offcntr | Hot hot hot (Reply)

It has been hot this last week.

Temperatures over 100° F. And I have been out in the thick of it.

Last weekend, our art center revived their annual fundraiser art fair, Art and the Vineyard, for the first time since 2019. I don't get my own booth there, too spendy, but I do participate in the group space my co-op, Club Mud sets up. There were about 12 of us participating this year, so we needed to do either set-up or takedown, plus two sales shifts. Because of the mass of stuff we bring in--shelves, ladders, booth canopies and a potters wheel, the art center has taken to transporting them onsite for us, we just need to move them to the courtyard at Club Mud and they'd be dropped at the site at 3:30.

Set-up was on July 4, and it was already in the 90s. We all arrived a little early, then waited an hour in the sun for them to finally bring the U-Haul around and unload our stuff. I mostly worked on the fringes with grid-panel kiosk, signage and canopies, while our most energetic members, Tea and Stu, took over laying out the shelves and screwing it all together. We wound up with a sprawling display, nearly 40 feet from end to end, with the sales tent in the shade in the middle. I finally got my pots out around 8 pm, went home and took a cold shower.

Because of Saturday Market, I'd signed up for a double sales shift on Friday. The show site is on the bike path, and parking is limited, so I took my trike down, cooler, frozen water jugs, and a soaked neck cooler in the basket. Got to the show before they'd set up bike parking, so I rode to the booth and locked my bike to a light pole.

The morning was fairly busy; made our first sale even before opening, another vendor coming to get her annual fix of Donna's whimsical porcelain bowls. Sales were steady through the morning, over a thousand at noon, double that by 1:30, though dropping off sharply afterward. We had a cranky member of the art center board bracing us in the morning, complaining that we'd blocked sightlines from the sidewalk to the booths that had, supposedly, paid a premium for end spaces. We told her to complain to the board, this is where they'd put us, and at this point we were set up, literally staked to the ground, so could not move. Never really figured out what she wanted from us. "Not to spread out any more," apparently, which was not gonna happen anyway. Staked down, remember?

Stuart had brought in a bunch of old Oregon Country Fair programs from 2022 for wrapping pots. We finally had to turn the pile over, as people kept wanting to take a copy, thought they were this year's. Karen had brought some folding canvas chairs, one of which I'd claimed instead of our old studio metal ones. Should've known better; leaning back to access the money belt, the stitching on the back gave way and I tumbled over backwards, incidentally kicking the table and knocking my phone and lunch on the ground. No serious damage except to the last of my salad. And my pride.

Got done with sales at 5:30, walked around the show greeting artists I knew, and actually buying a piece of art from one. Riding the trike home into the sun was a challenge. Fortunately, I still had cold water, the neck cooler, and at least some of the bike path is shaded. I survived.