To paraphrase Charles Dickens………“it was the best of shows, it was the worst of shows.” Gold Coast Art Fair is an Amy Amdur Production which is in it’s 53rd year in Chicago. It’s called The Granddaddy of Art Shows in Chicago. With 500 artists it’s also the largest outdoor art show held in Chicago. Formerly held on city streets, this is the first year it was held in Grant Park. Wedged right between The Art Museum of Chicago, Buckingham Fountain, and Lakeshore Drive, it should have been a perfect venue. However, even though Amy Amdur is a very organized and efficient show promoter….well, even she can’t control the weather and the economy and the City of Chicago.
We loaded in from East Jackson Street. We knew in advance that we’d have to dolly in to our booth space. The distance wasn’t really too bad – it was just the heat and humidity that did us in.
Out of all of the empty booth spaces available, the La Croix Company decided to use our space as an entry point to dolly in pallets full of La Croix Sparkling Water. The field was a little damp, so they laid down plywood to haul over. We just dollied in our things and placed them in the empty booth area next to ours.
This shows our stuff laying in the field next to a small body of water. Oh, and I forgot to mention the duck poop – it was everywhere! We’d checked out the show location the day before and it was covered with Canadian Geese and sea gulls – or are they just called gulls if they’re hanging around Lake Michigan? It normally takes us 2.5 hours to set up our booth and hang the pictures. Due to the temperature being in the 90′s and the humidity being quite high…well, it took us an excruciating 5 hours to set-up. We were just brain dead and moving very slow.
The show opened at 10am on Friday. Once again the temperature was in the 90′s. It’s just hard to be enthusiastic about art when you’re exhausted from the heat. An exhibitor near us was taken to the hospital with dehydration. The show went until 7pm even though it was advertised only until 5pm. When the show changed locations it also changed dates. When the new date was selected there was no Chicago Bears football game scheduled. Then they scheduled a pre-season game. Even though Soldier Field was about 10 blocks away from Grant Park, the city officials didn’t want the art show people taking away parking spaces from the football people. The city wanted the show to shut down on Saturday, but they finally agreed to let us stay open until 3pm. So the hours for the show were advertised incorrectly due to last minute changes.
This is a very unflattering pic taken of me Saturday morning at breakfast. Okay, I did pose to look particularly miserable, but I was feeling miserable and tired after two days of hard labor and high heat. Also, it had stormed Friday night, so we weren’t sure what the field would look like when we arrived……
Mud had actually splashed all the way up to the top shelf of the bookcase that we use to display cards. Fortunately I’d tied up the tan wall covers so that they didn’t get covered with rain water and mud.
The small body of water behind our tent had grown during the night – it now stretched into the inside of the booth next to us. We were actually lucky – our neighbor had to move her tent forward about 3 feet and scavenge for plywood boards to lay down over the mud puddles. Even people on concrete didn’t fair so well – some of them had ponds inside their booths. Amy Amdur’s people used shop vacs to suck up water and bought and laid down more plywood boards. However, there were 500 artists in the show, so most of us had to fend for ourselves. We cleaned up our space as best we could and helped our neighbor move her tent. We stopped short of helping her move muddy plywood – we left it to her fiance to get covered with mud.
This was the sidewalk in front of our tent. Due to standing water and mud which was already there on Thursday, we didn’t have any booth in front of us. Normally that would be an advantage – everyone walking by would look into our tent. However, I think most people looked out over the open field at the mud puddles. It seemed like just when we’d cleaned up from the rain- and the show and sales were starting to pick up……well, that’s when a city official walked around yelling, “this show will close in five minutes.” It really was disappointing……..
Sunday arrived bright and shiny and it was perfect weather. We knew that the crowds wouldn’t start rolling in until after church….or as one Chicagoan said….after brunch and their first Bloody Mary of the day. Ha. Eventually the crowds came, but for us the sales were disappointing. So, I do what I always do when I’m at a show and bored……I start looking at faces to find new people to paint. Met Jim from Chicago. He liked my paintings, so of course I had to photograph him.
Love that look on his face.
Juliette was the artist next to us who’s tent was flooded. Considering the mess she had to deal with she took it in stride and made do. It seemed funny that our booths were next to each other since we where the only two figure painters in the whole show. Fortunately, we liked each other and each others work – even though our styles are completely different. Her website is www.juliettebelmonte.com. I took lots of photos of her and may paint my own version of a woman with an umbrella walking a duck on a leash – that painting is one of her best sellers. I already had a picture of a woman wearing a raincoat, rubber boots, and holding an umbrella – sans duck – that I was thinking of doing.
I chased down Laura and asked if I could photograph her – turns out she’s only 15 and was there with her mother. I could have sworn she was 21! I loved her dark hair, perfect complexion, and the colors she was wearing.
Isn’t Drew interesting? To me he looks like a hot, sexy European. Actually he’s a hot, sexy American who’s moving to Bloomington, Indian a to get his Phd in Psychology. Wouldn’t you like to tell him your troubles?
I met Victoria while standing in line at the ice cream stand. Turns out that she’s done some modeling. What can I say? She’s just beautiful in a haunting, clean, wholesome way. Who wouldn’t want to paint her?
And what can I say about the Sunday night tear down? It was pure misery…..500 artists trying to tear down their booths and drive up their vans and trailers to load up – ALL AT ONCE. People were double and triple parked on the streets. I tried to talk Tom into leaving our stuff and coming back later when the crowd was gone. But he was tired and stubborn (he apologized later) so we started dolly-ing things across a bumpy, muddy field, across the sidewalks, across a six lane street, down a ramp, through doors, up a ramp, and across the parking garage – probably 1.5 blocks. We ended up cut, bruised, and exhausted. At the end of trip #3 I had to sit down and rest. Mind you – I’m tough, but this was beyond difficult. After trip #4 I ordered Tom to sit down and rest. He had a triple by-pass 4 years ago and shouldn’t even be doing this sort of thing. I said I’d get the van and try to park close by. I had to pass up 2 small parking spots because I knew I’d never be able to back up and parallel park into them. I did a u-turn in the middle of the street and pulled up behind a trailer that was almost finished loading up. Once he left I was able to completely pull into an empty spot. I went and got Tom and we still had 4 more trips before we were finished loading up. Our normal 1.5 hour tear down had turned into FOUR HOURS!!! It was 9pm before we drove off.
At our hotel I apologized to everyone else who shared our elevator – I knew we looked and smelled like homeless people. One again Chicago had chewed us up and spit us out.
Painting when I started this morning.
Painting when I stopped this evening. All I have to do is let this dry, then do a little bit of glazing – probably mostly cadmium red light on the face and some ivory black on the shirt and it will be finished. I did put a thin glaze of straight cerulean blue over the background. I thought it would neutralize the background colors, but it turned some of them green.
