art fair

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Last week was Art Fair week.

It's hard to convey the magnitude of this event. There are four separate fairs (separate management, separate jurying, separate locations), all found in and around campus, and down the Liberty Street corridor connecting campus and Main Street.

You can't do it all in one day. It would be exhausting to just walk through all of it (over a mile from the intersection of Main and Huron to the intersection of South University and Forest, and not everything is located along that direct route! much zig-zagging required to see everything!). It would be impossible to really *see* that much in one day.

Let's not leave out the sun (bring a hat!!!!), the heat (90F), humidity (60-70%), and the crowds (hundreds of thousands of people) as reasons to take it easy and see parts of the fairs on different days!


There is a lot of really excellent stuff to look at (and far less of the cheap tacky stuff that a couple of the fairs leaned toward a couple of decades ago).

I don't do a very good job here of conveying the extent, nor the crowds, as I was out early on Thursday and Friday. Wednesday and Saturday are more crowded, and it is more crowded later in the day.

Take this as a tiny taste rather than as a good sample of the art fair experience.

Note also that I really don't like feeling funny about taking pics of stuff, and don't really like asking permission to take pics. I would rather take pics of flowers and buildings and traffic and whatever, knowing that I'm fine.....

I did ask permission of every artist whose work you see clearly shown here, to take the pics, and to blog those pics..... I have, of course, only included those who said yes.

Here we are, near the northwest end of the extravaganza, looking south on Main Street.





Birds by Jim Mullan, of Pompano Beach, FL.





Looking east on Liberty. I was looking at allllll those white booths in the sun, and never saw this guy with the broom and the excellent shadow until I got the image up on "the big screen".....

That's one of the things I love about photography. In some ways it's like being a potter, opening a kiln. You have an idea what you meant to get, but you never know what you actually got until you open that kiln after the glaze firing. Same with snapping the images and then, a bit later, seeing them on the computer.....

Sometimes you get exactly what you hope for, sometimes you are disappointed, and sometimes there are these fine surprises......






Farther east on Liberty, still looking east. The tower in the background is a University of Michigan landmark/icon -- the Burton Bell Tower, which houses the oldest of Ann Arbor's three carillons.





We have now gone all the way east on Liberty, dodged south on State Street, and east again on North University.

In olden times, the Original Art Fair was on South University. Art Fair began as an adjunct to Bargain Days. Merchants would set their goods out on the sidewalks, with lots of sales, in the end of July. The merchants welcomed artists as a way to get more people to come downtown and shop.

Over the decades, the artists and the South U merchants diverged more and more about who should control what, who should get which percentage of whose sales, etc.

The original fair looked for different space, and now exhibits on the University's campus, in a t-shape whose intersection is North University and what used to be Ingalls Street but is now all pedestrian mall.

The Potters' Guild (where I was a student, lo, these many years ago) was on the front steps of Hill Auditorium. I was in a "don't want to ask permission" mode at the time, so didn't take any pics. I should have taken a distance/group shot, and watercolored it to further abstract, but didn't think of it.

I was really in "have fun" mode rather than "document art fair" mode.....

Here is Hill Aud. This is a performance venue that is, I belive, a favorite of the creme de la creme of musicians around the world. It has been completely restored, and is totally gorgeous inside......

Not so bad outside, either.





Grate in front of Hill Aud (I presume to drain away water on a big landing that is part of the stairs up to the entrance).





Looking at the southeast corner of Hill Aud from over by the side of the Michigan League. With flowers.





Closeup of flowers. Phlox, yarrow, lantana.



Artists' booths were all around here.

Marcia Derse is an artist whose work I have admired for some time. In addition to her larger work, she works in composite pieces (my term, not hers!). She makes a number of small pieces, and then exhibits them in groups. The small pieces stand out from the wall (not sure how they are mounted), which is part of what I find appealing about them.

I really want to try some work in that format.......

This year she showed more smaller works than I have seen in the past. This is 100 small works. They are for sale individually. Don't they look wonderful en mass? Wouldn't you love to arrange and rearrange them?

I told her I wanted to make something with 12" squares, and that I thought I would make 12 of them. She laughed and said I only *thought* I would stop with 12 -- once I got going, I would surely be compelled to continue.....





Here are some larger pieces. I love these, too. I really should put some fabric next to some other fabric. I would enjoy it. (Many more examples of her work on Marcia's website. Mmmmm. I really want to do this..............)





Here is Burton Tower from the other side (looking west). The dark bricks you see through the trees to the south of the tower are Hill Aud.

You don't particularly notice the artist/food-vendor booths in this image, but if you look at the bigger version (click on this version) you can see them between the small trees and the hedge, near the bottom of the pic.





Daylilies.





Drawings by Jeanne Goodman. I love the colors she uses, and the juxtaposition of bears and sheepses.





Wii Fit had a big demo booth. They had lots of places where fair-goers could try some of the different games. I watched a girl trying out one of the balance games. It was the sort of thing where you tilt a plane, trying to drop balls through holes.

It looked quite tricky to do. You stand on the Wii Fit thing, which is 15" x 20" x 2"????, and then lean this way and that. The thing you are standing on can tell where your weight is, as your weight shifts from one foot to the other, and adjusts the image on the screen accordingly.

The balance game I watched required a good deal of subtlety. Particularly when you graduated to a level with multiple balls!

There was a bit of a lip on the plane, so the balls had some incentive to stay on the playing surface, but if they hit the edge very hard at all, they'd go over.

Computer games that encourage movement/balance/strength (and even cardio, in the case of Dance Dance Revolution) have got to be a very Good Thing.





Definitely on a bird/animal path here, and of course I always love color. Gotta love the excellent cloth on which these are displayed!

These appealing pieces were done by Jill Vayberg of Vancouver, WA, who doesn't seem to have a web presence.





Ok. Having seen as much as I can take in, it's time to walk on over to work, where I can get hydrated and sit in air-conditioning for a while.

Coleus in front of the U admin building.

If you look at the bigger version, you can see me (and my lovely art fair hat) reflected in the window, and behind me, the rotating cube-on-pointe which is another Univerisity landmark. It really does rotate, if it's not stuck and you give it a good shove.





Parking is always an issue, downtown, and during Art Fair it's absurd. (The smart out-of-town fair-goer will park at Pioneer High School or Briarwood Mall and take a shuttle bus in to town for $1.)

Here is a sign of the times. There are a lot more motorcycles on the road now that the price of gas is over $4 a gallon. I wonder, once the extra accidents (and severe damage done to motorcycle riders in accidents!) is all taken into consideration, if this really results in a savings......

Lots of motorcycles are more flamboyant than most cars.





On my way home after work. This is the south end of the four blocks worth of Main Street Fair, looking north.

There is a lull in fair-goers around supper time, as the exhausted day-timers go home and the evening strollers haven't yet appeared......



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