This years Sedona Plein Air Invitational was good but not great. I think the Sedona Art Center does a great job with most of their organization, but a couple of tweaks to the show could make it great. The paintability of the area is of course amazing. Oak Creek, the Red Rocks, Dry washes, and Jerome, it all will blow your mind. The sales and attendance are both down for the opening night gala which is not good for a show. I think that this is a result of some shortsighted vision in the powers that be.
The following tweak will revive the festival in my opinion. The Art Center currently charges 100.00 to attend the “Wine and Art Lovers Gala.” By my calculations this makes the Center 10000.00 dollars free and clear with a hundred guests which is about what they had or so. I think there were about 10 sales of the evening or so with an average tag of say 1000.00. The split is 60/40 to the artist. That means the Art Center only cleared 14,000.00 for the night. With all of the wine and food donated they probably actually made about that much, minus any advertising or so forth. Now here comes the tweak. Let the 100.00 for the ticket go towards a painting on the wall. This way a couple has 200.00 invested in something. My theory is that almost nobody will leave without a painting. At over 100 paintings from 27 artists I think the Center could have made more like 50-80,000 that opening night. That’s my two cents and I’m Sticking to it.
Feel free to comment.
That being said, I still love the Art Center and hope to continue coming to Sedona and Teaching and Painting.
Below is the body of work for the Event.
