Norcross ArtFest

I had an art festival to work up in Norcross, GA. The plans were made well in advance of my sudden divorce and relocation back to sunny Florida, so I packed up the trailer, gassed up the truck and headed out with a few sad memories and hopeful dreams that I would make enough money to have made the trip worthwhile. It's a little over six hours from Palm Coast to Norcross.

A lot of mixed emotions went in to this trip. I was trying out a new way of displaying my art using pegboard, the tent was different than the one I had used for two years before, and the set-up was at 5 a.m. on the Saturday of the show. Seasoned festival workers may have scoffed at my anxiousness. but I certainly wasn't. 

Set-up, for those of you that aren't trying to make your living selling your wares at festivals, can be a grueling process. When I first started doing them, it was much more complicated, with little metal thingies that held massively heavy pieces of metal grid together, and it took about two hours to get everything up and ready for art. Plus, the grid had large openings, which meant the art hung on large s-hooks, and it was hard to get the small canvases to hang, much less straight. Not to mention the tent had a couple of broken braces, which required duct tape and prayers. Oh, and the desk that I used to keep all the wrapping paper and bags was one of the heaviest beasts on the planet and even though it had wheels, it was way too heavy for this girl to get on and off the trailer. There were several arguments and hurt feelings and something had to give.

Now, the grid has been reduced to only the corners, and that's more for structural stability more than anything else. I can use my metal shelves to keep the tent square, and it holds my birdhouses really well. I bought pegboard and cable tie it to the sides of the grid, and it works p-e-r-f-e-c-t-l-y. Plus, the new tent – well, I don't know whether it's because it's a different model, but it goes up so easy, I could practically do it myself. I never thought I'd say that setting up a festival tent was a piece of cake, but it was.

Lots of people, lots of really great stuff  but the money wasn't coming out of the wallets as readily as it did a couple of years ago. I still made enough to get the truck fixed, which needed a tune-up badly, as well as plug wires and an oil change. I recouped the cost of the gas to get there, and the booth fee. Oh, and I paid the storage on the trailer for another month. Baby steps...

Norcross is absolutely gorgeous, and I fell in love with the town. My daughter was born at Northside Hospital in Gwinnett County, and I used to live In Norcross, so it was nice to see how revitalized the town had become. Fall was beginning, and there were pumpkins everywhere. The leaves on the trees were starting to show color, and it just made everything feel better. One thing I will miss about relocating back to Florida are the change of seasons.