STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
The Neuvo Cowgirls with their Day of the Dead faces stare out at those cruising the Sun Valley Arts and Crafts Festival.
And those who stare back at Dolan Geiman’s 4- and 5-foot creations are the lucky ones will find a treasure trove of found objects that Geiman has salvaged from old farms in Idaho, Wyoming, Texas and California.
They include pieces of aluminum platters, an old peanut butter can, license plates, vintage flour cans, even handwritten Civil War love letters, scraps of old textbooks and wooden nickels.
“The girls came out of my crazy artist’s brain,” said Geiman, who grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. “I come from a creative family of artists, and my father always told a lot of folk stories about heroes I always wanted to have around me. I created these Wild West women loosely based on tales of bygone eras.”
Geiman’s faux taxidermy wall sculptures, 3-D portraits and prints are among some of the unusual one-of-a-kind works showcased at the 50th Sun Valley Arts and Crafts Festival being held today and Sunday, Aug. 12, at Ketchum’s Atkinson Park.
The show features the works of 130 artists and craftsmen whose work was selected by jury.
Eva Letts and Douglas Chalk of Oakland, Calif., are showing their handmade Cleverclocks boasting hypnotic arrows, dot matrixes, mosaics, hexagons, triangles and elaborate Rubik cubes that depict time in a different way with shimmering effect.
Virginia artist Will Armstrong is showcasing his pen on collages of maps and sheet music depicting tales of honky tonks and vintage movie palaces with songs and artists like Bob Wills, Johnny Cash and Muddy Waters embedded on the towns they made famous.
North Carolina Fobotologist Amy Flynn prefers not to choose favorites among her foot-tall Fobots created from little treasures—or junk--she has found at flea markets, such as the tin cans of long forgotten theatrical Hollywood cold creams.
But, if pressed, it’s Super Freak, created with a Percy Dalton cashew nut can and holding his Freak banner.
“I create each with its own story and personality,” said Flynn, who started building the robots to fill the time between her professional illustration jobs.
Joseph Graci of Marquette, Mich., has carved solid chunks of wood into art representing such natural elements as lava.
“My intent is to capture the beauty of nature and modern architectural design by stripping down the decorative elements and focusing on the simplicity of the object,” said Graci, who lives on the shores of Lake Superior.
And Erin Pietsch of Boise has created groupings of ceramic trees, starting with a chemical process on clay to cause it to crack. She then low fires it, stains it black and sand the black off to create her fine porcelain trees.
The Sun Valley Arts and Crafts Festival, billed as one of the top 100 such festivals in the United States, continues today and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Kids can paint party cups today and make paper party hats Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the free Kids Activity Area.
Bellevue saddlemaker and leather tooler Jack Sept. will offer a demonstration of his work from 1 to 4 p.m. today, and Bob Dix will offer a drawing and charcoal demonstration on Sunday.