As I mentioned in a thread I started earlier in this forum, I had my first solo show (a pop-up event over a weekend) at Catskill Animal Sanctuary, where I volunteer as a photographer. The show was held in the Homestead, a beautiful, 200 year-old farmhouse that is available as a B&B-like guesthouse for CAS members. We took down the existing art and I hung my photos throughout the house for the weekend.
We had a good turnout, and I sold about 9 framed prints, several dozen matted prints, and about a dozen photo books over two days. I donated 100% of the profits to CAS to support its mission. I've most of the remaining framed prints in the house for another month or so, to give Homestead guests a chance to see (and, ideally, buy) the art.
Since only a few days have past since the exhibition, I haven't fully digested the experience, but I'm starting to pull together some lessons I've learned from the experience - and thought others might be interested.
1. Most importantly, it was great to be able to do my first show in a familiar environment (my "happy place"), supported by people who know how to handle the stuff I'm not good at (e.g., hospitality, transaction-processing, outreach, etc).
2. Equally, it was great to bring the portraits to the place they were made - so there was a strong link between the venue and the subject. And some of the people who attended already were familiar with some of the Sanctuary residents featured in the exhibition.
3. I was glad to have some experience in showing images in juried exhibitions. Obviously, a solo show is a much bigger undertaking, but it was helpful to have learned already where to source frames, how to print exhibition quality work, how to design promotional material like flyers and advertise the show through social media.
4. In preparing images for the show, it also was helpful to have gone through a portfolio review a few months earlier. As a result, about half of the images I showed were already "exhibition-ready" for printing, and this made the process of printing them for the exhibition much faster.
5. CAS is about a 2.5-hour drive north of New York City, and the show was scheduled to run on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon, after some guests had checked out of the Homestead and before others checked in. I didn't want to be scrambling (or pulling an all-nighter) to get the show hung, so Mr frogoutofwater and I went up to CAS the weekend before the show to get a head start. This made it a much more expensive endeavour (rental minivan for two weekends, not just one) but it made the process much more pleasant - and allowed us to make some adjustments to the exhibition plan after hanging part of the show on the weekend before. We were able to enjoy being at the Sanctuary, going out for dinner, etc on both weekends, instead of just working constantly and not enjoying the experience. That said, if I do something like this again, I think I'd like to do something closer to home.
6. It was really helpful to have a handy partner (Mr frogoutofwater), who framed all the prints (using frames from framedestination.com), loaded the van, hung the prints and generally did all the grunt work before cleaning up and being a charming host. Seriously, I have the best spouse ever :)
7. Printing most of the images myself and using ready-to-assemble frames from Frame Destination reduced the cost considerably for the show. But the overall expenses were still a fair bit higher than I anticipated - mainly because we spent money on travel, and I displayed more images than I originally planned, plus we bought some supplies for the exhibition itself. Because the Homestead isn't a gallery, we ended up buying a number of things to put the show together (e.g., wire stands to prop up small prints, labels, etc.)
8. It was amazing to see the walls throughout the Homestead (2 floors, 3 bedrooms and a suite) covered in my photos. But that also meant that we printed and framed 45 (!) pieces, in six sizes. I think for a more traditional show in a more conventional venue, I would end up exhibiting a much smaller number of pieces (maybe 12-25) and probably would only present a couple of different image sizes. But for this audience, the range of sizes (from a 5"x7" print up to 16"x20") made sense.
9. Last year, I created a photo book, which is now available for sale at the Sanctuary. I specifically designed it to be relatively affordable ($25 for about 60 pages) and to suit all ages. It sold well at the exhibition - I think there were a number of people who wanted to support the exhibition and CAS but didn't want to commit to buying a framed photo (the least expensive of which was $95).
10. I also made small prints of a number of images in the show and made them available as unsigned, matted prints. These sold very well, and if I were to do a show like this again, I would make more available.
That's it for now, but if anyone has any questions or feedback on their own experience with shows, I'd love to see it. Thanks.
