Art West Art Fest - Interesting Finish

My experience as a participating artist in the Out West Art Fest had a great first two days and a very interesting third day. Saturday, day two, was another beautiful day as the predicted rain was moved to Saturday night as opposed to arriving in the afternoon. There were great crowds and I had another profitable day selling some giclee prints and notecards. As the day progressed the artists became ever more diligent about keeping tabs on the weather reports. To be on the safe side most of the artists decided to take their art home for the night. My tent partner and I both decided to take all of our art home for the night. We added extra weights to the tent with concrete blocks and 25 pound barbell weights. We were in a short row of three tents across from the food tents. As an extra precaution we tied the three tents together. We all left for home hoping the storms would pass us by.

I woke up to rain Sunday morning and it wasn't long before the phone rang. A friend who was also participating in the art fair and lived close to the location had driven up to check her tent after the night of storms. She called to let me know that our tent top had been peeled back by the wind and the interior was soaked. According to the news reports later in the day a microburst hit Cave Creek. We actually fared better than many of the artists. There was substantial damage to many of the tents as you can see from the pictures above. Our tent nor panels were damaged......just totally soaked by the 3/4 inch of rain that fell in the area. We could not hang our art on the wet panels as it would destroy our artwork.....so like a good number of the other artists we packed up our tent and panels and gave it up. I did not get a picture of our tent as my partner and several helpful people already had the tent disassembled by the time I arrived.

Oh well.....the first two days were great! I guess this is what you have to be ready for in the art fair business!