(This is a review of the Renegade Craft Fair in Austin Tx. As such, what I will be doing is expressing my opinion. I can do that. )
I went up to Austin today and a friend and I went to the Renegade Craft Fair. If you follow that link, you will see it happens in several major cities and in Austin. As they say on their About page: "RCF is held yearly in urban epicenters of creative indie-entrepreneurship." Well, that kind of describes Austin, doesn't it. But I was surprised to read this after coming home from the fair:
Each individual fair is juried from hundreds of applications to purposefully feature a curated, eclectic array of young and emergent designers producing original and handmade goods in a wide variety of media. We feature artists with a DIY (do-it-yourself) background – creating innovative work using traditional craft methods, but not based on preexisting patterns or products.
Really? Because that is not what I saw in Austin. There were many t-shirt booths, some with funny sayings, some with stamped-on designs. I saw one with a branch-like design that I liked very much. I saw two leather bag booths that were creative and interesting. My friend bought a beautiful necklace of quartz and other stones. A few of the ceramics booths had some interesting items. But my friend described most of what we saw as very commercial, in the sense that most of the items for sale were "assembled" (her term) from commercially available materials for quick sales. Lots of onesies with stamped-on designs. Finger puppets crocheted in acrylic. I did see one booth that looked like fun, in which hoodies for kids looked like characters from Where the Wild Things Are. I guess my complaint is that the fair did not seem like an event "juried from hundreds of applications to purposefully feature a curated, eclectic array of young and emergent designers producing original and handmade goods in a wide variety of media." We saw much more non-traditional, original, handmade goods at the Handweavers Guild show in Houston last fall, where my friend bought a beautiful nuno-felted stole. And at the Arts Fest during Fiesta at the Southwest School of Art, where I scored a pair of gorgeous earrings made with colored pencil on metal. Unfortunately, there was nothing renegade about the Renegade Craft Fair in Austin.
Yeah, great advertising on their part, but it sounds like poor product.
Posted by: Funny Sayings | May 22, 2011 at 10:20 PM