A foray into art markets!

Back in April or so, my artist friend Taylor mentioned the idea of working Last Thursday Alberta together. I hadn’t worked an art market before, but this one was free to vend so the stakes were pretty low. I decided to start preparing some fine art prints and researching art market set-ups. Then I had a wedding vendor contact mention First Thursday in the Pearl and how she thought my live portraits would do well there.

So my first market was the First Thursday in the Pearl in June, doing live portraits only. You have to wait in line for same day sign ups.

I was pleasantly surprised at how large this market was, and I couldn’t believe I had grown up in Portland but had never been. I’d only heard of it once and assumed it was just galleries. When immersed in the First Thursday street market you feel like you’re in a bigger city than you are.

I brought my canopy but due to the shade didn’t actually need to set it up, so my set-up was very modest. I profited and didn’t do incredibly well- but still well enough to think it was definitely worth it.

Then on Instagram Marina from Sweet Tica Events reached out to me- she loved my work and wanted to invite me to vend at several of her upcoming pop-ups and small markets. I signed up for several for various low vendor fees, and also signed up for a few larger markets with higher barriers to entry.

Starting to get into art markets has been lot of trial and error. I did a lot of research online via mainly watching various YouTube videos by market vendors; I couldn’t be sure what would sell, if anything. I realized pretty quickly that offering pet commissions (and occasionally live portraits) outsold any fine art prints by a large margin. Sometimes I’d sell no prints at all, and only sell pet portraits.

I get it, it’s an easier sell as an impulse purchase- people love their pets, the art is cute, and it grabs their attention! I’m working on develop lower cost items than prints, like stickers, and maybe some more greeting card options. I also want to expand to selling prints of work that aren’t just landscapes/cityscapes, but an homage to my love of character art and story. I plan on creating a few different lesbian/sapphic pieces.

My favorite markets to vend at have been Portland Flea and First Thursday in the Pearl- Portland Flea is also fairly sizeable but not a street market. It’s at The Redd on SE Salmon, and takes place in a sort of warehouse and parking lot.

It may be too late into the year to attempt this, but some time next year I want to try a market without doing any custom work, be it live portraits or pet illustrations, and simply try to focus on selling fine art. I also want to keep developing my vendor set-up; while my banner featuring my company name and description helped a lot, I want to add some little decor touches! The first year is the hardest with all the initial costs and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. I’m going to keep working at markets throughout the fall and winter as much as I can while I prepare for a busy spring and summer next year!