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Nick Wroblewski is a Midwest based printmaker specializing in hand cut wood block prints with an aesthetic reminiscent of the stylized Japanese masters, yet uniquely his own. Standing in his booth you know why you love art fairs. Not only do you see fresh exciting fine work but you also get a glimpse into the lives of the creators.

In his childhood Nick traveled with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre. The group toured down the Mississippi River, performing in every state from Minnesota to Louisiana. He grew up in a community that supported the arts and is still deeply connected to the artists that inspired and encouraged his development. He is still an accomplished stiltwalker.

He has worked with Jim Henson Productions; traveled to Brazil with a jungle tour company where his experiences there caused him to a commitment to printmaking. Nick developed a series of prints of the local flora and fauna that ultimately were used in a tour guide book.

He has continually refined his printmaking skills while working with a timber company, the Neu Erth Worm Farm and in the Northwest Territories of Canada producing many woodcuts of the landscape and its inhabitants. His work is usually derived from the natural world and he is deeply committed to the continual exploration and development of his artistic growth.

This is what he says the traveling artist's life is:

• taking the initiative to learn about how things come together, honing the skill, tackling it and finishing the work in the studio
• the final process is the opportunity to travel and share the imagery with new folks, a satisfying component of the entire process and the final step
  

He not only creates images for sale at the nation's best art fairs he teaches workshops, has gallery shows, designs images for t-shirts, illustrates magazines and has found many commercial uses for the images he loves to create. In the midst of this he is deeply committed to the continual exploration and development of his artistic growth.

Nick was the poster artist for the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair in July 2014 and the t-shirts with his images were great sellers.

Meet him this month:
Aug. 22-24 - Art in the High Desert, Bend, OR 

Aug. 30-Sept. 1 - Art In The Pearl, Portland, OR

Learn more about Nick and his work 

Transplanting herself to Florida from Kansas and Texas, not only was Bonny Hawley's life changed but so was her subject matter. Living on the Gulf Coast of Florida surrounded by water her imagery explores the mysteries of the deep. Floating images barely seen peer out at the viewer and draw you nearer. What is the media? What am I seeing?

Bonny weaves from the fabrics of ancient worlds and threads of her imagination to create her mysterious flowing spiritual works.  Her art celebrates life and stimulates the spirit.  The work consists of acrylic mixed media collage, oil glazing, and cold wax medium and involves monoprinting, stenciling, metallic paints, gold and silver leaf and hand painted papers on raw silk and linen.  

Living in Naples, a winter tourist destination that brings art collectors to her doorstep, means she doesn't travel far to meet them.

See her on December 28 & 29 at the Coconut Point Art Festival in Estero, FL, and at other art fairs in Naples throughout the winter months.

Learn more about Bonny and her work: ArtFairCalendar.com/featuredartist.

One look at Ron Roland’s art and it becomes obvious that he not only likes trees and color, but he likes perfectly shaped trees and beautiful, rich color.

The Florida painter describes his work as contemporary landscapes in acrylic impasto style on birch panels, noting that he has a “love affair with color and movement...I want my paintings to evoke participation. I want the viewer to be plunged into the scene by the simple act of viewing.”

Ron Roland is similarly caught up in his surroundings. In the Florida Panhandle he saw Hurricane Ivan first hand. Watching the fury of the storm descend and viewing the aftermath, so that now his landscapes have become a way to show our sometimes conflicted and ambivalent love affair with nature, the prevailing trees and water which the storm did not destroy.

“I paint larger than life treescapes using a bold palette with high contrast. My style uses an altered form of impasto painting. That is, I use a brush and not a palette knife to build up the paint to create texture. He paints wet-on-wet and the board is both the substrate and the palette, as he mixes colors as he paints directly on it.

After a long career in the arts that included being a graphic designer he is now participating in art fairs full time because of the opportunities to show his work to the large numbers of people who attend the shows. 

See more of this exciting work: RonRolandart.com

Call for Artists - deadline November 14th.

Apply to be a Featured Artist on ArtsyShark.com. Once accepted, you present your portfolio and share your bio, inspiration, technique, and accomplishments. Your article includes a link to your artist website, to drive traffic from more than 30,000 unique visitors per month who visit Artsy Shark. Featured artist articles are permanent - use this opportunity for publicity as long as you like! Currently 36 artists are needed. $15 jury fee. No fees are taken on resulting art sales.

Get Details and Apply here  www.artsyshark.com/become-a-featured-artist/

From our school days learning about Colonial living the word "pewter" rings a bell.

The images it brings to mind are of traditional pitchers and candlesticks and other functional items. Pewter is a malleable metal that can be spun, hammered, molded, turned on a lathe.

What is exciting about the work of Rebecca Hungerford is that she takes this modest metal and creates exciting contemporary objects. It is not your great-grandmother's pewter! Her long apprenticeship (nearly 40 years) of creating traditional pieces has led to her current work, amazingly modern objects that push the boundaries of the materials and imagination. 

Who knew pewter could be organic and feminine? Rebecca's enchantment with the medium, plus the hammering, soldering, welding, etching and engraving the pewter yields exactly that. She loves to color it and add pearls and semi-precious stones to it and describes it as "jewelry for your home."

Meet her June 21-23 in Milwaukee, WI, at the Lakefront Festival of the Arts at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Learn more about Rebecca and her work: www.artfaircalendar.com/art_fair

"Mystery Lady"

Characters in Search of a Home

Meet Elle and her cast of characters, found object sculpture that tell a story. What kind of a story? That is up to you to find out because these mischievous objects have something different for each viewer.

Elle is a relative newcomer to the art fair business but is attacking it with a vengeance! This is her first full year of participating in the shows and it has led her from Reston, VA, to Stillwater, OK, and many places in between. 

Sometimes, just like more seasoned artists, she doesn't turn a profit and other times she wins the award and great sales to boot! 

Two recent triumphs were having one of her sculptures chosen by producers at ESPN to be on their set, right behind the anchor and most recently, in Spring Green, WI, when early in the show a customer purchased 90% of her work, which meant cancelling the next show so she could make work for the next ones.

"Pops"

Each "Character" is an original, one of a kind creation composed from a variety of materials: old vintage junk, tools, flea market finds and ephemera of times gone by. They are constantly changing as she finds just the right component that enables the sculpture to find its personality.  

Meet Elle and the Characters:

July 17-20 - Ann Arbor Summer Fair, space C133 on State

and 3 Chicago area shows in August & September, with more to come. 

Learn more about Elle and her work: www.artfaircalendar.com/art_fair/featured

"Hearsay" - drawing by C. L. Cunningham

Anticipation runs high for artists as they head into the nation's top art shows. It is "show time!" All the studio work and creative time is about to be unveiled and shared. C.L. Cunningham says she likens it to a fine dinner party. The show organizers, the volunteers, the sponsors, everyone comes together to establish the atmosphere, set the table, polish the silver, extend the invitations and then the artists present the banquet! 

Cunningham's mixed media drawings are a mix of 28 materials that include watercolor, pastel, india ink, gouache, iridescent pastel, crushed and pulverized glass and school chalk applied to handmade watercolor paper. Her retro imagery is a slice of life, catching the light and shadow that enraptures the viewer and brings her collectors asking for more.

Learn more about C. L. Cunningham and her work: www.artfaircalendar.com/art_fair/featured-artist.html

Meet her March 15-17 at the Winter Park (Florida) Sidewalk Art Festival, www.wpsaf.org.

We all know people who are enamored with photography and dream of earning a living selling their best work at art fairs. One day Geoff Coe was on assignment taking publicity photos at a local art fair. During a lull he spent some time visiting with a well-known nature photographer who was exhibiting at the show when suddenly the light went on, "I can do this too." Fast forward a few months and he was up and running.

Was he just a lucky hobbyist? No. He'd spent years as a communications editor, photography columnist and freelance photographer by the time he moved to south Florida. Interested in nature photography he soon found himself in a flatwater kayak at the break of dawn stealthily observing Florida's many species of birds at their morning routines.

He knew little about them, but he would kayak, shoot, talk to birders and research until he became expert both at the intricacies of nature photography as well as a recognized wildlife specialist.

Thousands of photos and thousands of miles later Geoff   agrees with a friend who said to him, "Gee, what a great way to earn a living."

Learn more about Geoff and see more of his photos.

If you're in Florida this month meet him January 19 & 20 in Sarasota at the Sarasota Fine Art Festival, and January 26 & 27 at the Islamorada Fine Art Expo.

Leslie, like so many of artists, followed in the footsteps of her    mother, and is a painter just as she is. This led to an art degree where her mentor was a painter who had excelled in a career selling his work at the art fairs. With influences like this it is no wonder to find her today at the top shows in the country exhibiting her luminous abstract pieces.

Her newest body of work is "acrylic on acrylic." Moving away from her watercolor days she now does reverse painting with acrylics on acrylic sheets. She had always used plexiglas to lay out her paints and brushes but one day as she looked at the by-product of her preparation and saw the blobs of color through the clear surface of the acrylic she discovered a new technique.

Building up layers of the paint gradually and transparently and sometimes opaquely created incredible clarity of color and incredible textural effects. It was liquidness frozen, parts of the paints look as though they are still wet and she's able to achieve fantastically deep, layered paintings with color and textural effects comparable to nothing else.

Just when you think you've seen every photograph you ever need to see at an art fair someone comes along and grabs your heart with the strength of their imagery.

For Chris Dahlquist learning to use a camera and the darkroom came at the same time she learned to ride a bicycle. Her amazing photographs follow in the tradition of the "pictorialists", early photographers who were interested in "creating" an image rather than simply recording it.  At a glance, you may think the images are from an old archive. Instead, they are the musings of an contemporary explorer of the nation's highways and open spaces.

Just as the  earliest practitioners of daguerreotype and tintype, she treats each metal  plate by hand, preparing it to receive a photograph. She  capitalizes on the smooth surface of steel, a finely textured under  painting, and the translucent qualities of digital pigments to create  each luminous piece.

Disillusioned by a life as a commercial photographer and ready to leave that life behind she began again,

I returned to the start, the root of the discipline; I went back to the days of photographer as experimenter, inventor, and mad scientist. I investigated the line between science and creativity, process and concept, historic materials and contemporary technology. The artwork I have created through this exploration has been varied, but the common theme remains - experimenting with modern process while carefully studying and honoring historic techniques.

Learn more about Chris and her work:

ArtFairCalendar.com/featured artist

Meet her this month: 

September 1-3, Art in the Pearl, Portland, Oregon

September 7-9, St. Louis Art Fair, Clayton, Missouri

I've met a lot of crabby people lately which hasn't done a lot for my mood, so when I went looking for an artist to feature this month no one was quite what I was looking for, then voila! Marti McGinnis's fanciful colored "happy art" danced into view!

A lifetime of exploring, living the expected life and finally choosing the unexpected and expressing it exuberantly in an outpouring of color, Marti's current body of work focuses on the ancient art of fabric felting with a decidedly modern twist. Her self-styled "happy art" reflects her love of texture, coloration, friendly animals, cartoons, writing, designing -- this girl does it all! A Renaissance woman?

Marti is not only a visual artist, having explored wood, canvas, paint, pencil, aluminum she is also a blogger, website designer, social media leader and still she finds time to create one of a kind fanciful creatures and wearable art that pop your eyes out. I'm guessing the richness of her creativity informs it all. Now I'm happy and I think you will be also.

Her current body of work is felting, an ancient art, wherein a non-woven cloth is produced by matting, condensing and pressing woolen fibers. She is pleased to say she has met many of the animals whose fiber she uses to create clothing, pillows and many happy figurative animal shapes.

She does only a few art fairs so don't miss this opportunity to see her work and meet her this month at the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair, booth #A015. I'll be there, how about you?

Learn more about Marti:
     www.artfaircalendar.com/art_fair/featured-artist.html

A  recognized master in the medium of graphite, David will surprise you  with what is possible using only a pencil. On his technique, David  explains, "While many artists draw with an  emphasis on lines, I use  light and shadow-contrast-to delineate  surfaces, much like a painter  uses color. In that respect, my approach  to drawing is more like  painting."

"Cloud Gate", two cradled Claybord™ panels, 30" x 10" and 30" x 30"

Discovering in junior high that he wanted to be an artist, he has spent the intervening years exploring many media and has been able to make his youthful dream come true. Growing up in Oregon he spent many years as the senior photographer for Harry & David and the Jackson & Perkins mail order catalogs. So chances are pretty good you have seen his photos!

He says,  "It was a great job that I loved very much but my passion always lay  with drawing. In fact, the photography supported me while I began my art  career and allowed me to, fifteen years ago, turn my attention to  becoming a full-time artist and I've never looked back!"

Coming to the art fairs about five years ago with his drawings he says this is the best and most risky decision he has ever made. He has embraced the lifestyle wholeheartedly and the shows and the patrons have reinforced his choice. Mainly traveling the Western events from Washington to Texas he is piling up awards and is enthusiastic about his "new" career.

See him in April in The Woodlands Waterway Arts Festival near Houston and at the Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival.

Learn more: www.artfaircalendar.com/featuredartist

Growing up was the natural world a wonder to you inhabited by friendly creatures and stories of fairies? Lynn Fisher lived in this kind of wonderland, reading survival manuals and imagining herself living off the land. Fast forward to today she now creates porcelain and stoneware pottery that reflects these childhood dreams.

Lynn has been a professional potter for many years and each stage of development has brought her closer to the imaginings of her early life. The current work is entirely handbuilt starting with a thin slab of clay into which she embeds real leaves that she assembles into teapots, cups, vases and other functional forms. The pieces are very light, about what you would expect a few leaves to weigh, yet a fairy could not make them as the process is very intricate including the building, drying, brushing, glazing, waxing and high firing.

Lovely as they are they are also food safe and durable. You too can recreate your childhood dreams with these fine pieces.

Find her this winter in Florida at a handful of shows including, Artfest Fort Myers, February 4 & 5.

Learn more about Lynn and her fine work: www.ArtFairCalendar.com/featuredartist

Maybe you've already been struck by the clean-lined modern, yet nostalgic, quality of Brian Jensen's paintings, but he's only been in the art fair business since 2004, so possibly you haven't seen his work. 2011 took him from Scottsdale to Sausalito with a few stops in Iowa and Michigan in between.

He began his career as a graphic illustrator after finishing art school in Minneapolis. He and his wife, Leslie, owned a design studio there, then decided to downsize to a home studio which eventually led them to the art fairs where he's found many collectors.

His work includes original paintings, mosaics, wood trays painted mostly on wood. He also builds his own trays, boxes and frames. There is a cohesiveness and vision to the work that draws you into his booth. His iconic images of Chris-Crafts, MG's, old motorcycles and summer days at the lake resonate with a regional flavor that should be much appreciated at his next show in Chicago, The One of a Kind Show, December 1-4, at the Merchandise Mart.

Read more about Brian: www.artfaircalendar.com/art_fair/featured-artist.html

ArtFairCalendar.com/featured artist 

You'll enjoy meeting Nancy, seeing her work and hearing her stories. Next show:
      July 20-23 - State Street Area Art Fair - Ann Arbor, MI

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I'm confessing here that when I am looking at jewelry at an art fair I have rarely thought to myself, "I wonder how this was made?" As a buyer you may be looking at the style, the intricacy, the inlay, the gems, the color, thinking how it will match an outfit, justifying one more pair of earrings, wondering if the artist will let you make payments, etc. Right?

This month's featured artist is jeweler, Carla Fox, who is a metalsmith, constructing wearable art from various metals using heavy machinery and chemical processes. It gives one pause and elevates "jewelry making" from "pretty nice work" to "amazing!"

Carla grew up with talented parents who were both handworkers; she took those skills to her first art, soft sculpture. This turned into a business of making large scale fabric & metal art banners for commercial buildings. The metal banners downsized when she discovered precious metals and her love of making small sculpture---jewelry.

Until I studied Carla Fox's jewelry pieces I never thought about how jewelry was made.  Visiting her website and seeing the amazing machines I have a new respect for this art. Did you know that in jewelry fabrication, millimeters matter and degrees make all the difference?

As a result Carla says, "I have become part artist, part scientist - perfecting my craft through trial and error, creative thinking, and dogged problem solving. Every finished piece of jewelry is built from many smaller pieces of metal. Gold, bi-metals, silver, and copper sheets are cut, hammered, filed and soldered. They go from 2-dimensional building blocks to 3-dimensional forms."

About her jewelry she says, "Jewelry says something about the person wearing it ... if I'm doing my job designing you will see jewelry you've never ever seen before."

Meet Carla and see her metalwork in June at the  

Des Moines Art Festival, June 24-26.

Learn more about Carla and her work:  

www.ArtFairCalendar.com/featuredartist

Enjoy this YouTube.com video of Carla in her studio:

"Close to Home"

Born in Illinois, Beth has lived in Colorado, California, Maryland, New York, Mexico, East Africa and India before settling in West Virginia in 1977. Art school and a passion for drawing were bedrocks in her life. Selling images of mermaids to classmates in grade school, pencil portraits in Larimer Square in Denver for $5, being a courtroom sketch artist for CBS TV and then spending 15 years doing portraits from life as a member of the Artists Touring Association, traveling to shows in malls throughout the mid-Atlantic region prepared her well for her years on the road traveling to the nation's art fairs. It also developed her skills and her eye for catching the moment and the fleeting light.  

In 1990 Beth left portraiture behind and now focuses on rural landscapes and animals, sheep and more sheep. She says, "portraits are all about expression and people react to my sheep as adorable, without being cartoonish. In a small booth, rather than showing up with Noah's ark, I decided to be the sheep-lady. The public, for some reason love sheep, and they were the perfect counterpart to my haystacks. The shape, the skinny legs.
 
I always love my latest piece the most! Sheep or landscapes,  its the practice of applying the contrasting colors, like a tapestry or embroidery. Edgar Degas was my greatest influence, for his bold outlines and draftsmanship."

Upcoming shows:  

May 13-15  Artisphere in Greenville, S. C.,  

May 20-22  Artsplosure in Raleigh, N.C.    

Learn more about Beth and her find work: www.artfaircalendar.com/art_fair/featured-artist