I exhibited my art at La foire aux croûtes 2025#

The French word croûte can be translated to English as crust or scab. Outside of its basic meaning, it can also designate worthless, banal, failed or damaged paintings. The term could originate from painters employing so much paint on the canvas to try to make impasto that it creates a crust so thick it looks like one you would find on bread (yes, to French people everything can be compared to bread).

But from my experience, there's also a more judgemental, classicist subtext. The term can also be used to describe folk, amateur, provincial paintings. The ones you would find in small-town galleries that only local, uncultured people would buy ; in opposition to the more professional "Grand Art" found in big cities and museums that the intellectual elite enjoys.

Therefore, La foire aux croûtes or The Crust Fare, that took place from May 28 to May 30 in my city, is a celebration of small and often local artists, who will probably never be favored by museums, but who nonetheless love art and what they do, regardless of the result.

The poster for the crust fare. figcaption — The poster for this year's edition. | Full size

It's been ran by volunteers as a non-profit for more than 30 years, and it takes place in an historically anarchist place of the city. To say it makes art political would be an understatement!

To ensure everyone has a chance, artists are chosen by lottery, and each one can invite a friend to share its space. They can expose outside or inside big tents, and usually younger, experimental and printing artists are out ; while more older folks doing classical painting on canvas, or fragile pieces, are inside. Places are attributed randomly to avoid favoriting anyone.

When the weather is good, a TON of people come to visit. They buy prints or original works, are very open to chat about art in general, very curious, and with the random mix of styles and themes from the different artists, there's something for everyone.

Small local bands perform on the big stage during the day, and more famous bands during the evenings. A lot of activities are organized for kids too. There's a bar, food stands, a lottery to win art pieces given by exhibitors, and even auctions for non-reclaimed pieces. I bought an over-painted piece of a lighthouse for 7 euros, an excellent investment if you ask me.

A photo of me handling a small painting of a lighthouse getting smashed by a big wave. figcaption — I spared no expense. | Full size

Going as an exhibitor#

And so, I exhibited my art! It was one of the artistic goals I wasn't able to fulfill in 2024, and wanted to achieve in 2025. I won the lottery in February and invited my friend, A Moldy Peach, to join me. We spent the three days exhibiting and selling our art and everything went well!

A photo of our stand, with a sunshade, a table, a lot of prints on it and on the wall behind. We are doing thumbs up pose. figcaption — Look at those beautiful artists. | Full size

When I decided to participate, it was a way for me to present my own little worlds to a crowd and see what they think about it. I prepared 13 drawings, a mix of Drawtober favorites, broken androids, and a series of naked people + cats + skeletons.

My art is figurative, but not thematically very defined and thus easy to grasp. I don't see it as commonly attractive or seductive and being inspired by manga and surrealism, I don't think it clicks with most people.

Also, lots of people still see art as craftsmanship, they value unique pieces and don't like buying prints as they see it as a less valuable thing, like posters. The only exception is when the print feels like it was made by hand, like for lino-cut or cyanotype.

As proud as I am from my work, I can see it still feels amateurish in many aspects and that I have lot of progress to do. Still, I wanted to show it "as is" with all its flaws and successes. I printed 3 pieces I liked in A2 format, and the rest in A4 and A5.

Various prints on a sofa. figcaption — The last time I printed my drawings was 15 years ago, at the time I was sick of art and thought I was done. I was feeling a bit emotional when I unpacked all this. | Full size

I could have done very small prices as my prints were not fine art but edition prints. But seeing that a lot of exhibitors were professional artists, I decided to not create unfair competition, and set A5 to 10 euros and A4 to 15 euros.

The result#

After three days, I had sold more than half of my stock, which I consider a big success! I reimbursed my investment and made a little profit. Some pieces had a lot of unexpected success, and others I thought would sell did not.

My most successful drawing was, without surprise, this broken android that I printed in A2 and hanged up on my wall:

A drawing of a female android. She has a kind of pinup pose and look at the viewer. Her hair is cyan, she has nbig breast in the open with a leaking plus planted in it. We can see she has no waist, and that her mechanical spine is visible. Between her shoulder blades, a giant electronic connector is connected to a cable. Her face, even if pretty, looks worn out. figcaption — Only one person, a true nerd, understand that the right cable was an IDE cable. | Full size

A lot of people saw it from far away and came to see what it was. My first interaction on the first day was a lady around her sixties saying to me "I don't get it! Explain to me what it means!" in a very imperative tone, which caught me a bit off-guard. Another woman looked at it and winced, then told me it hurt her to look at the android in the picture, especially the tube in the breast.

Of course once you show your art to the world, you can't know or control how people will react or what they see into it. Some asked for explanations, but after a day I went full David Lynch and decided to stop answering, out of fear it would ruin their interpretation and the fun that comes with it.

A black and white drawing. A person is in the middle of the drawing, they seemed surprised: eyes wide open looking at your the viewer, mouth half open. Their hands, are positioned to protect something: two tiny skeletons, dancing into one of the palms. Around their face, 5 giant cat faces surround them. The one of the left has the mouth open and eyes closed, and is getting captured by a spiraling strand of hair. The one of the top left has strands falling to its head that gives him a neglected but funny look, and it looks with curiosity. The one at the top looks at you, the viewer, with round eyes. It has two big combed strands of hair giving it a more serious look. The one at the top left is looking down, and has very long straight hair strands. The last one, on the bottom left, is angrily biting a strand of hair that then falls on the shoulder of the person. The multiple hair strands are detailed, and the background is fully dark. It feels both funny and somehow alarming. figcaption — This one was my second best seller. Cats are a safe bet! | Full size

Most visitors seemed to like my art, or at least were intrigued by it, but the feedback I grabbed was that it was too dark, too strange (maybe too amateurish too?) to dare exhibit it at home. Which is fair!

I draw for myself to have fun, and I never planned my art to please an audience or sell prints. The goal with the fare was to motivate myself with a deadline, present myself un-apologetically to the world, propose something different than local marine/city landscapes, and see how it goes. Prints were just a way to reimburse the project.

On a gray background a woman floating in the hair with a massive hair mass holds what appears to be an orange line, which spins around and above her. figcaption — One of the surprise success was this one. | Full size

I was going expecting limited success or appreciation and, compared to my friend Moldy Peach or even the other exhibitors around me, I clearly attracted less people. But the ones I attracted? They really vibed with my art. Hearing someone say "this is beautiful" while pointing at my little prints made me proud and humbled at the same time.

It was mostly the younger visitors, from teenagers to mid forties people, who engaged and bought prints. Some totally recognized my references, and for those who were interested, I gave them manga/comics recommendations, which triggered nice conversations.

What's next?#

So here it is, I finally exhibited my art to the outside world. Goal achieved! I'm left with nothing to do, no direction. Oh no!

I will do a drawing for a local fanzine, but have no other plans after that. In the next few weeks I'll probably make a plan and list things I wish to work on. Better line work? Shading? Composition? Better "world building"? Other themes? Who knows.

One thing I'm sure about is that I don't want to participate next year if I haven't made any progress or don't have enough new pieces to show.

It took me around 2 years to do all the art I exhibited this year, so it's doable. But art is just an escapism hobby I do on the side that I don't want to pollute with a productivity mindset.

We'll see how it goes, thanks for reading!