Business & Tech

2nd Saturday Art Fair to Shut Down at Year's End

Requiring artists to buy a yearly business license for showing their work once or twice a year is discouraging participation to the point where the show has gone stale, says the organizer.

This is the last year for the city’s Second Saturday Art Fair, said organizer Randi Peshkin.

“I can't run the show below critical mass, it needs to be able to pay its bills,” Randi Peskin, who voluntarily has been running the street art fair since 2007, told Patch. It is sponsored by the San Juan Capistrano Chamber of Commerce.

The problems began when the city started charging the artists a yearly fee just to show at the fair, even if they showed only once or twice a year, Peshkin said. Since then, artist participation has been dwindling.

“In 2011 I lost two-thirds of my roster as artists, who only did one or two shows a season, opted not to purchase a business license,” Peshkin said. “By last year, I had less than 100 artists participating. This year it's less than 50 who renewed their business license.”

And so, she’s decided not to continue into 2014. “With no new blood the show becomes always the same and patrons stop coming,” she said.

Two local residents came before city councilmembers Tuesday night to ask them for a solution.

Jan Siegel, a member of the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission, said the art fair brings much-needed traffic into town, especially at a time when the Ortega Highway interchange project is not very inviting.

“You can talk to a lot of restaurants in town. They do very well on the second Saturday with the air fair,” Siegel said.

Nancy Ingham, Miss. Fiesta for the Swallows Day events in 2012, said the way the city charges for its business fees “not fair. It’s not ethical,and it’s not being business friendly.”

City Manager Karen Brust said that the city is examining all its fees and will come back to the council in July with recommendations.

Peshkin said that may not be fast enough. In a letter to the city and the chamber, she wrote:

Having now fallen way below our survivability threshold, I see no hope for the future of the SSAF.

The show is barely able to pay its bills due to low participation. I will continue to schedule shows through Dec 2013, however I will not be seeking a permit renewal for 2014.


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