LIFE IS LIKE A RIVER
Sometimes life presents unexpected options to you. If you follow the options, great learning adventures can occur. That's what happened with my trip to Surtex/National Stationery Show (NSS) in NYC.
I first learned about Surtex at a presentation about selling & licensing art & design at MassArt (see my blog post http://askdesign2.blogspot.com/2009/05/selling-licensing-art-design.html). I had heard about the NSS, but not Surtex, which is odd considering that Surtex is THE premier design show in the U.S., and all artists and designers should be told about it! At the end of the presentation, it was announced that MassArt was taking a group of graduating painting & illustration majors to Surtex. There was room on the bus for alumni to come along. Register with Career Services if you were interested. The very next day, I registered!
On May 18, we gathered at MassArt. The bus left at 6:30 am. I am not a morning person. This was an early wake-up for me. I chatted with a few people, met Jeanne (fabric artist/printmaker who sat next to me) and Heather (painter), closed my eyes, and slept most of the way. We got to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center around 11 am.
SIZE AND SCOPE
Our entry badge (labeled "Student") got us into 3 shows: Surtex, NSS, and the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. There was a fourth show opening the next day that I would have enjoyed seeing: The Supply Side. Perhaps next year.
Hearing about the shows is one thing. Attending them is quite another. The size and scope was beyond anything I had imagined. Surtex = 300 exhibitors attracting more then 6,000 buyers & licensees; NSS = 1,000 companies featuring more then 10,000 product lines. The energy was amazing.
These numbers were impressive to me, yet we were told that the shows' exhibitors were only half the number they used to be. NSS used to take up an entire floor. Attendance was also down. The directory was slimmer. For an interesting view on the history of Surtex, check out Carol Eldrige's blog: http://caroleldridge.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/05/reflections-on.html
I really didn't understand exactly what Surtex was and how it differed from the NSS until I attended the shows. To clarify: Surtex is a marketplace for showcasing and licensing original art and design. The NSS is where manufacturers/distributors exhibit their new products for retailers who come to order merchandise for their stores.
WALKING THE FLOOR
I was told to wear comfortable shoes, and I'm glad I did! A few days prior to the trip, I had scoped out the exhibit maps online and found where the coffee was. That was my first stop! Coffee in hand, I started "walking the floor" at Surtex with Jeanne and Heather, but we gradually went our own ways and did things at our own pace. The "Student" badge generated a lot of inquiries from exhibitors who wanted to know what school I attended; I had fun with it and stopped to talk with many people about their booths, artwork, and experiences. I was impressed with and thankful for the exhibitors' generosity of sharing.
There were 3 genres of exhibitors: artists, art reps, and licensees. The art was mostly commercial and decorative, with some fine art mixed in: patterns, textures, florals, landscapes, animals, people, ethnic, cultural, and holiday themes. The booths that I found most attractive and effective were those that had large printouts of the art, displayed neatly and cleanly on the walls. The booths that had many small samples were very distracting and busy. Artists would often display mock-ups of products that their work could be applied to, which included every imaginable product: giftwrap, wallpaper, apparel, floor coverings, linens, towels, furnishings, stationery, notecards, packaging, and publishing.
It was all very inspiring and stimulating!
My wandering through Surtex took at least 3 hours. While eating lunch, I had a lovely conversation with an artist from Oregon. She brought samples of her notecards, which had hand-cut renderings of leaves on beautiful textured paper. I showed her my notecards, too, offset-printed with my pastel landscapes. We happened to be sharing a table with an art buyer who overheard some of our discussion, gave me her biz card, and invited me to submit my art to her company! That was an unexpected surprise.
The afternoon notes on Surtex will be posted soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment