by Ellen Miz Ellen
Saturday, May 15, 2004--This is the weekend of Belleville's Art on the Square festival. I went this afternoon and was lucky to find free, off-the-street parking only a couple of blocks away. The weather was perfect: gorgeous, sunny but not too hot. The artists's booths are arranged in a cruciform pattern along the four streets leading to the "roundabout the fountain". Something of everything: potters, photographers, painters, artists in fabric and jewelry, glassblowers and sculptors. Sizes ranged from earrings to pieces that would require a pickup truck and two men. Even though I had the pickup truck, I found myself drawn to the stuff that can be hung on a wall. A Chinese artist in ink and watercolor had some rapturous work. An old nearly-deaf photographer had spent his life photographing life in an unnamed Amish community: in his prints one would see the same blue bench in five separate pictures. The bench and the porch remain the same, but the flow of objects and animals around it varied. The same trees would be shown white with winter, then in Technicolor colors of sunset in fall. Children would grow up. But I found myself returning time and again to a British artist who sketched in pencil. His originals were quite expensive, but he also had limited edition prints, offered either matted only, or matted and framed. His subjects were train stations, ships and several beautiful renderings of Shire draft horses. I loved one of his originals, showing two Shires in harness, the plowman riding one and leading the other. It reminded me of stories told by my father and Uncle Wayne, of riding the plowhorses home after a day's work. But at something over $3000 it was above my touch. I kept circling back to look at these subtle pictures in shades of soft gray. The booth was near my route back to the truck. As I was leaving, I stopped and checked through the rack of framed prints.
I found a picture of a farrier working on a horse, with two little girls in pinafores watching. The artist explained how the buildings in the picture were typical of the Lake District. Considering the cost of framing, the price for the picture, mat and frame seemed quite reasonable. I offered my credit card. The artist used a calculator to add the tax, swiped my card in his little machine and then failed to register the final digit as he punched in the price. He freaked (in true British fashion, using the word "bloody"). He was going to need technical help to void the charge. I suggested rather than do that, he should just swipe my card again for the balance still owed. I wiped out my own mini-calculator and computed the remainder, he punched it in carefully, I signed both credit slips and he put the picture in a protective cardboard sleeve. It looks even more beautiful now that I have got it home. It's the first piece of artwork I ever bought on the installment plan.