Holiday Art Sale Brings Valuable Experience to UA Little Rock Artists
What does it take to run a fun, successful, and well-attended holiday art sale?
After the COVID-19 pandemic shut down UA Little Rock’s annual art sale for a couple of years, this was the question facing Andrea “AnDi” Tompkins, art outreach specialist for the School of Art and Design. Luckily, Tompkins organized art sales at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts for 12 years and was ready to take up the challenge for the university.
“This year’s success of the Open House and Holiday Art Sale is a testament to the way people feel about visual arts in the community,” Tompkins said. “They enjoy supporting the students, local artists, and the school. This year we put more of a focus on decorating, marketing, and preparing the students to present their work in a professional and positive environment.”
The 2023 event was held Friday and Saturday, Nov. 10-11, at the Windgate Center of Art and Design. Nov. 10 featured an open house where visitors could tour the Windgate Center of Art and Design, view art demonstrations, art history lectures, and enjoy a reception with cookies and cocoa. Altogether, this year’s event featured more than 70 artists and had close to 700 visitors during the two-day event!
“The holiday sale is a wonderful opportunity to teach our students how to price, present, and sell their artwork, and it’s also a lot of fun,” said Joli Livaudais, interim director of the School of Art and Design. “This year’s sale was a grand event. It was wonderful to see so many people supporting our community of artists, and it definitely got the holiday spirit ignited in the School of Art and Design!”
To help prepare students for the experience of selling their art professionally, the School of Art and Design held a mandatory meeting for all artists participating in the event. Artists learned about table presentation, customer service, sales tax collection, marketing, and revenue collection.
“We wanted our students to have a lot of engagement with their customers,” Tompkins said. “We told them not to use their phones unless it was for a transaction. They are learning how to present themselves and their work in a professional manner. These are all important things they need to know how to do as professional artists.”
Drawing Instructor Robert Bean, who teaches the capstone Professional Practices course and saw many of his students participate in the sale, was grateful that his students had the opportunity to participate in mandatory meetings to help prepare them for the sale.
“For many of them, this was their first time to deal with sales tax,” Bean said. “I’d much rather have them learn that in a supportive school environment than have them figure it out on their own after graduation while also trying to be professional with an exhibition or some other form of financial exchange. What really made me happy to see, however, was just how well the students responded to the opportunity to share and sell their work to the public. They didn’t shy away from the chance, and they listened, learned, and rose to the challenge of being professional with all the guests and visitors.”
UA Little Rock student artist Kristi Pruett said she was thrilled to be a part of the holiday art sale and plans to return as an alumnus.
“Switching the event to Friday and Saturday was perfect, and the open house really worked to bring in an audience,” Pruett said. “Also, having a greeter at the door was really helpful in directing people around the building and making them comfortable in a space that they are unfamiliar with. It makes it a much more personable experience.”
Professor Emeritus of Art Michael Warrick, who is a longtime participant in the holiday art sale, commented that the “sale was very good this year.”
“Robert Bean and Andrea Tompkins did a great service in helping students learn about the art marketplace, how to be better organized, and how to approach it professionally,” Warrick said.
A unique aspect of UA Little Rock’s holiday art sale is that the event is completely free for vendors, meaning all sales go straight to the artists.
“The artists do not have to pay a table fee, and we do not take a commission on sales,” Tompkins said. “Admission and parking is also free. All the money that the artists make goes back to them, which is a little unheard of when you have a sale like this. We are a school just trying to teach our art students about professional practice standards.”
