bought a large, flat gray brick that weighed maybe 20lbs and put one of those on top of each of the sandbags. I was not messing around this time!!! :o

Like I said, the gridwall is heavy, but in case of winds I wonder if you could tie the tops to the bars of your tent? If your tent is sturdy, I bet that the gridwall would be pretty difficult to knock over then.

Thanks Lacey, I will check them out. I hope your event was successful and that it generated new commissions for you.

Eh, no commissions yet. :( Any tips on that? I will be doing 2 or 3 more shows this year; should I have a guestbook/sign-up sheet?

All I can say is hang in there. First show, no sales and no commissions. Later on I set up my easel and painted, which made people curious enough to stop and look. I did not generate any portrait commissions either, but I sold several small decorative paintings, tons of postcards of my work and added many names via the guest book to my mailing list. I did see other paintings sell though, and that made me wonder if maybe my prices were too high for the venue.

This year, besides displaying samples of portraits, I am going to offer prints mostly 8"x10"of some work along with the postcards and small pet portraits in oil . Don't forget to print brochures! I will be at two outdoor art shows and one street fair in September and figured if the paintings are affordable enough for browsers, it might lead to future portrait commissions that are priced higher.

I am looking at this as purely advertising, it is less costly than advertising in the paper and I get out of my studio and can gage how my work is accepted by the general public.

Should you stumble across the magic solution of how to generate sales at art shows, please share.