I grew up with two street artists as my parents. Summer weekends were often spent in a park or on a street in and around the San Francisco Bay Area selling art in various street art shows. During that time individual crafts people were on their own to design and build booths to not only display their work, but easily fit into a trailer or Volkswagen van to cart it from fair to fair. With the invention of the inexpensive pop-tent awning, it has become much easier to throw an entire booth in the back of your car and easily erect it anywhere. This has had the added effect of creating fairs and festivals that have a uniformed and similar look. A sea of white tent tops against a green backdrop has become the signature look of most art shows and festivals. Although handy, it does mean that one fair looks very much like any other.
A Renaissance Faire is actually attempting to do the very opposite of this. Uniformity is a byproduct of a post-industrial world. Right angles, synthetic materials, and PVC pipe are conveniences that just were not available to craftsman of the 16th century. Imagine any movie depiction you have seen of a medieval or Elizabethan village and you will see a meditation on asymmetry and earth tones. Booths in the past were sturdy affairs, covered with materials heavy enough to keep weather off their wares, and definitely sported no vinyl banners or signs. The only concession we will make with our period booths is the introduction of a more vibrant, but not exactly non-period color palette.
WHY DO IT?
This is a good question, and one to think about before you jump into the deep end by participating in a Renaissance Faire. Traditional crafts fairs are a known entity, and they are relatively inexpensive to participate in. Apart from your entry fee and a potential percentage of sales, you arrive with your white tent and wares and are ready to go. Renaissance Faires make many more demands on your time and money. Booths are never standard, and demands on what you wear, how you speak, and how you spend your weekends before opening are many. For this expense there is no guarantee that you will necessarily break even… so why do it? Well, having been a craftsperson I can tell you that there is nothing quite like the larger community that participates in such Faires. You aren’t just appearing at a venue, but being adopted into an extended family. Your booth, apart from being the place where you sell your products, is a private living room facing the biggest party of the year. While seeing to your customers, you are also host to your own friends and acquaintances as you invite them behind your counter or into you “Hooch” (back room). Time at a Faire ebbs and flows with each hour bringing festivities, parades, and just plain silliness that are as distinct from each other as the seasons in a year. What is happening is bigger then any one participant, and the love for it gets into your blood, and once infected you find your year is in a state of anticipation of the Faire’s arrival or dread that it will soon be over. Faires change the people who take part in them, this has some participants living the life of a gypsy as they travel all over the country doing what many call “the Faire Circuit”. It is far from an easy, or necessarily financially rewarding life, but damn it if it isn’t food for the soul. If this sounds like too much work, you are right it is, but what things worth having aren’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment