Taking notes from the symbiotic relationships between all living things, we want to help BIPOC artists cross pollinate with others and build stronger connections and relationships within Western North Carolina - not just with other artists, but businesses and organizations, too - because we are all connected.
Caravan Art Bazaar is focused on empowering, supporting, and uplifting BIPOC artists in WNC.
Designed to be a Collective, Caravan Art Bazaar is an experimental program launched in 2023 by Mike Talyad of Jungle Branch, who has been organizing art events and markets in the Asheville and Chicago regions since 2016.
Selling enough of your work just to cover studio rent and commission fees is bullshit, and we all know it.
By creating and joining spaces to share and sell art, and by building a community network for artists that doubles as a marketing platform for all artists involved, CAB seeks to flip the script on todays art industry culture, which largely overlooks and undervalues BIPOC artists. What’s more, the industry standards of market fees, studio rentals, consignment fees, and so on all help perpetuate the “starving artist” issues that many folks continue to struggle with - not just those of BIPOC. Selling enough of your work just to cover studio rent and commission fees is bullshit and we all know it.
Not everyone has the time, energy, money, or enough inventory to join a market as a solo vendor, which is a big part of why Caravan Art Bazaar grew into what it is today. CAB features the works of several artists in it’s vendor booth for folks who can’t join in person, taking no percent of their sales, and directing customers to pay the artists through each artists preferred online method of payment.
We lovingly call these folks Ghost Artists,
while calling those who join our booths in person Guest Artists.
Our website & Instagram both act as community networks and marketing platforms for all CAB Artists. In addition to this, the ability to join markets and sell artwork in the CAB Tent or brick & mortar locations that donate merchandise space all help CAB Artists achieve more opportunities to earn income from doing what they love, and more - more importantly - more time to create what they love; ART.
Not an artist but
want to support?
Caravan Art Bazaar is thus far fully volunteer operated.
If you’d like to volunteer with set up on market days, or support us via donation of market equipment or financial aid, please reach out to us! Anything helps as we are currently in the beginning stages of a dream whose reality is quickly growing.
Thus far we’ve been able to maintain a platform and relationships that have allowed us to set up in markets without fees to the artists and we’d love to keep it that way, though it’s possible we may need to incorporate a cheap and/or sliding scale annual membership fee. For now, we’re focused on a handful of upcoming markets and finishing things like our website.
Behind the scenes tasks such as marketing, working market booths, connecting with all the Artists and so forth takes a lot of time and work, all of which has been volunteer based. But as we grow, so does the work load.
With your support, we can keep doing what we’re doing and let all the Artists keep doing what they love: ART!
