How do you deal with hundreds of artists at Indian Market?
I deal with about a thousand, sending out emails, reminders, coordinating applications and booth sales.
Here’s an example: I have one artist who has to drive 15 miles to the post office so she can get service to give me a call. So she calls and says, Hi, Mona, can you mail me my application?
I tell her, Get your niece, your granddaughter, somebody that can help you with the computer. I need you to email me your pictures. That’s the only way it’s gonna happen. Or they’ll fill out a hard copy app, and they’ll send me their pictures on a USB drive. Last year was the last time I accepted a CD ROM, because I had the only computer in the office that still had a CD drive. I have to break their hearts and say, I’m sorry, you cannot send me CDs anymore, and you can’t send me a 4 x 6 printed photo from Walgreens.
These guys will not touch a computer in their whole life. That’s where a passion for helping comes in.
Look, I don’t want them to feel like, Oh my gosh, I can’t even work a computer. I’m not gonna be able to be part of market. No. Let us help you do that footwork, and we’ll get your application in!
Once it gets close to the market, the questions start piling in: Do you provide tables? Do you provide chairs? Can we put a tarp up? You can see why I don’t sleep the week before market at all. Maybe even two weeks.
Then, the day of the market, at 4:30 AM, my ass is in the plaza. Excuse me. I don’t have the pretty mouth sometimes.
I’m like family at this point. My artists are my babies. I’m sitting there. It’s dark outside still. Cars are coming in and unloading their stuff. Soon there will be complaints about neighbors or how the sun is heating up someone’s jewelry.
Wrangling artists is not the easiest thing.
But when I get a new artist who comes to me at the end of the day and says, Mona, I’m almost sold out, or Mona, I sold two, three pieces, that makes me happy. That tells me, okay, I’m doing my job.
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