Corvallis Fall Festival

Background:

Back in July 2004, I was  in France attending a sketching/journaling workshop along the Brittany coastline. At the end of the class, Carol and I headed to Paris for several days of sight-seeing and museum hopping. On departure day, Carol had an early flight and I had an early afternoon train ride back to London.  After checking into my hotel, I decided to check emails and discovered an interview request from Corvallis Fall Festival. Cynthia and I had met previously at WOU. She exhibited while I was the student gallery director for then Campbell Hall Gallery (now the Dan & Gail Cannon Gallery) and was also part of the jury for my senior oral presentation.  I had an interview after returning home and I’ve been an integral part of staging a local arts festival.

CFF is a not for profit arts & crafts festival featuring 170 artist booths and over 200 artists participating in the 2 day event. This years event takes place on Sept 26 & 27th.  Our jury process opens at the beginning of February and ends May 1. The jury day  was on the 13th this year. There were over 300 applicants for 100 booths. 8 jurors spent 2 hrs going through each application. We are one of the last remaining shows in the PNW using actual photos ( I think Edmonds is still using photos and not gone to ZAP). We request 3 images that fit on the front of one single piece of paper.  The paper is then inserted into clear plastic sheet covers and grouped by media.  Some artists give us 3 pages of images. Not the wisest choice because jurors don’t always pull out the other pages to view. I try to place the strongest image on the front and another on the back. We encourage our jurors to not decrease the points due to photo problems. Go for quality of the item produced. Our jurors are anonymous. Many have been a part of the art fair world for many years or are artists in the community. Some are great purchasers of artwork. This was an especially strong group. Now the fun of sorting and sending back the non-accepted packets, data entry of those accepted and placing others on a wait-list (if they accept).