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SIERRA VISTA — For the past 37 years, the Huachuca Arts Association’s Art in the Park has attracted some of the best painters, potters and crafters in Southeastern Arizona and some of the largest crowds.
The number of vendors dropped a bit from previous years down to around 220, according to Edie Manion, HAA member. She attributed some of the decline to economic conditions and gas prices. But, other artists may just be getting too old to make the trek as they have for the past 30 years.
“We have had a lot of vendors that have been with us from the beginning. Now they are getting up there and have health concerns,” said Manion.
All weekend long, the aisles were filled with thousands, though she couldn’t venture a guess as to the exact number.
  
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“There was hardly any room to walk around Saturday,” she added.
That was true of Sunday, too, as folks drove from lot to lot trying to find a place to park. But, the number of bodies didn’t necessarily correspond with higher sales. In part, success seemed based on the prices.
Lynda Alcamo, a painter from Tucson, had not made a single sale of her brightly-colored desert flora in watercolors and oils.
“This probably wasn’t a good year to start a new venture. And it seems people down here prefer more muted colors,” Alcamo added.
Her work on large canvases brought the brilliant colors of the desert in the monsoon to life, but it just wasn’t making it with the crowd.
Gourd artist Irma Brewer, Tucson, was having a decent weekend with sales.
“It always could be better, but I’m doing all right,” said Brewer as she spread glue across the huge gourd that was her next project.
Once the glue was where she wanted it, she sprinkled sand on it.
It would be the base coat creating an unusual texture for the gourd. When dry, she will paint it with muted tones or vibrant silk dyes, to make it a unique work of art. She also uses wood-burning tools to create dynamic drawings, one tiny stroke at a time, of eagles, elephants and other wildlife.
Though working with gourds may sound easy, there are health risks involved. As most gourds dry, mold can develop inside and out. To keep from breathing in that moldy dust when the cutting and smoothing work starts, Brewer has learned to use a mask to filter it out. She also has a trick of burying the gourds in dry potting soil.
“Somehow, that pulls the mold off of the exterior,” she said.
Another vendor doing well was Maxine Gray who was selling her lovely copper-plated jewelry and barrettes at Grays Tree Leaves.
“This has been the best show for us,” said Gray, from Tucson. “We try to keep the prices down so people can afford to buy, so we have something for everyone.”
The process starts in northern California with her sister who gathers the leaves of aspens, oaks, cottonwoods, maples, birches and Japanese maples.
The leaves go into a brine for two weeks that clears the plant tissue leaving only the “skeleton.” This framework is then electroplated with copper.
“You have to gather twice as much as you think you need, because you’ll lose 50 percent of them in the process,” added her husband, Joe.
To create the fall-like colors, they heat the surfaces lightly with a blowtorch. The heat creates the colors from the reaction of heat on the copper.
“It can be really hard. You have to be careful, because the leaves are so small, it doesn’t take them very long to heat up. You can overdo it, and the color is just burned away,” she explained.
Rhonoda Byers and Shellie Cerecke, both of Sierra Vista, had just begun their trek around the booths. Byers had made a few purchases of small items for her new home. Cerecke decided she wanted to see everything first before making any purchases.
“That way I won’t feel bad if I buy something at one booth and then see something else farther down the line,” explained Cerecke.
At another booth, Steve Dach from Cordes Lakes near Prescott also was doing well with a variety of carved antler knife handles, sheaths, cribbage games and key rings at Dear Antlers. The former woodcarver learned his craft while serving time in prison. When he was released, he got into carving and has managed to make a living at it ever since.
He started carving antlers after he found some off in the woods after the rut of the bucks.
“I figured I could carve them like wood, but I found out they are a lot harder to work,” he said.
So he dropped the hand tools of woodcarving and picked up some power tools that would work and hasn’t looked back.
Not only does he use cast-offs from the woods, an intricate part of his designs on the knife handles are strips of detailed metal that comes from old picture frames he collects.
“I thought of promoting this as a green business,” he said with a smile. “It is recycling.”
Herald/Review reporter Shar Porier can be reached at 515-4692 or by e-mail at shar.porier@bisbeereview.net.
No more pavement thanks wrote on Oct 14, 2008 11:05 AM: