Oakhurst Arts & Music Festival 2009 Review

Kim Wolfe in the 2009 Oakhurst Arts & Music Festival

So let me clarify how I am going to review the 2009 Oakhurst Arts and Music Festival. My review is based on being an artist in the artist market of this festival, not a consumer or local resident.  I was not able to  walk around much to check out all of the festivities as I was busy working my own space for Absolutely Right Brain. So my opinions are based on a vendor perspective and being an artist participant in the artist market.

If I had to rate this festival on a scale from 1 – 10 with 10 representing “the best festival to ever be in” and 1 representing “don’t do it, waste of your money”, I would have to give the 2009 Oakhurst Arts and Music Festival a 6.  There were some glitches and some triumphs and highlights in my overall work day.

One downfall I experienced was the lack of communication on collateral of where we were supposed to enter into the festival. Granted Oakhurst is NOT a huge place and this was my first time participating in this festival. This festival and all Oakhurst festivals are in Harmony Park located at the corner of East Lake Drive and Oakview Road. I knew this as it was obviously stated on all materials including the hand drawn copied map. So when I arrived at the stated intersection, parts of the intersection were blocked off by local police because of the 5K run that had apparently begun. With the police, there were no visible Oakhurst volunteers around to help guide us. We, myself and my helper for the day, could see the general area of where we were supposed to be but could not figure out how we were to enter. After we had turned around,  we slowed down and asked one of the police officers. He looked a little puzzled and then pointed and said, “just go into that parking lot and take a right”. Not really sure what that meant, we turned around again and followed his instruction. We entered into the parking lot and attempted to take “that right”  but there were cars and trucks coming out of  “that right”. I even pulled over and got out of my vehicle to go ask and no volunteers seemed to be around at that moment. Still puzzled, we eventually were able to enter into “that right”  as vehicles seemed to be entering and exiting out of this same entrance which happened to be Mead Road. To sum this up, we ended up spending about 25+ overall minutes by the time we got there and finally figured out where my tent was. We ended up taking Mead Road all the way down away from the festival to E. Collage Road (Close to Downtown Decatur) and turning onto Oakview Road from E. Collage Road to eventually find another entrance with a volunteer who guided us to where we needed to be. We were both a bit frazzled at this point as we didn’t expect the entry to be that difficult. Specific directions on our collateral would have been helpful to avoid this situation. If I missed this detail somewhere, please educate me!

2009 Oakhurst Arts and Music Festival Artist Review

The second downfall was my particular location. I wasn’t in the best of the location however, not all artist would say the same. As you can see by the map above, I was in booth # 33 which was quite far from and pointed away from the center of activities which is indicated with the reddish-orangish triangle shape. I remember taking a break to go to the bathroom and I thought, “There are alot of people here!”. I never thought that from judging by the traffic in front of my tent. The location of our row was like a back alley. My view was a strip of retail about 10′ ahead. There was enough room for 1 row of vehicles to load and unload our tents but that was about it. I think the only reason some people actually discovered us was because some of the retail including including Saba and Matador Mexican Restaurants. The overall traffic flow in front of our row of tents seemed to be slow and kind of sparse.

Now away from the negative glitches and on to the positive highlights. First, I was able to make back the money I invested into the show with the tent fee, artwork supplies, etc and was able to profit about $100. Secondly, the festival volunteers were very friendly and helpful when they were around which was really all the festival with the exception of the morning entry part. When I was setting up my tent before the festival, a volunteer actually came to me and asked if I had received my check in packet. Since we were behind our schedule on setting up, I forgot to go do that and wasn’t sure where the check in pavilion was anyway. This volunteer was extremely nice and went personally to check me in and hand delivered my packet to me at my tent. At one point, I was manning the booth myself and needed to go to the bathroom. I flagged a volunteer down and within seconds, I had someone manning my booth and I was free to go relieve myself! Thirdly, I made a good a contact for possible future retail store showing of my works.

So all in all, this festival was a good experience and good exposure! I certainly could have done without the entry complications first thing in the morning but I’m probably asking too much to have an event go absolutely perfect!