A Fair of the Arts kicks off Saturday, shows local art

White tents were pitched Saturday morning in Showers Plaza, directly in front of the steps of City Hall. A crowd of people milled among the different tents, perusing the handmade art on display. The artists, housed in each tent, interacted with passersby, explaining their creative processes and showcasing their artistic efforts.

The Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department sponsored the season’s first A Fair of the Arts. The event, located in Showers Plaza at Eighth and Morton streets, was from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and is scheduled to repeat once a month through October.

The adjoining Showers Commons is home to the Bloomington Community Farmer’s Market each Saturday.

Thirty vendors were selected through a juried process to display their work at the fair. All art was hand made with a variety of materials and processes. Jewelry, woodworking and handmade soap were some of the goods offered.

Kay Daniel displayed her handmade origami earrings in one tent. This is the fifth year Daniel has participated in the fair. Each pair of earrings takes her about one hour to complete, and she said it is a tedious process. Sales are not great at the fairs.

“I’m happy if I sell over two pairs,” Daniel said.

But she enjoys the creative process, using beads paired with wrapping paper, traditional origami paper or scraps of old maps to create the earrings. “I really like to see how the paper matches the bead,” she said. “There’s a huge variety. It keeps it fresh for me.”

Joe Henderson of Hickory Hill Studios in Brown County, Ind., occupied another tent in the fair. He crafts his wood art into clocks, cats and birds, using hard sugar maple as his medium.

Henderson uses splated wood, which is created when a fungus causes black lines to form. These black lines in the wood create shapes, which Henderson then fills with colored ink.

A shared box of strawberries sat between Henderson’s tent and the adjoining tent, where his wife sold T-shirts and handmade wire jewelry.

Local artist Abby Gitlitz of Tweetle Beetle Glass creates handmade blown and stained glass. Colorful coasters and other glass shapes sat on white shelves in her tent.

Printmaking is integrated into her work and then integrated in her coasters.

“Anything you can do to another medium, you can do to glass,” she said.

She also implements steel wool and baking soda. One method she uses when creating her work is dipping the glass into water combined with baking soda and watching the resulting reaction.

“Go in your cabinet, see what you can find, play with it. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but that’s part of the fun of experimenting,” Gitlitz said.