A booth is NEVER done

by Loretta Fontaine

esterday I gave away the metal joints from my very first canopy. The canopy poles had long been bent and discarded — victims of a show with torrential overnight rainstorms. The joints had sat in a faded duffel bag in my garage for years. Then I found someone whose husband had accidentally thrown away her canopy joints and she had only the poles. She had saved her poles for years. So now, under fortunate circumstances, a canopy will be reborn from disparate parts.

Illustration by Dave Fontaine

I remember setting up that first canopy 15 years ago. It was in the postage-stamp-sized backyard of a rented two-family home in Buffalo. Previously, I had just rented a table at indoor shows and this set-up was my big $125 investment — a real canopy to join the “big leagues.” As I followed the instructions, set out the poles and secured them into the joints, the canopy rose loftily into the air. That day, years ago, was a carefree sunny summer day. As I sat in the grass looking up at the bright white ceiling of the enclosure, I felt 10 feet by 10 feet held so many possibilities that I couldn’t wait to fill.

Today, after sitting in 10x10-foot spaces for more hours than I want to recall, my relationship with those dimensions is mixed. There’s a thrill to be able to design and build your own little “shop” in 100 square feet. But as my booth has grown more complex over the years, so has the time required in setting it up.

I’m the first to admit that setting up and dismantling a booth is one of my least favorite jobs as an artist. The clanging ringing of metal on metal as a show’s worth of booths is assembled is a symphony I can’t wait to end.

Once fully set up, my 10x10 booth can be a great home if the show goes well. Still, you’re confined to that space and at the mercy of your surroundings. Surroundings can include extreme temperatures, howling windstorms, or a guy next to you repeating the same crass sales pitch to every passerby. And if a show is slow, I often stare at the walls and wonder how I’m going to “improve” my booth.

If you’ve ever been to a standard business convention, the booths seem cookie cutter. They all seem to be wheeled around in handy luggage-sized containers and popped open with pre-printed graphics. But artists’ booths … Well, let’s just say that one day in years past someone decided to improve on the plywood-on-a-sawhorse table idea and built something fabulous. And we all had to follow!

For the last outdoor show, as I was feverishly trying to get ready, my husband remarked that one of the reasons I always am feverishly trying to get ready is because I’m always changing my booth! And he’s right. I figure my booth will never be done. There’s always something that needs “perfecting” and, once improved, I’ll completely redesign everything again. So for the next show maybe my cases will lock, maybe I’ll rig up new lighting and maybe I’ll do something about the front-and-center hole in the middle of the booth skirt.

All this angst over achieving booth nirvana is worth it — I think our artistic efforts are appreciated. Unlike bland business conventions, when artists set up their spaces the circus has come to town. Yes, our work draws the crowds, but the booths that are the background to that work are equally wonderful. Wildly colorful booths, sophisticated urbane booths, booths with spunk and wit and booths with Zen-like calm.

I’d been saving those canopy joints for years because in the back of my mind I hoped to find a young artist on a tight budget. He or she could use them to set up a cheap first canopy to enter a brave new world.

Today I got an e-mail telling me the joints would go toward reconstructing the canopy frame in a backyard to make a vine-covered gazebo. The new owner already has a top-of-the-line Craft Hut for shows. But that’s okay … 10 feet by 10 feet is the perfect size to put up one’s feet under and rest. It’s a fitting canopy retirement.