Fall Foliage Festival Art Show, 2007

Well, there it is: the Main Street portion of the Fall Foliage Festival Art Show in lovely downtown Waynesboro, VA! This is one of the big events of the year for the big W, what with lots of local and regional talent displaying and selling their wares. There was everything from hot air balloon windchimes...



to stained glass panels...



to sporty verdigris frog statuary...



to the ubiquitous and much-loved funnel cakes.



Barb and Charlie? We have funnel cakes! Heh.

As you can see, it was a lovely day--more summery than fall-like, though. What with temperatures that just wouldn't dip below the 70-degree mark, this portion of the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah Valley had yet to sport much fall color, even in the midst of October. Lee and I walked from my mom's house in the lesser tree streets the mile or so to the festival, and we soon had to doff our jackets, the sun was so warm and unrelenting. And then, when we got to the festival, we were met with THIS odd sight, smack dab in the middle of downtown--not fall foliage but TROPICAL foliage!



That huge-ass palm-looking thing (look at me, ma! I'm a botanist!) would have never been able to even grow that big over a Waynesboro summer twenty years ago, much less still be thriving in the middle of October.

Ah well... it was warm enough that Lee and I enjoyed al fresco dining in the food concession area (he had a kind of Chicken Satay thingy, although it was being touted as "Chicken on a Stick," and I had an Andouille sausage), followed by yummy, hand-cranked ice cream at the SNACK concession area. Believe me, the pumpkin pie ice cream was to die for!

The wonderful Ed Brownlee was there yet again this year, he of the colorful and amusing ceramics...



Here are some more of his wares:



I love the little box bedecked with eyeballs! Stay tuned to see what I bought from him...

We ran into pals Beth and Barb (and Cortney and Charlie), PLUS Beth's daughter Erin and son-in-law Ben were there with their daughter Anya and their teeny new son Adonis... um, I mean, Elliot...in tow. Here's a picture of three generations, plus a doting auntie (L-R: Erin, Anya, Barb, and peeking over, just visible, is Beth):



Speaking of generations, Barb and Beth's mom, Patsy, was also exhibiting. If you look back over last year's account of the art show, you'll know that I bought an original watercolor from her. This year, another original caught my eye, but, alas! This one was just too dear. Still, here it is... there's some glare on the glass that obscures the depth of color, but trust me. This is lovely:



On Sunday, I took my mom to the art show, mostly so she could socialize. She made a beeline to Patsy's booth...


(That's Mom on the right, Patsy on the left)

Which gave me a chance to run over to Ed's booth and purchase a couple of cool things: a pitcher with the first sentence of A Tale of Two Cities on it for Jeff (who is a Dickens fan) and pot decorated with a cactus-shaped alien, a sock, and so forth (it looks great on the new table in the sunroom):



I also bought a print of Patsy's called Along the Skyline Drive. This picture doesn't do it justice, but you get the general idea.



So, it was a lovely art show--and one I hope to attend for many years to come.

Next up? A look at a very weird display at the Waynesboro Heritage Museum, where Lee and I took refuge from the sun for a moment or two...