It’s a sunny June day in Kalamazoo and Bronson Park is filled with music from the stage. Hundreds of square white tents crowd the grass and underneath each of them are original paintings, jewelry, photography, woodwork, and more. Both locals and out-of-towners are selling beautiful art pieces at the fair.
“Yeah we’re like a traveling band of gypsies. A lot of us will show up to the same shows all over, like next week I’ll be in Columbus, Ohio, and I bet you I’ll see at least 20 artists from this show there,” Nels Johnson says.
Johnson is a 72-year-old photographer who’s been working art shows professionally for 45 years.
“I do shows from Kansas City to Virginia Beach and from Buffalo, New York to Key West,” he says.
Other artists from as far away as Texas, California, Maryland, and Florida also participated in the fair according to Katie Houston, the marketing manager at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. She says that about 70 percent of the artists at the fair were Michigan natives and 15 percent were from Kalamazoo.
The variety of artists who attend the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts Fair range from photographers like Johnson, to potters, metalworkers, jewelry makers, and painters.
“I’ve been coming I don’t know how many years, it’s been a long time, I’ve had some customers stop in and say they’ve bought my work 20 years ago. So that could be true. So I’m here to selling my paintings, I do watercolors and acrylic,” says painter Deborah Hoover.
Hoover has been an artist for 30 years and is from Michigan. She’s also a fan of the many other artists who come to the fair from out of state.
“Well I think it’s interesting, they bring different art and fresh faces and people like that," she says. "You want to have a turnout, you don’t want the same old thing, otherwise no will come.”
The KIA accepted 190 of the roughly 260 applicants for this year’s fair. This is the third fair that Michigan woodworking artist, Carol King, has participated in. She's passionate about meeting the people that come to fairs and making her art:
“I enjoy talking to the people when I come to fairs. I really enjoy doing the wood turning, the work itself, and the artwork and having the wood work with me to make items. It makes me feel…it expresses myself well, I enjoy doing that. Coming to the art fairs it’s really interesting to talk to people, different people, seeing what they like and what’s going on.”
Artists like Nels Johnson and Deborah Hoover are full time artists selling their work as an occupation. King on the other hand is retired and makes her art as a hobby.
“I’ve been very lucky. I’ve been very successful selling them," she says. "Makes it really nice so it supports my, my habit. So then I don’t have to…I don’t use my money, I don’t use my husband’s, I just use the art fair money for whatever I’m doing."
Awards given to select fair artists totaled over $3,000 this year. Applications for artists interested in the KIA’s 2017 fair will be accepted beginning this fall.
