Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts 2011
Day 1 at the Arts Fest in State College, PA. I figured I won’t hang around the booths again much, so a premature review is sufficient.
Baby A and I took a quick 40-minute tour this morning, starting at the Strudel stand with a delicious Apricot strudel for a ridiculous $9. This is definitely how you want to start your tour-chomping on sugar pastry.
The Arts Fest is a great venue if you have plenty of funds to afford and lots of space to clear for cluttering semi-functional crafts. Last year, I thought it was disappointing. This year, I found two artists that appealed to me.
Watercolors by Joe Jacobs and etch prints by Ann Eldridge.
Joe Jacobs was a no-brainer. He had several paintings of horses. I’ve been off and on interested in motion drawings that involve les chevaux 
In Printmaking class, I’d experimented with linoleum prints to create anime-like color prints. Jacobs’ horses are still but bizarrely dynamic. For one thing, the horses are multi-color and sit on needle-thin legs. His style is almost like collage. But in fact he’s chosen watercolor as a medium.
Ann Eldridge’s most striking piece was her etching of a set of bird’s eggs on the ground-in a nest of grass, leaves and bushes. I don’t recall the name of the etch.
It’s breathtaking-the detail is mindblowing. I remember doing an etch–since I like general outlines and more comic-like characters I’d found woodcarving a lot easier than etching. Plus etching requires a little bit more thinking ahead–the process involves chemistry. You have to make sure not to carve too thick and dense, otherwise you lose details.
…check out the links anyway. See for yourself.
