a day trip to the Bayou City Art Festival

It's been a long time since I was at a quality art and craft fair so Friday, my sister and I headed into the city for the first day of the Bayou City Art Festival. This year the show included 450 artists working in 19 different categories (photography and mixed media have 2 categories each, mixed media/3D is a separate category than sculpture/3D, and then one for functional art, and of course the traditional clay, glass, wood, metal, jewelry, etc.). I wonder with so many categories, how an artist selects one. Some would be easy like jewelry. But what if you do sculptures in wood or clay or metal? Or the three people who made musical instruments out of wood?

Anyway, it was a great show on a beautiful spring day and by going on a week day, there weren't so many people that you couldn't even get in the booths to see the work or lines so long at the concessions that you had to wait an impossibly long time just to get water. By the time we made it all the way around the loop we were just in overload. I quit looking at the jewelry about halfway through because I just don't wear jewelry and especially not expensive jewelry no matter how gorgeous it is. And I stopped looking at the painters and photographers works because most of it didn't appeal to me however well crafted and so many of the canvasses were huge with huge price tags. In fact, there was lots of very expensive art there.

I purposely left my camera in the car because I didn't want to have to carry it around all day. After asking my sister for the third time to take a picture of something for me, she handed over her iPhone for the duration. The quality of the pictures is not always great but these are some of the things that really caught my eye (all the artists' names link to their websites).

As soon as we entered, to the left, was a metal artist with a fun and quirky flair, Fred Conlon, and his work immediately drew me over. He must have had hundreds of pieces spread out under the trees there. It didn't take me long to find the one I wanted and then I dithered over spending my money on the very first thing that I saw before seeing anything else of the show. So, I just took a leap of faith and forked over my money. He held it for me til we left.

Venus flytrap with spark plug dragonfly

The man directly across, Andrew Carson, did kinetic sculpture out of metal and glass. You can't tell it from the photo but these were in constant motion.

Further in, I thought these strumsticks by Bob McNally were elegantly beautiful even though I don't play any musical instruments.

These gorgeous beaded 'heritage' purses by Jacqui Uza were stunning. They not only looked beautiful, they felt good in your hands and what is even more amazing is that they are knitted. The beads are knitted in as she goes and she knits them all of a piece. She showed me the one she was working on where she had already 'turned the corner' and was working back up the other side.

Brenda McMahon was showing these beautiful softly colored vessels with natural materials adorning the tops. She uses a saggar fire form of raku which produces the soft colors.

These baskets by Cindy Killgore (who, unfortunately, does not have a web site or FB page so I can't give you a link besides her email address) are woven using pine needles and raffia. She had a set of shallow round forms on a wall that were based on butterfly wing colors and patterns but apparently I didn't get a picture of those.

Another potter whose work caught my attention is Cathra-Anne Barker. Her vessels are highly decorated with wax resisted glazes that she makes herself.

These beautiful obsidian wind chimes are made by Deborah and Richard Bloom. The shards of obsidian have the sweetest tinkling sound and are ornamented with all sorts of natural materials...bits of wood, dried seed pods and berries, bone and thorns, antlers and shell.

I loved the sweet little watercolors of leaves and bugs and fungus and feathers and moths and so on by Katie Musolff.

The enormous metal sculptures of cactus and palm trees by Richard Turner were wonderful. We were a little amused when he told us he was from Kansas...because they have so many cactus in Kansas?

These very cool birdhouses by David Boone stopped us in our tracks.

More gorgeous stuff continued in the next post...