For the past three years I've done this festival by myself in my own booth. This year the Greenbelt Community Center told its instructors they could invite their students to share their booths. Karen Arrington (another instructor, and also my student in advanced wheel and wood-firing) and I decided to combine our booths into a double booth, then invited other potters from the advanced wheel class.
For some, this was their first experience with selling their pots, so the weekend turned into a class on selling at a craft fair. This was a lot more fun than doing the show by myself. Not only did we share all the heavy lifting and salesmanship duties, but saleswise we did considerably better than I've ever done by myself at this show. This speaks to the strength of our collaborative display. Generally I think group shows are bad for sales, because the display is cluttered and unfocused. But in our case, each potter brought a clearly focused body of work, with a strong concept tying it all together (advanced wheel), so we enhanced each other instead.
Here we are stopping to take a group photo during setup (l-r) Karen Arrington, Kori Rice (with baby Dexter), me, Chris Coyle, Amy Castner, Vejune Svotelis (photo by Barbara Davis with Kori's camera).
Karen, Chris, and Kori putting the final touches on our display.
Our display close-up (photo by Kori).
During the show ... Karen and Amy ring up sales while our booth is packed with shoppers!
