5 Tips to Crush Your Superfine Experience - For Artists

Hello! My name is Joe, and I am an artist working and living in San Francisco, California. I’m writing this post for fellow artists at any stage in their practice who are thinking about participating in a Superfine Art Fair or already have a booth reserved at an upcoming fair and want to make sure they make the most of their experience.

Before you listen to anything I have to say, it’s important to know who I am so you can decide what parts of my perspective are helpful to you and which parts aren’t. I’m the guy in light blue on the right in this picture. I’m an educator, designer, and artist in my thirties, and art has always been a part of my life. It’s only in the past five years that my art practice has grown from a passion-project into a business, and I appreciate Superfine because it gives emerging artists like me a chance to exhibit in a big, exciting environment without leaping through all the hoops of finding gallery representation.

I’ll be talking about my experience with Superfine at the San Francisco fair hosted at Fort Mason. However, the tips also apply to other Superfine fairs or similar spaces, like the Other Art Fair. I also won’t be digging into any part of creating high quality work or cultivating a healthy and truthful creative practice in this post, but if you’re interested in that side of the work, I’d recommend checking out The Creative Act by Rick Rubin as a helpful place to start.

**My Superfine Timeline**

2021: Throughout the quarantine lockdown, I had been working on a collection and was starting to think about ways to get more visibility for my art. I applied to Superfine and was offered a spot, but ultimately decided I wasn’t ready for the upfront financial investment that a booth would require. Instead, I attended the fair as a guest and got the lay of the land - and purchased a print that I still love!
2022: This was my first Superfine! I had a collection of eight pieces framed and ready to show at the smallest (and least expensive) booth size available (8 linear feet). It was nerve-wracking and exciting and a whirlwind of a weekend. I ended up selling five of my originals and a number of prints, for a total of about $5,500 in sales. This was more than enough to cover my booth costs and materials, so I took it as a win. More importantly, I met a lot of collectors and fellow artists over the fair weekend that made the next year more productive and connected.

2023: I upped my booth size to 12 linear feet and brought a larger collection of twelve pieces this year. I also made a bunch of the shifts outlined below, and it made a big difference. I sold out all twelve original pieces that week plus a number of prints, making just over $15,000 in sales. I also met a lot of visitors and added about 75 people to my collector’s list over the course of the weekend, which was a major factor in the success of my collection launches later in the year.

2024: I am sticking with a 12 foot booth this year, and I’m excited to release my newest collection at Superfine SF in March!

5 Tips to Maximize Your Superfine Experience

**Marketing**

If you are investing your time and finances into an art fair, make sure people know about it! Start posting about your collection a few weeks before the opening on whatever social media platforms you use. Build the hype.
Also try to get all of your pieces up on whatever platforms you use (your website, Instagram, etc.) before opening night. That way, when people meet you at the fair and look you up later, they’ll see the pieces that caught their eye in person.
Marketing doesn’t have to mean you are spending money to promote your work, it just means that you are getting your work in front of more eyeballs. People tend to prefer things that they’ve seen before, which is why we see and hear the same commercials and branding over and over. The same is true for your art. If someone sees your art online before, during, and after the show, they are more likely to recognize it and love it.

Last but not least, use your artist guest passes! Every Superfine exhibiting artist gets a number of free passes for their fair (last I checked, it was 20). Use all of your passes. If you have an email list, send out invitations to your collectors as your VIP guests. Invite friends, family, acquaintances - anyone who has an interest in art, you, or your work. Hot tip: an hour at Superfine alongside dinner and drinks is a stellar date idea, so help your single friends out! How suave is it to be able to say, “Hey, my artist friend gave me a pair of VIP passes to this emerging artist show - be my date?”

**Setting Up Your Booth**

When it is time to set up your booth, you want to make sure your work looks like the best version of itself. Elevate it. If you’re a painter, that means you should frame your work. Framing can get expensive, but I’ve always gotten a return on investment when I frame my pieces. A cheap but presentable frame from an art store can also do wonders for elevating your work. If you are having your pieces framed by a professional, be prepared for a high price tag and long wait time (I budget 1.5 months for framing before a show) BUT they will look like a million bucks.

When mounting your pieces don’t overcrowd your work. Superfine will require a curatorial plan before the fair, and this is a helpful way to plan out your booth. If you look at your curatorial plan and think, “Is this too busy/crowded?” then the answer is probably “yes.”

You’ll want to mount your work with a wire across the back and two screws into the temporary walls that go up for the show. This makes it a bit easier to make sure your pieces are level once they’re in the spots you want them. I stick a little nubbin of frame putty on each of the bottom corners to help them stay in place once they’re hung.

Here are a few items that are great to bring with you on install day, which typically happens the Wednesday before a show opens:

Step ladder
Electric drill
1.5 inch wood screws (Note: this does not mean screws made of wood, which I *certainly* did not think the first time I saw them referenced by name ;) They are metal screws designed to drill into the wooden temporary walls each booth is made of. )
Level
Frame putty
Measuring tape
Business cards or stickers with your info
A notebook, sign-up sheet, or other way to collect emails (more on this below)
I like to have a little floating shelf to store my business cards, email sign-ups, etc. I use this one and it works well.

