i was reading the "review" of the brooklyn flea market in the sunday style section, and i was bothered by how much criticism the crafter's received. i think it was a little bit unfair. the overall tone of the article was pretty positive, until the remarks about too many crafters being present. critics argued there was too many crafts and not enough junk, and quote the flea market organizer as saying "I think the criticisms came from people who felt the balance tipped too much toward crafty people."
they did spend a good deal of the article on a vendor who gave up teaching in order to sell ceramics, and came as far as indiana for the flea. i think it's great the flea market has a lot of variety of sellers from all over, but i also feel it is important to support locals. it's so difficult to be an artist or crafter in the city these days and there are so few forums for getting your work out locally to a lot of people. a flea market should have a lot of "junk", one of the terrific things it does is to encourage people to buy beautiful, useful, interesting, and weird things already in existence. things that would end up in the trash while we simply buy more and more to replace it. however, if we are going to fight mass consumption and homogenization wouldn't also be great to support local, handmade, one of a kind items that are produced on a small scale with care and attention. plus, it was the first week... give them a break.
obviously this is coming form a crafter, so take it as you will:)
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