NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1983, No. 43, $3.50 Making ... - Wood Tools

Notes and Connnent (continued)
ready resource-the marketplace provided
by the arts festival, a well organized
nine-day event. It's become an instirution
by dint of its 30 years running,
and draws well over one million people.
I'd participated in the festival for the
last four years, but in the traditional
way-12 pieces of furniture crammed
into a 1O-ft. square. This time, in our
own large space, I invited several artists
who normally don't participate in shows.
Our group consisted of rwo woodworkers
besides myself, a blacksmith and rwo
sculptors. I chose them because of their
style-they all take risks in their work,
seeking other than standard solutions to
problems of design and strucrure. Many
pieces were mixed media, combining
metal and glass with wood.
More than 80,000 people viewed our
exhibit during its nine-day run. Although
most of the pieces had been
built on speculation and only a few of
them sold outright, all of the artists reported
considerable interest in new commissions.
JUSt as important was the
educational exposure of contemporaty
furnirure as a mode of artistic expression
to thousands of Southerners. My goal
was to show what constitutes good
woodworking, while reinforcing the fact
that fine design and craftsmanship are
affordable. The follow-up has proven
the show successful, so much so that I'm
already planning the next one. 0
Four galleries,
one dance hall
Woodworking galleries may bite the
dust with dismaying regularity, but just
as regularly new ones sprout. Four new
galleries to report on here, each one
looking for work to display, each one
worth visiting to see high-grade contemporary
pieces.
In Bethesda, Md" the craft shop Appalachiana
has opened a new department
to present wooden furnirure in a
domestic context, amid handmade tableware,
rugs and lamps. Partners Joan
Farrell and Ann Powell mean to emphasize
"living with and using" their wares,
rather than collecting them. Nineteen
furniruremakers were represented in the
spring opening, at 10400 Old Georgetown
Rd., Bethesda, Md. 20817.
New Mexico has rwo new galleries. The
Archer/Haggard Gallery of Contemporary
Woodwork opened last December
in Santa Fe, and within rwo months it
had sold
his
25 pieces. This success encouraged
woodworker James Rannefeld to
open own gallery, Palisander, in Taos
last July. Its opening show included
108
Promoters gamble
for your gold
For the San Francisco woodworking
public, and for the merchants who rented
booth space, last April's big "Working
with Wood" exposition was a great
success. But the debris was hardly swept
off Fort Mason Pier before the rwo entrepreneurs
who had come together to
organize the trade show split bitterly
apart, leaving at least $60,000 in unpaid
bills.
Among the few things on which both
sides still agree are these: producing the
show cost more money than anticipated;
all the money the show took in is long
gone� and the other guy should now
make good on the debts.
Even though one large and well-attended
woodworking show lost money,
these same rwo entrepreneurs are now
separately promoting twO competing
shows to be held in the Bay Area next
spring. The wood industry's merchants,
the professional artisans, and the woodworking
public, will now have to decide
whether rwo shows are rwice as good as
one, and if not, which 1984 show to attend,
if either.
The rwo entrepreneurs are Fred Damsen,
who owns the Woodline/Japan
Woodworker tool store in Alameda, and
Wayne Inouye, a professional show promoter
doing business as Exhibitor's
work by Californians Art Carpenter and
Sam Maloof, as well as from several regional
craftspeople. Archer/Haggard is
at 129 W. San Francisco St., Santa Fe,
N.Mex. 87501, and Palisander is at
4 Bent St., Taos, N.Mex. 8757l.
In San Francisco, a 1500-sq.-ft. showroom
in the shopper's heaven of Pier 39
begins displaying California woodwork-
At Danceteria, 'Mothra chair' by Main
and Main.
Showcase. In July of 1982, they signed
a contract saying that Damsen, as show
producer, would receive all the money
and pay all the bills, while Inouye
would promote, market and manage the
event. Their dispute turns on clauses
saying Inouye wasn't to incur debts or
major costs without Damsen's prior
consent. What actually happened isn't
likely to ever be unraveled outside of
court, but despite numerous threats,
only one of the three major creditors has
actually filed a suit.
Promoters generally try to cover hall
rental and their pre-show expenses
(mainly publicity, plus their own sales
and office costs) by selling space, for
anywhere from $200 to $700 per
booth. Then their profits and their
showtime expenses-guards, ticket-takers,.
haulers, sweepers-come out of the
gate, at $3 to $5 per person. This sort of
three-day show typically takes about six
months to promote, during which time
the magic number is percent of space
sold. Merchants don't want to be left
out of a successful show, but some
shows never do sell enough booths to
open, leaving the early-birds with nothing
but worms. At Fort Mason, about
200 booths were sold for an average
$400 each, and about 12,000 people
paid $ 3 .75 each to attend.
Damsen's Woodworker's Foundation
has now joined up with another pro-
ing this month. Planned to be more like
a furnirure store than a gallery, with
room settings that will include all manner
of crafts accessories, the as-yet nameless
showroom will stage a fearure show
every eight weeks. Ron Ashby is gallery
coordinator, and portfolios can be sent
to him at Box 43, Albion, Calif. 95410.
Danceteria, the new-wave disco in
Manhattan's West 20s, threw a rwo-day
party last July to show off work by
some of its neighbors: artists, furniruremodelers,
decoratists maybe? The show
was called "Ourhaus," and in a fashion
akin to Italian Memphis, but pierced
with Westside Punk, the place was
decked in dry-cleaner plastic, corrugated
fiberglass and dangling colored bulbs.
The furnishings, which included a neontrimmed
coffee table, an ironing-boardbacked
chair, and tar-black chainsawings
decorated in day-glow, were grouped
together in ramshackle little environments
that echoed their colors, textures
or themes. I didn't find myself going
hmmpf for more than a few minutes,
before I was taken by the colorful exuberance
of this sruff. -Rick Mastelli