The craft show life. You might call it the artist's rendition of a traveling salesman.
It's set-up on Thursday, pack-up on Sunday, with selling in between. Often, there are only a few days before the next show.
"It's not an easy life, but I like it. I love it," Beckenheimer said. "The best thing about being at shows on weekends is the customers. They're like family to me."
Linda Van Trump, managing director of the Craft Organization Development Association, said she believes overall sales today are about at the same level that they were in 2000. She blames the lack of growth on the struggling economy. "The market has changed," she said. "Probably the middle end is not doing as well, but the upper end is still selling."
Still, rising gas, motel, and other costs are cutting into profits, forcing some to leave the business, she said. At the same time, "young people are not going into it as much as they used to because it's more difficult to make a living," she said.
So where does that leave people like Beckenheimer, who makes his living selling pottery?
On a beautiful Sunday morning in late summer, he talked to customers who came to his booth at the Sugarloaf Craft Festival in Manassas to admire his ikebana pots for Japanese floral arranging, mugs, vases, bowls, and other pieces of pottery. "My stuff is functional pottery," he said. "Stuff people use every day. I keep my prices reasonable and affordable."
But the crowd was small, and there was a full day to catch up on. The show hadn't opened as scheduled the day before because of heavy rain. The 150 exhibitors received vouchers to participate in another Sugarloaf show, show manager Lorrie Staley said. On average, the show charges about $525 for exhibit space.
Thousands of craft shows and fairs are held across the country each year, some high-end extravanganzas, others as simple as the church bazaar.
Carol Sauvion, co-executive producer of the PBS series "Craft in America," calls them a "coming together" matching artisans and their customers.
"It is a public expression of what is sometimes a very solitary existence," she said.
It's also big business.
