The City of Bridgeport put on an amazing event on Saturday, July 7, 2012 in Downtown Bridgeport, CT at the McLevy Green Park to showcase local artists and performers and their talents, abilities, and work. The Bridgeport Arts Fest was in its 3rd year this year and had over 100 vendors and the largest turn out from the local community ever. We actually JUST made the deadline to submit our vendor’s application and we’re so thankful we did because the experience was amazing and extremely beneficial for us as a company.

This was our first exhibition and boy did he have to learn a lot fast! We barely got any sleep the night before because we were still editing the website and creating flyers (never wait until the last minute to do ANYTHING; lesson learned) so we started the day off tired…actually sleepy would be a better word.

We arrived at the event early enough (2 hours before the event started at 10AM which means 8AM which means we were up at 6AM) and had 2 SUVs worth of paintings and equipment to set up. However somehow we weren’t even almost done setting up when one of the festival’s attendants came over and kindly said, “We’re starting in 20 minutes.” WHAT?!?!?!?! Ok we then began to run around like pollos with their cabezas cut off. Luckily we had family members to help us set up and make runs back to the house multiple times for forgotten necessities. Somehow family and friends always get dragged into business endeavors don’t they? But we LOVE them.

Anyway, we definitely didn’t bring everything we needed. One major thing would be anything associated with aesthetics and beautification. But we made due with what we had and before you know it we were ready…or as ready as we could be at that point but not as ready as we should have been.

One of the first people to stop by our tent was Mayor Bill Finch who was very happy to see us. We had given him a painting of President Barack Obama to hang up in City Hall a few years back and he was asking us about getting a new painting of himself soon painted by yours truly. NICE! And that pretty much started off our day. We had well over 100 people visit our booth and we ran out of flyers multiple times. So much so that we had to go back home and actually bring our printer to the tent to print flyers right there! I know, I know…sounds crazy but we couldn’t make this up if we tried trust us.

We weathered the heat, we weathered the short rain showers, and we weathered sleepiness throughout the whole day until 6PM.

During the festival there was a competition called the Sweet Spot which highlighted what visitors felt was the best and most creative booth throughout the day. At the end of the day the votes were talled up and the winner was announced. And wouldn’t you know, De la David won! We were one of the LAST vendors to submit an application for the Bridgeport Arts Fest, this was our very FIRST exhibition as a company, and we ended up being voted #1 out of over 100 other vendors!!!!!! Extremely humbling experience.

So from the bottom of all of our hearts here at De la David we would like to say thank you to the City of Bridgeport and to all of those who came out to the 2012 Bridgeport Arts Fest! You encouraged us to keep creating and to keep growing as a company and for that we are forever thankful.

Be creative!

Art. Life. Inspiration.