Fur In The Paint

At Least The Cat Looks Dignified
So here is a photo of me and Budda crashed out on the couch in the front room of the gallery, resting after a hard day of packing. Apparently Budda thinks my gut is more squishy soft than the couch.

I am actually threatening my husband Mike not to take the picture. (Perhaps it would have worked better had I not been smiling. Hmmm.) I went ahead and posted it because I thought what the heck, your amusement is worth more than my humiliation.

The Land Whale
So we have yet again packed for another adventurous art fair. This time we are going to Omaha, NE. This fair generally gets anywhere from 60,000+ fair goers.

Here’s a photo of our business van. Isn’t she a sexy beast? Okay it’s a land whale, but it holds an unbelievably huge amount of stuff and gets between 20-21 miles to the gallon, fully loaded for an event. By todays standards that is hardly high recommendations, but for a vehicle of this size, with an 8-cylinder engine and towing 1500 to 2000 lbs. It’s phenomenal. And I love her for it.

Important Van Features

So for those of you thinking about getting into doing artfairs, (with the exclusion of jewelers, they can show up in a compact, if they know how to pack it.) Here’s a few pointers for choosing the right vehicle.

• Square is good. The boxier the better. Before this van we had a GMC Safari. Also boxy in shape. The reason for this is you can pack more stuff in square than you can in a round type of curvy van, say like a Ford Windstar.
• Tinted Windows are nice. They not only keep the interior cooler, but they also kinda hide the fact that your vehicle is packed with “stuff.” Unfortunatley this van does not have that feature. Our old van did have tinteds and we really miss that in this one. But this one only had 39,000 miles when we bought it, which makes up for the windows.
• Measure your interior and the space between your wheel wells. This is really most important when it comes to your display panels. Whatever kind you’ve got, homemade or pre-made, generally they are largish in size. Most pre-made panels run approximately 3′x 6′. Display panels are really the most difficult object to pack and make fit.
• Note the doors that fully extend open (both on the back and the sides) allowing you the maximum space to put large objects inside.
• Bigger is better. As I said, our previous van was a Safari which was considerably smaller. We got almost as much in it, but we had to pack it in a specific order, in order to get it all to fit. Which meant we generally had to tear everything completely down so we could put our tents in the bottom, then the display, then artwork, totes, etc. If the weather is nice, this is no big deal. However, if it is driving rain and lightening, having to pack in this way, becomes a noticeably a bigger pain in the arse. Also with the larger size van, we can now do two booths at an event with plenty of inventory for both.
• This is the typical art fair artist vehicle. This and trucks towing trailers.

Cargo Vans
This is actually a passenger van that we have removed the seats from. It is essentially the same as a cargo van with some important, comfort related distinctions.

• Cargo van are often an empty shell on the inside. Literally the raw metal of the vehicle make up the interior. This means the van gets colder in the winter and hotter in the summer. Many artists custom build in an interior for comfort.
• Also often cargo van do not usually come with air conditioning (and possibly cruise control) standard. Be sure to check that out if your looking at one.
• And lastly most cargo vans have very few windows. This may not be a big deal if you pack it to the ceiling. We pack most of the time so we can see out our windows. This really helps when driving in unfamiliar cities.

Tags: artfairs

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