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SIERRA VISTA — The final day of Art in the Park on Sunday proved to be a boon for the 240 vendors from across the Southwest who came loaded with their works of art and handcrafted items ready to show and sell, as well as the hotels and restaurants of the area.
According to Edie Manion, Huachuca Arts Association secretary, it was the largest showing of artisans and crafters the association has gathered in Veterans’ Memorial Park since the event’s inception 36 years ago.
“We may see around 40,000 people coming to Art in the Park this year,” she said. “It has been a pretty sizable crowd. I can’t say what it means to the economy of Sierra Vista and the area, but probably it’s a huge benefit.”
She said a lot of people come from all over to the two-day event, and for many it was a good time to start Christmas shopping.
  
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In addition to the usual and the unusual artwork, festival-goers got the chance to meet the latest robotics creation of the Buena High School N.E.R.D.S. (Nifty Engineering Robotics Design Squad). The simple machine was handing out fliers explaining just what the squad does and the money it needs to raise to make their creations for competition.
A little ways down the aisle was the cast metal works of Betsy Kunzer from Sierra Vista. The process she uses is as old as the Bronze Age, but her works run from whimsical, like the tiny mouse with the prehensile tail reaching from one wheat stalk to another, to a sperm whale leaping from the open sea.
She said she tried painting and was not happy with the results, so she switched to sculpting as a student at The Art Students League of Denver, where she used to live before moving to Sierra Vista.
“I discovered I could do that,” she said.
Once the mold is made she takes it to a foundry, and the metal work begins. She adds certain minerals to bring color to the patina of the copper, bronze or steel.
Down another aisle, Carlie Murphy from Phoenix was busy sewing beads onto one of her attached wraps made from beautiful silks and velvets. She sews the wraps and adds a three-dimensional effect with her intricate beadwork.
“It can make the simplest outfit look elegant,” she said as she showed off one she had made and was wearing over a plain white blouse and blue jeans.
This was her first year at Art in the Park, and things were going pretty well. She had sold most of her wraps and even had orders for more from shopkeepers wanting to offer her work.
Also doing well was Rick Weisberg, now in his second year at the show with his original jewelry boxes made from a single piece of exotic wood. He chooses not to use any stains in order to bring out the true colors and textures of the richly grained woods from Africa and South America. Weisberg is well known around Sierra Vista as the man who builds fly-fishing benches, plays trombone in the symphony and started Oasis Rain Water Harvesting.
“I’m doing very well this year,” he said. “I’ve sold a third of my inventory.”
One of the most popular offerings was the twirling metal ribbons that held crystal balls. The optical illusion made it appear the crystal ball was actually traveling up and down the ribbon. Spud’s Spirals, as artisan Manny Spadaro calls them, was a technique he devised one day in his shop while messing with some coiled up metal strips.
“I made the first one without the crystal ball, but it didn’t have the right effect. So, I added the crystal ball, and the optical illusion was just what I wanted,” he said.
People stood in amazement trying to figure out how the ball seemingly traveled up and down the ribbons of metal.
He creates the ribbons from various metals — copper, steel, stainless steel, aluminum, you name it. He has been a regular at the event for the past five years.
Rich tones of what sort of sounded like a guitar drew people to see what it was they were hearing. What they found was instrumentalist Leo Gosselin, originally from Winnepeg, Manitoba, but now touring in Arizona. He was playing a unique instrument called the Chapman Stick. The 12-string instrument was invented by guitarist Emmett Chapman back in the 1970s and is played with both hands in a percussion-type manner.
“No known guitarist, bassist or fingerboard player had ever before used a basic three or four fingered technique in each hand simultaneously to play independent lines, scales and chords. It was unique yet basic and logical — both hands aligned parallel to the frets and perpendicular to the strings, the fingers of each hand fitting sequentially into selected fret spaces at any point along the fretboard,” writes Gosselin on his Web site. Gosselin has been playing the instrument for the past 30 years, but says he still has not managed to master it.
“I found it intriguing and challenging,” he said. “So much so, I stopped playing guitar.”
He had several CDs available for sale, and people were snapping them up. Next weekend, he will be playing at the Patagonia Fall Festival.
The Art in the Park event is one of the HAA’s biggest fundraisers, according to Manion.
“It allows us to do all of our classes and keep our gallery and studio open,” she added.
The mission of the nonprofit association is to encourage and promote artistic growth in the communnity.
For more information on the Huachuca Art Association, call 803-1078 or visit huachuca-art.com.
Herald/Review reporter Shar Porier can be reached at 515-4692 or by e-mail at shar.porier@bisbeereview.net.
keep it real wrote on Oct 9, 2007 2:04 PM: