Two old ladies at the fair

Broad Ripple Art Fair was another success.  The Indianapolis Art Center has put on this fair for more than forty years, with over two hundred artists from the United States and Canada.  Exhibitors work hard, but the festival committee just as hard to pull it all together, and this committee has it all together.  

Linda’s on a Farewell Tour this year.  I think she’s doing twelve shows, instead of the twenty odd she’s done the last several years with Cara helping.  Next year she wants to do only the six she likes best, and hopes the juries still accept her.  So, if she’s accepted to Broad Ripple next year, you’ll find her there.

Broad Ripple was Linda’s first outdoor show this year, and the test of doing shows without her daughter, Cara.  I was only along for the ride, and picking me up was the first potty break on the way to Indianapolis. 

Here are some wildflowers at another rest area along Indiana’s interstate 70.  I think some intense soil improvement could help, but the flowers are a good start.

We reached the motel in time to go to bed and be ready for set up the next day.  We got up bright and early, because we could.  Sunrise on the pond out back of the motel.  That lower right mallard will figure heavily in our evening diversion the next several days.

The real grunt work of setting up the booth and display requires someone much younger and stronger than Linda and me, even together.  My runty self no longer raises tent poles seven feet off the ground.

Linda has a plan for her outdoor shows this year.  This weekends' plan called for her cousin, Bruce.  He’s young and strong and an available stay at home dad who rolled in at 10 am sharp Friday morning and regaled us with father stories while I sat in a chair and he and Linda built the booth.

That sucker is HEAVY.  More than I could have handled, even in my heyday.  It’s a Craft Hut.  I’ll show you a nice Lite Dome like I used later on.

Other exhibitors rolled in and got to work building the weekend’s art festival grounds.    The part you might wonder about when you come to the show on Saturday morning. Look at the little city that grew up here overnight.  What a lot of work.  Does someone come in and put these tents up for you?  Do you have a home, or just drive around?  Well, those are a couple of questions I remember from the day.

Bruce and Linda built the display and I shifted a few rugs.  Then Linda and I made the executive decision to finish in the morning and head to a brew pub for lunch and lager with Bruce. 

That’s when my camera quit working, so you’ll have to wait for the rest until Linda sends me the good stuff I shot with her camera on Saturday and Sunday.

A Lite Dome, just like the one I sold when I retired.  A great canopy and I could handle it.  The artist  is a weaver, too, Sandy Duffy, Flying Shuttle Fibers.

And, here’s a link to all the artists at the festival.