**Pricing**

Ok, now that your booth is set up and the word is out, let’s talk about selling your work.
Superfine is a venue for **emerging artists**, so for the most part, the people walking through the door will be **emerging collectors**. People have to pay for a ticket to get through the door (unless they have one of your VIP artist guest passes!), so most people you meet will be serious about wanting to collect art. At the same time, most people aren’t looking to drop 20k on a piece.
Generally, artwork is priced from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. I’ve sold pieces that are priced anywhere from $450 - $3,200 at the fair, with lots around the $1,000 mark.

There is a big psychological difference between a price tag with three digits than one with four digits. If you can have several pieces that are below $1,000, it will make your body of work more approachable to a wider audience.

It is also a good idea to have a range in price points. Having a wide spread of price tags based on size and time spent creating the work gives your collectors helpful context. Buying art can feel subjective and scary because it isn’t something we do every day and most of us don’t have a frame of reference for how much a large piece of art should cost. Even if most of your pieces are in the $800 - $1,000 range, it is good to have one or two big, show-stopping pieces; they might be out of the budget for most collectors, but they show your range as an artist, catch people’s attention, and add value to your more affordable pieces by showcasing your skill.

**Mindset**

Ok, your work is priced and you are ready for opening night. One of the most important things you can do to make sure you have a successful Superfine experience is to manage your mindsets. It is great to have ambitious goals in our creative careers, but if we are unrealistic in our expectations going into one art fair, we run the risk of being disappointed by what is actually a very successful experience.
First and foremost, you are here to meet people. This is all about relationships. As artists, we spend all this time thinking about and creating our work, often in isolation, and now it is time to share this precious piece of ourselves with the world. Superfine is an incredible opportunity to get hundreds, if not thousands, of eyes on your work, and you will learn so much about your work, your audience, and yourself from the reactions that people have to your work.

I am a firm believer that every single piece of art has an audience out there that will absolutely love and cherish it - you just need to help that audience find your work. When people have a reaction to your art, you will see it in their faces. Talk to those people! Learn what is resonating with them. This is a chance to get a better sense of who your audience is.

When you have a beautiful human connection with someone over your work, make sure it doesn’t end there. Many times, people will ask for you Instagram or business card to follow up after the fair, so it is a good idea to have something to hand people that has your information on it. Moo makes nice business cards, but I prefer their stickers so people can slap them on their water bottles, notebooks, and laptops and become part of your marketing team.

Even better, get people onto your email list! When you hand out a business card or sticker with your information on it, you are leaving the ball in their court. It is a much better to collect their information so that you can be the one building that connection through thoughtful emails and updates over time. I cannot emphasize enough how important building your collector email list is. The vast majority of my sales come from my email list.

Finally, keep in mind that you have a long artist career ahead of you. Take the long view and recognize that you are at this fair to build relationships and a collector base that will stick with you over time. If you end up selling some art along the way, that’s a nice bonus.

**Making Connections**

Ok, now that our mindset is oriented towards building relationships, how do we do that?
The first step is to pace yourself. Superfine is long: four days, with Saturday and Sunday clocking in at 9-10 hours. If you are an introvert like me, you’re going to have to take care of yourself in order to be at your best when meeting collectors. Before doors open, go for a walk, get a coffee, lounge in your bed - whatever will leave you feeling your best. If you’re feeling good, it will translate into more meaningful connections with collectors.
Think about how you are going to describe your work during the fair. Try to have a 30 second elevator pitch ready to rattle off when people stop by your booth, and then be ready to go into further detail if they ask deeper questions.

You don’t have to be a salesperson during the fair. You’re not trying to sell anything. You are here to get eyes on your work, so you’ve already won. If someone wants to buy a piece, that’s a decision they will make on their own. You are just giving them a window into your process, your inspiration, and why you love what you’ve created. Whether they love it is up to them.

Investing in a piece of art takes trust, so be yourself and relax the pressure to make any immediate sales. If someone is going to drop hundreds or thousands of dollars on a piece of art, they need to trust that they are still going to love this piece in a month, a year, five years… That trust might take time to build. I had multiple collectors buy pieces from me at Superfine in 2023 who had met me the previous year. They didn’t buy anything from me in 2022, but a year later, after seeing my work on their Instagram feeds and in their email inboxes for a year, they knew who I was, they knew they still liked my work, and they trusted that I had some credibility and staying power as an artist. These are the long term seeds you are planting throughout the fair.

5 Tips to Crush Your Superfine Experience - For Artists

My Superfine Timeline

5 Tips to Maximize Your Superfine Experience

Marketing

Setting Up Your Booth

Pricing

Mindset

Making Connections

Good Luck!

San Francisco, CA