Today my wife and I headed to Bush Park for one of our favorite summer activities, the Salem Art Fair. Here's some impressions we had of this year's event.
(1) Compared to the typical pre-$5 admission charge Friday crowd (we always go on that day of the Friday-Sunday fair) attendance seems lower. But we're fine with the fence, gates, and money takers.
If someone isn't willing to pay five bucks to attend the fair, they don't understand the value of what the Salem Art Association is offering. Plus, children under 12 are free, and there is no charge to get in from 2-5 pm on Sunday, the last three hours of the fair.
(2) The Salem Art Fair isn't the Oregon Country Fair, which we went to the preceding Friday. Nor should it be. Different strokes for different folks who live in very different sorts of towns. Salem never will be as wonderfully weird as Eugene, or Portland.
Still, I wish there was more artistic creative spontaneity at the Salem Art Fair, which is abundantly evident at the Oregon Country Fair. How about some street performers here and there? Encourage costumes, with prizes for best visitor dress-ups? Some strolling Art Fair improvisational greeters?
(3) Please, more and better tasty, healthy vegetarian food. We always eat lunch before we go to the fair, because there is nothing other than snacks that we enjoy eating there. By contrast, I make sure that I'm really hungry before I enter the gates of the Oregon Country Fair in Veneta. Wonderful imaginative food of all varieties abounds there. The Salem Art Fair could do better in this regard.
(4) The overall vibe is terrific. Organizers do a wonderful job. Friendly volunteers and staff abound. Honest ones also. After about fifteen minutes at the fair, Laurel and I were at the end of a line of booths near the gate where we had entered. A fair staffer, seemingly a security guy, walked up to me and said "Are you Brian Hines?" "Yes," was my easy-to-come-up-with answer.
"You dropped your wallet on the grass there," he told me, pointing. "A Salem Parks employee found it and took the wallet to lost and found." Sweet! I hadn't even noticed that my wallet was missing. But before too long I would have. Must have absent-mindedly tried to put it back into my hip pack after paying for admission without looking where the wallet was being placed. On the grass, obviously.
When I walked by the information booth later in the day, I was greeted with "Hi, lost wallet guy, how's it going?" I told them that, amazingly, so far I seemingly was still in possession of my stuff, though not of my mental acuity. I mentioned that the positive side of losing personal items at the fair was that I could find my car by following a trail of dropped keys, wallet, veggie snacks, and such. "Just like Hansel and Gretel," a volunteer said. "Exactly," I replied. Nice moment
(5) We liked how many new artists there were. Could be wrong, but it seemed like the proportion of first-time booths and old-time booths was tilted more toward fresh faces. It must be a difficult decision to choose between tried and true artists who have been at the fair for quite a few years, and new artists who may or may not appeal to visitor tastes. I think the Salem Art Fair is doing a good job in this regard.
(6) My wife and I always wonder if the high-end artists (some pieces sell for $2,000 or more) make enough money for the fair to be worth their while. Salem isn't Sausalito. The average income here likely is much less than many other places where the high-end artists exhibit their stuff. Frequently we'd say to each other, "Wow, that's beautiful. But how many people in Salem either can afford it, or have a house where it would look good?" Hopefully more than I think, for the artists' sake.
(7) I really admire artists who have a booth at an art fair. I'm sort of an artist, being a writer. But I'm not aware of people ignoring me. The masses who are cluelessly uncaring about my literary creations are hidden from my view. However, at the Salem Art Fair some booths are filled with people admiring the art, while at other booths the artist sits alone on his/her chair.
Showing that I have at least a semblance of compassionate Buddha-nature (not much, but a little), I'd make a point of slowing down when we walked past a deserted booth, wanting to show the artist that we cared enough about the art to look carefully at it -- though admittedly not enough to walk into the booth for a closer examination.
I also have learned to not make critical comments about art until we are out of earshot of a booth; a few times I've semi-loudly expressed a negative opinion about a piece to my wife, then walked around a booth partition to find the artist standing there. Oops.
Of course, if I had a dollar for every comment left on one of my blog posts that notes the idiocy of my writing, I'd be able to buy the expensive works of art that I ogled today.
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