Pennsylvania artist John Cheer stands next to some of his art work. His website is: www.cheerclaystudio.com
The Wickford Art Festival, Rhode Island’s Premier Art Festival featuring hundreds of artists, happened this past weekend. This along with the Amica Ironman 70.3 or half triathlon on Sunday (not sure why they are simply called it an Ironman 70.3. I guess it sounds better then half), and 3,000 soccer games in South Kingstown occurred over the weekend. The Ironman ran right up through the Wickford area, just a few blocks away from the Art Festival. This made Sunday morning travel to the Art Festival very difficult.
Some more unique mediums used by artists at the festival
The Art festival which is in its 47th year featured about 250 artists each each with a white canvas booth of about 10ft x 10ft from where they hang painting, photographs, clay, or other artwork. Some were able to also set up additional displays in grass or sidewalk areas around their booths. The festival usually draws a considerable crowd and this year was no exception, while the crowd was smaller it was still a healthy 45,000 people give or take. From talking with different artists it is hard to make a good profit from the art festival. I talked with about 2 or 3 photographers and only one of them said they were making a good able to making a living solely from their photography. The one who said she was making a living from her photographer had some very exotic photographs, one which I commented that it looked like it was just out of a movie was actually of temple that had been featured in Tomb Raider. She also did very some interesting photographs of some monks and just really draw you into the ancient land and culture. You can she her photos at Zimphotography.com Two other photographers who I talked with had a number of beach scenes, one having more local shots, and another having a lot of West Coast landscapes, both of them echoed the sentiment that it is very difficult to make a profit form their work. Their work was very good, but of mostly American landscapes. I suppose the term starving artist was not coined for nothing.
There were also a number of artists who worked in many other unique mediums. One such man I talked with was John Cheer (picture on the top of the page). He had some very interesting things which really caught my eye. He works with a type of clay and makes these interesting things which look like sting rays and lobsters kind of, some of them also reminded me of horseshoe crabs. His website is Cheerclaystudio.com
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Tags: Art, art festival, artist, clay, painting, Photography, wickford, wickford art festival