A Sojourn in Waynesboro: Part 2, The Art Show

Here it is, folks! Beautiful downtown Waynesboro, Virginia, all decked out for the Fall Foliage Festival Art Show. Now, that may sound sarcastic, but I can assure you that the art show is one of the highlights of the Waynesboro year, and for good reason. It really is a well-managed and eclectic art show. There's a fine mix of media, there's a nice balance between locals and exhibitors from elsewhere, and the artists are all vetted so that the quality of the work for sale is very high.

Study the photo above closely--it will play an important role in Part 3.

But first, a tour of the art show.

First stop, the booth where I parted with the most of my hard-earned cash.


This is the booth of Patricia Black Spilman, an award-winning watercolorist and my best friends' mom. Note that friends' is plural. She's Barb's mom and she's Beth's mom. While she had a number of lovely prints on offer, I bought one of her originals--a watercolor of a rocky stream bank called "The Earth Has Many Colors." That's Patsy, sitting behind the little table.

Her daughter Barb was also an exhibitor:


She does colorful pen, ink, and marker drawings of little kids and cartoon animals, most of which are connected to letters and spell out kids' names. She did a land-office business this weekend.

Then there's my very favorite ceramicist--a guy named Ed. He does the coolest tumblers, vases, cannisters, plates, platters, jugs, bowls--if it has a goofy, colorful face on it, it's his! Although Ed is from Pennsylvania, I have only seen him at the few recent Fall Foliage Festival Art Shows that I have attended. The first time I ran across him, he was selling a wonderfully HUGE bowl festooned with demonic smiley faces. I owed Barb and her husband Charlie an anniversary present (it was one of those, um, BIG year anniversaries), so I bought it for them. And have coveted it ever since! Each year I go back to Ed's booth, hoping to find something similar... but to no avail. I always buy a tumbler or two from him, though.

Even the local merchants were getting into the art show spirit, although I think this place is actually a gallery. For real. My pal Lee the hipster accompanied me to the art show on Saturday afternoon, and he took a liking to this Munchean slash nephew art painting. I think it is a portrait of Sirius Black, and that the ETC. written in shadow below his wizardly chin is a clue to the location of one of the horcruxes. When I came back on Sunday, the portrait was no longer in the window. Lee? Did you purchase it? Or purloin it? Or...?

I also bought a couple of small prints of Chinese watercolors depicting blue jay-like birds with long, sweeping tails perched on blossoming moonlit branches painted by Bryan Yung. Oh, and some candied pecans. Yum.

I love the Fall Foliage Festival Art Show. I hope I can drag Jeff to it next year, because I know it will make us both smile.