Cat in a Hot Tin Booth

New rule; from now on, the phrase “nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof” will be replaced by the phrase “nervous as an artist in a hot craft booth”.  Full of kids who grab and push and don’t listen to you or their parents.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Saint Louis Art Fair, Day 2: Invasion of the Robot Snatchers.  As you may notice in the above picture, we have a fatal flaw in the booth display that worked so well for us in Philadelphia.  In Philly, a) the floor was completely level, and b) there were no children allowed in the show.  The street is actually on a slope and fairly uneven, though it doesn’t really show in the photo.  And on Saturday and Sunday, everyone at the fair brought their kids.  We met many lovely, well behaved children this weekend, who expressed their delight in the Fobots and asked charming questions.  I could kiss each and every one of them. 

And then there were the unsupervised hellions who tried to grab everything within reach, pull themselves up onto the pedestals, and twist the robots’ arms in unnatural directions.  I can’t really blame them.  The art at this fair was uniformly SPECTACULAR, but most had little appeal to kids.  Sadly, the robots did appeal to them.  And I hope there is a special hell for parents who don’t want to stifle their babies pwecious cweativity by actually supervising them, or telling them not to touch.  So I spent three days in a constant, jumpy, adrenalized state, ready to leap forward at any second to catch a falling robot.

And amazingly, though several hit the pavement, only one of the sturdy little creatures (and I’m referring to the Fobots here, not the kids) broke.  And that was only because  Beelzebot had porcelain faucet cover feet.  And the culprit here was not a kid, but a woman with a large handbag who not only knocked him over, but spilled her red wine all over Phil’s lab coat in the process, went to get him some paper towels, gave them to him, and then split without even offering to pay for the dry cleaning, let alone the repairs or–god forbid–the robot. 

OK, enough bitching.  In spite of my constant state of anxiety, the backbreaking labor, the dehydration, and the long drive, we had a great show,  made a lot of money, and are already planning our new display and future shows.  I’ll wrap this all up in a later post.  But for now, the adrenalin is finally wearing off, and I hope to sleep for a few hours in a row without dreaming that I’m lunging for a wobbly pedestal or smacking some undisciplined child on the ass.  And by ass, I mean it’s parents.