Fleshing Out Vision

Yesterday after morning meditation, Minda invited me and Frank to visit the Carmel International Art and Food Festival. I'd missed this every year since hearing about it two to three years ago so I eagerly agreed.

We had just the perfect weather to enjoy the outdoor festival. Carmel, ever looking affluent and "with it," had blocked Main Street and a block north and south of the intersection on Rangeline Road for the fair. I parked behind an interior design shop and chatted with the muralist, Jacqueline, where she knelt in front of her panel sketching the outlines of flowers in  orangey brown oil. Jackie was voluble and answered questions with great animation. She told us she had always painted. Her parents and grandparents painted but never attempted to sell their works. She broke the mold and has been doing commissions for large and small murals and, when she was not busy with paid work, doing fine arts. She had a thick portfolio of photographs of work she has done.

Mind and Luz had Filipino-style pork and chicken barbecue. Frank queued up for kielbasa served on a pita with sauerkraut. I opted for the sausage, ten inches of hot, freshly grilled sausage dripping in "Mississippi sauce." The owner was retired and lived in Florida in the winter, in Ohio in the summer and fall. I told him he appeared to have found his "sweet spot." He grinned. The sausage was wonderful! I've decided to take healthy eating more sensibly. I'll treat myself while keeping to home-cooked, healthier meals most of the time.
We sat down to enjoy dessert. Frank, Luz and I each had a giant serving of mango "Italian ice" from a couple (she's from the UK, he from France). I couldn't finish mine but Minda was kind to finish my share. Sitting in the shade while the band struck up around the corner, we watched people pass by. People-watching is one of my favorite sports. For the gorgeous weather, there were not that many people at the fair. Most were either young couples or young families with young teenage kids.

After we finished eating, we resumed meandering down Main Street and visiting the artist booths. I was surprised at the international representation there both for food and art. One booth sold typical French beverages. Most exhibitors were painters but other hobby art forms were represented--furniture crafted from exotic woods like burl maple, ceramics influenced by American and Japanese traditions, ikebana creations, leaded glass, dried-flower art, etc. 

I spoke with several painters. Aprill was one of my favorites. Aside from the beautifully colored pastels she had displayed on her exhibit tent walls, she had storybooks that she has illustrated. The books were on wood furniture that her husband, Scott, designed and built. He also designed her book covers. I was won over again by how artists saw. Most took inspiration from Midwest landscapes and plants so their images are extremely familiar to me but I was struck again at how artists select just a few elements from the scene or object they work into art. This process of selection and highlighting is at the heart of art. Art is imitating nature such that it represents something essential about nature. The colors are often not true-to-life but somehow truer to life after the artist is done with them. My excitement about art renewed with the experience about their work and experience that I heard from the many artists I spoke to.

To my surprise, one of the largest exhibit tent was also the most crowded. Windows of the World was a photography studio. At first I thought that the huge pictures were oils. The colors really jumped up. I remember first seeing blown-up photographs at the art fair Tony and I serendipitously stumbled into when we visited Saugatuck two years ago. That was when the idea of printing outside photos first came to me. The photographer I spoke with told me about his ink-jet printer. The cost seemed too high for me then and I promptly forgot about it. 

When I started my sabbatical last December I brainstormed about what I wanted to do. My initial impetus was to make movies but after shooting Kaleb I was hooked on shooting portraits and models. From my trip to the Philippines last year I thought of collecting portraits of Filipinos that I would curate into a gallery show by the time the Indianapolis Spirit and Place November festival came around again in 2009. I may not be ready next year. I imagine artists are already reserving space for next year by this time and I have yet so much to learn about the craft and art of images. It seems to me that the more I learn the more I realized how little I really knew and how much more I need to learn!

At the last booth on Main Street yesterday I was enticed by a woman with white hair and whose head just reached my chest. Holly told me how her family had to escape the Ukraine during World War II when the German army burned and pillages on their way to Moscow. She and her two siblings lived in constantly moving refugee camps for eight years. I was touched by her story. An Indiana Methodist congregation sponsored her to immigrate to Terre Haute where she grew up, attending ISU for four years to earn her teacher's degree. She is not retired from teaching art.

She and another lady from the Hamilton County Art Center tried to get me to create art with watercolors. She made it look so simple. I resisted but watching her dab watercolor on a bookmark-size piece of vellum I realized without picking up a brush that I too could be an artist! Bit by bit my vision of what I want to do with myself takes on more details. I am becoming an artist not only with photographs and later videos but more important also with life itself. Even more than I used to believe, life takes shape as a surprise-full adventure!