SOUTHERN ILLINOIS ARTS & CRAFTS MARKETPLACE; MARKETPLACE BENEFITS SOME, NOT OTHERS

The Southern Illinois Arts & Crafts Marketplace gets mixed reviews from artists whose work is sold there.

Fine artists Victor and Helen DeGraff of Cobden, Ill., say the facility along the interstate is set up more for selling crafts.

"People stop by and look, and they're more inclined to buy something they can pick up and carry away in the form of a craft item," Victor DeGraff said.

He does sand painting and his wife paints watercolors. They have more success selling their work at open art shows in Chicago, Bloomington and Normal.

He also sells his paintings through a gallery in Prescott, Ariz., and another in North Carolina.

But DeGraff supports the overall idea of the marketplace. "Anything the state can do to promote the arts is helpful," he said.

Cobden woodworker Tom Sather has had the opposite experience. His work is high-end, including tables that sell for $330 to $550 and jewelry boxes that sell for $35 to $250.

"They not only sell my works, they're good because I get referrals," he said.

He currently is at work on a table for a Springfield, Ill., couple who saw his work at the marketplace.

He said he has sold six tables and two dozen jewelry boxes since his work was juried into the marketplace a year and a half ago. "They're one of several outlets I use."

He disagrees with the notion the marketplace is more oriented toward selling low-priced crafts. "They don't sell kitchen art," he said.

And he says the 50-50 artist/marketplace split is the same as any retailer charges. "I essentially sell to them wholesale," he said.

The marketplace has not been a boon to Anna weaver Mary Zang. She makes vests, jackets, shawls and other functional clothing, and can't afford to have them sitting at the marketplace on consignment when she could be selling them at weekend arts and crafts shows herself.

"If I could have supplied them with more variety they probably could have sold better," she said.

The percentage the marketplace takes also creates a dilemma for a small crafts person trying to survive on the sales of her work.

Paying a high percentage forces her to raise her prices at the marketplace, she says. Otherwise, she said, "On a $100 piece I'd be making a 10 percent profit."

The marketplace also gets another cut from the artists. If people call Zang because they saw her work at the marketplace, she is supposed to give the gallery 25 percent of the purchase price, she said.

Roberta Elliott, a blacksmith who lives in Cobden, sells hooks, dinner bells, candelabra and iron tables through the marketplace. She likes its performance on her behalf.

"I get a check every month. I couldn't retire on it or rely on it, but I'm satisfied with what they're doing."

She said the marketplace videotaped her working so their staff would better understand what she does.

Elliott thinks the 50 percent cut is justified by the marketplace's overhead and the quality of the work it does.

"The facility is the best as close as St. Louis," she said, "and the staff is fully available to us."

Most of those who buy at the marketplace are tourists who perhaps aren't prepared for high-end purchases, she said. "But they're really working hard on promoting the marketplace to local people so they'll go there to buy their gifts."

Another Cobden artist, photographer Keith Cotton, has not displayed his work at the marketplace since switching from landscape to people photography. "What people want is rural landscape photography," he said.

"...People coming from Chicago is really their target. They wand to take it back and say it was handcrafted in Southern Illinois. People aren't going to make an appointment with me and do a sitting," he said.

"My customer base if pretty local."