Thanks for all the well-wishes everyone! I just wanted to talk a little bit about exactly what our direction is. Just to be clear, this is not a one-off. The plan is to produce events of all different sorts. Life Is Art, Inc. is incorporated as a Florida non-profit corporation and we are in the process of applying for our 501(c)3 charitable organization designation, though we do not need that to proceed, only if we want to take donations and offer tax write-offs for them (which we do not do at this time).
The idea is to organize regular events to promote the arts community in Miami. In addition, we plan to create an arts incubator that will include seminars, coaching, and networking to help train artists how to make a living out of their art. Things like how to read a contract, how not to get screwed by unscrupulous dealers, how to do a spreadsheet, how to market yourself, all that kind of stuff *other* than actually making art.
And understand, we define art in a broad sense, not just visual arts. We will include music, fashion, dance, and even culinary arts. Every event will be a combination of some of those aspects. We plan on doing a wide variety of events, from small single-artist lounge shows, to big, multi-artist art fairs.
This particular fair is primarily just to get the ball rolling. We expect a good crowd, but do not expect to make any money from it, ourselves. We do expect the artists to. We charged no fee for the artists to apply (most fairs do), we are only charging them a small sales commission, and we charged our sponsors very little. Why? Because, after nearly 20 years experience in business, I am a very big proponent of what is called sampling. You give away a little at first to show people the quality of your product so they are willing to pay for it later.
Note that everyone working in this is a volunteer right now. Obviously, that will change as the business progresses, but we have had many people put forth their time and talent because they believe in the goal. Again, thank you to everyone who is supporting.
