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In the Press...
Making the Markets
Another Saturday, another place for art shopping
by Sue Strachan
New Orleans Magazine
March 2005The scene: the corner of Canal Street and Canal Boulevard on a Saturday afternoon. To be more precise, the fourth Saturday of the month – the official day of the Mid-City Art Market. In addition to the usual flow of traffic, both car and streetcar, a bustle of people roams the sidewalks across Canal Street from Robért Fresh Market near Mid-City’s new “Heart of the City’” sculpture. Tents are pitched, full of items for sale, as are the tables inside an adjacent building. Much like bazaars of old, this one offers a variety of goods, making it less of an official “art” market in the strictest sense of the word. Yes, there are artists, but like a bazaar, not all artists or craftsmen are of the same talent caliber.
Back in May 2002, art markets held on a regular basis did not exist in New Orleans. There were some small outlets, however: the French Market, which is a mix of tube socks, books, fake designer handbags and African sculptures; RHINO, the artists co-op in The Shops at Canal Place and on Royal Street; and the Artists’ Market, located in a building on the edge of the French Market. But there was no full-scale market dedicated to exposing emerging artists to the general public.
The Bywater Art Market
Seeing a niche, Blake Vonder Haar, the president of the New Orleans Conservation Guild, founded the Bywater Art Market, of which she is also the director. “I have a lot of friends who are artists and had no place to sell their work,” says Vonder Haar. “I also have a lot of clients who wanted to buy real art but were intimidated by the Julia Street galleries. Many times, the art was too expensive.”
Held the third Saturday of every month in Mickey Markey Park in the Bywater neighborhood, the art market attracts upward of 70 artists – to a high of 116 artists on Dec. 18, 2004. In the beginning, the market booked any artist who paid the $50 fee. Vonder Haar soon concluded that the market needed to be more selective, so now new artists are juried in. The requirements are that their work be original, composed from scratch, have a good presentation and cannot be giclée (an archival print from an original piece of art).
The point of the art market, according to Vonder Haar, is to promote artists and create a location for artists and collectors to meet. “This is a very high-quality art market with a good quality of clients, with quite a few who can spend $2,000 to $3,000 on a painting,” says Vonder Haar. Since starting the art market, many of the featured artists have been able to quit their day jobs and pursue art full-time. Others, such as painter Philip Thompson (a retired anthropologist), are now getting recognition.
Like the Mid-City Art Market, the artists line up under white tents to display their wares. Thompson’s work, almost Charles Willson Peale in style, is a stand-out. Other noted work is from ceramicist Craig McMillin (gravity-defying teapots) and photography by Christopher Porché West. There are also the eccentricities such as Eggstra Special Gifts, which are mostly ostrich eggs turned into Faberge-like jewels.
And, as with all the art markets, there are the inevitable bead jewelry artists. Vonder Haar has managed to weed out the amateurs, which proliferate at the Mid-City Art Market.
Mid-City Art Market
It is these people “who create beaded jewelry in their spare time so they can have extra money to go shopping,” that offends one artist who has exhibited at the Bywater and Mid-City markets. And the large amount of jewelry “designers” is a problem at the Mid-City Art Market. So much so that I almost swept by one, Rachel Adamiak, whose jewelry definitely deserved a second glance.
While the Bywater venture is more of an art market, the Mid-City location is more like an arts-and-crafts fair. There are serious artists who exhibit, but the difference between the artist and the hobbyist appears vast. It can be charming to have both, but after you have been to the market more than once, passing by another booth of photographs of cemeteries, Jackson Square and Garden District homes, you begin to wonder who is minding the quality. This may soon change, as the Mid-City market established a jury system for entry, mainly due to the high demand.
Mid-City does have one thing Bywater and the other regular art market – ArtEgg ArtMart – do not: A good location. And as the famous adage about real estate says, it’s all about “location, location, location” and Mid-City has it, making it a huge success.
ArtEgg Art Mart
ArtEgg, on the other hand, is located in a warehouse off South Broad Street. Sort of. After two visits, I still wouldn’t be able to give directions to it. Being out of the way has made it difficult for ArtEgg, which is the second Saturday of the month, to take off. Both times I visited, the artists were a small but an interesting mix, with painter Anne Jenkins; Sinan Atilla, who does Turkish Meerschaum carvings; and a woman who knits wonderfully. The atmosphere, however, needs to be cheered up a bit. An old warehouse is still an old warehouse, with low lighting, gloomy gray walls and a musty air that seems to have been in there since the 1950s. And finding an artist is like winding your way through a maze. My favorite part about the ArtEgg? No bead jewelry.