Notes on the Uptown Art Fair!
I did manage to go to the Uptown Art Fair last Saturday despite the hot BLECH weather! I wanted to hit all 3 art fairs at once, including the Powderhorn Art Fair and the Loring Park Art Fair via Target's free bus service to all 3, but the hot weather wore me out, and I refused to buy a large $6.00 cup of lemonade composed mostly of ice cubes >8(. I only managed to sweep Uptown's artists before I collapsed in a heap at Calhoun Square. If I had ventured to the Powderhorn or Loring fairs, there wouldn't be any cool hideouts for me to duck into for relief. The Uptown Art Fair was a LOT better organized than in recent years though. The ratio of food stands to artists was a lot smaller instead of 3 food stands per 1 artist booth! Sadly, there was no grilled corn stand this year though ;_;! I really wanted a cob of fresh sweet corn dipped in a vat of butter! I ended up passing on all the food vendors along the fair except for the stands handing out free samples ;b! I later went inside Calhoun Square to buy a Starbucks pomegranate tea smoothie and a grapefruit sorbet gelato to cool down 89.
Uptown's Art Fair once again shrank a bit. All the street wings outside of the alley or the big street by Calhoun Square are now empty 8(! I suspect the Powderhorn and Loring Art Fairs are picking up the slack from Uptown. Still, I had plenty to go, "Ooo!" and "Aaah!" over in Uptown, but not as much as when I first started going to the Uptown Art Fair. I was most impressed by the wood artists this year though. There were so many exotic woods to look, see, touch, and smell, and there were so many ingenious wood compositions in the form of small drawer chests to sculpture! I would have loved to have been able to buy a small wood box, but the smallest boxes were $80.00 each XP! The jewelry artists were a bit disappointing. There didn't seem to be anything really new or creative in this lot, and usually, the sparklies make me drool. As for 2-dimensional art, there were a lot more photographers than in past years vs. painters and sketchers. I guess the easier accessibility of photo equipment, editing tools, and printing devices lately has sparked a little revolution in photography art. I didn't see too many 'affordable' pieces that I wanted as usual though, so I didn't buy a thing this round, again. In all my years going to these art fairs, I've only bought 2 items total: 1 etching and 1 small ceramic square box with glass glaze. Mom bought more things at the 50th and France Art Fair, which we went to earlier this year, than I've ever bought in my art fair history O~O, but that was only because Mom was in the market for turquoise jewelry to match her new outfit and purse she was planning on using for the various weddings we're going to this summer ;b!
It took me about 3 hours to circle around all the Uptown artists with a few breaks in between to cool off in some of Uptown's interesting stores. Bobby Bead ate up a lot of my time because of my 11 mm bead quest. The 11 mm bead I wanted was for a small silver charm I bought recently at Dayton's/Marshall Field's/Macy's. The charm looks just like the Heart of Kandrakar Will wears in W.I.T.C.H., except with a replaceable bead center. I never got a chance to show it off at The Gathering though since it hangs on my cell phone, and I didn't use my cell phone much during my trip. The charm came with a blue bead, and I wanted to find other colored beads to interchange with the blue one. Unfortunately, the bead is 11 mm in diameter. Beads normally come in even millimeter diameters (i.e. 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, etc.). The closest thing I could find was a dull jade bead which came from a pile of rock beads which weren't so strict with sizes as most beads are. I wanted pink like the Heart of Kandrakar ;P! I also spent some time looking at the 'future' artists tables set up in Calhoun Square. I saw many sparkly bracelets at reasonable prices, but nothing really caught my fancy. There were even a few high school metal jewelry artists in the group too whose pieces looked more interesting than the ones I saw in the main Uptown Fair ;b! Mmmm, metal ^-^!
Sigh, I don't think there are any other big art fairs in my area this year, so I'll have to wait for next year --;!
Uptown's Art Fair once again shrank a bit. All the street wings outside of the alley or the big street by Calhoun Square are now empty 8(! I suspect the Powderhorn and Loring Art Fairs are picking up the slack from Uptown. Still, I had plenty to go, "Ooo!" and "Aaah!" over in Uptown, but not as much as when I first started going to the Uptown Art Fair. I was most impressed by the wood artists this year though. There were so many exotic woods to look, see, touch, and smell, and there were so many ingenious wood compositions in the form of small drawer chests to sculpture! I would have loved to have been able to buy a small wood box, but the smallest boxes were $80.00 each XP! The jewelry artists were a bit disappointing. There didn't seem to be anything really new or creative in this lot, and usually, the sparklies make me drool. As for 2-dimensional art, there were a lot more photographers than in past years vs. painters and sketchers. I guess the easier accessibility of photo equipment, editing tools, and printing devices lately has sparked a little revolution in photography art. I didn't see too many 'affordable' pieces that I wanted as usual though, so I didn't buy a thing this round, again. In all my years going to these art fairs, I've only bought 2 items total: 1 etching and 1 small ceramic square box with glass glaze. Mom bought more things at the 50th and France Art Fair, which we went to earlier this year, than I've ever bought in my art fair history O~O, but that was only because Mom was in the market for turquoise jewelry to match her new outfit and purse she was planning on using for the various weddings we're going to this summer ;b!
It took me about 3 hours to circle around all the Uptown artists with a few breaks in between to cool off in some of Uptown's interesting stores. Bobby Bead ate up a lot of my time because of my 11 mm bead quest. The 11 mm bead I wanted was for a small silver charm I bought recently at Dayton's/Marshall Field's/Macy's. The charm looks just like the Heart of Kandrakar Will wears in W.I.T.C.H., except with a replaceable bead center. I never got a chance to show it off at The Gathering though since it hangs on my cell phone, and I didn't use my cell phone much during my trip. The charm came with a blue bead, and I wanted to find other colored beads to interchange with the blue one. Unfortunately, the bead is 11 mm in diameter. Beads normally come in even millimeter diameters (i.e. 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, etc.). The closest thing I could find was a dull jade bead which came from a pile of rock beads which weren't so strict with sizes as most beads are. I wanted pink like the Heart of Kandrakar ;P! I also spent some time looking at the 'future' artists tables set up in Calhoun Square. I saw many sparkly bracelets at reasonable prices, but nothing really caught my fancy. There were even a few high school metal jewelry artists in the group too whose pieces looked more interesting than the ones I saw in the main Uptown Fair ;b! Mmmm, metal ^-^!
Sigh, I don't think there are any other big art fairs in my area this year, so I'll have to wait for next year --;!