In mid-October, a small sign placed on the sidewalk outside of the Lafayette Square Community Center is the only clue that gestures to a small art fair consisting of local Duluth artists.
The inside space is somewhat packed, with people circulating around the booths looking at crafts and lots of handmade gift items, something that I wasn’t expecting when I first thought of an art fair.
“This fair is not like a dealer because everything here is made by the people,” Wendy Grethen said.
Grethen, who is also an artist, has been organizing these local art events for seven years. She said that the indoors and the smaller size of the room is ideal for some people who are showing their work for the first time, like photographer Sarah Vandermeiden.
“It’s fun for me to think of how to display everything,” Vandermeiden said.
Her corner of the room is decorated with antique pieces that she and her husband put together to showcase her photographs. The pictures are nature-inspired, some taken around a beach and a few of the fall-colored leaves in Hawk Ridge.
“I actually worked at the UMD housing office for 14 years,” Vandermeiden said. “Photography was a hobby for me, and I thought it’d be fun to show them at a fair.”
Around the room there was a variety of people who majored in different mediums of artistry, but there is one who majored specifically in writing, with a background in journalism.
On Marie Zhuikov’s table there were two stacks of books, one with a huge, blazing eye of a wolf, the fur of its face covering the entire front cover.
“I would say my genre is very unique: eco-mystic romance,” Zhuikov said. “I write books based on real problems, stories about people and animals.”
After she got her degree in science journalism, Zhuikov went back to graduate school at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities to get her degree in health journalism. Her books address environmental issues that relate to animals.
Just a table over, another artist has her work neatly displayed with some distinct evidence that she is also environmentally conscious.
“My products are packaged in sustainable materials,” Diana Miller said. “I’d like to abstain from using plastic.”
Originally from India, Miller married her husband, who is from Superior. She makes hand soaps in small batches of different flavors, and she also has a variety of cosmetic products made from raw and natural ingredients. Each item has its own essence, like a rose facial clay mask packaged in a small glass bottle.
“It becomes very personal because of the taste,” she said.
I saw that her organic collections extend beyond just cosmetic use, like a bowl made entirely out of beeswax.
“It’s called a beeswax luminary,” she said. “You would put rice or sand in the center, light a little candle, and it’ll give off a warm glow that eliminates the use for electricity.”
We have come to know that artists are people who paint on elaborate canvases or draw the most abstract art, but really they can just be our neighbor who makes little trinkets out of household items.
