August 1, 2001
Art fair draws in artists
Insect sculptures, pottery, paintings all part of show
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Rod Bearup's creations stopped passerby in their tracks.
A double and triple take later, the unique, lifelike sculptures of bugs, birds and other wildlife he displayed Saturday afternoon at the 41st Annual Traverse Bay Outdoor Art Fair brought a smile to people's faces.
For the Empire resident who has been a working artist just six years and displaying at art shows four, this kind of feedback still tickles.
"It is fun to watch people's reactions, that is half the gratification of the whole art fair experience," said Bearup. "I don't even really consider myself an artist, I consider myself a craftsperson - I just try to reproduce as much as possible what I see in nature."
Bearup backed into his new career as a sculpture. The former tool-and-dye maker and engineer for auto companies now uses his unusual set of skills to weld, braze, forge and enamel his creations.
While his work is well received now, it wasn't always that way. At first he began making birdfeeders and birdbaths, but was struggling to sell them. Then a vision of a snapping turtle sculpture came to him and he created two of them. When they sold within an hour at the next art show he attended, he knew he was on to something.
"I said that I had a new career, overnight I was a sculpture," said Bearup. "My work before [as an engineer] was all rectilinear and now it is all about curves. My work before didn't draw so many smiles."
Bearup was one of 120 artists gathered on the campus of Northwestern Michigan College for the art fair. Sponsored by the Grand Traverse Art Center, the show offered a wide range of work by artists from around the region and state. Media included fiber, clay, glass, watercolor, oils, prints, wood and photography. Jewelry, baskets, wooden toys and clothing rounded out the show.
"This year we got a better quality show than in the past few years because we have been gaining better artists," said the show's chair, Don Shepard of Claire.
Shepard has been attending this show for 25 years, remembering the days when he would sell his stoneware sculptures out of the back of his station wagon, pulled right up on the college grounds.
"The arts show originally started as a way to give artists enough money to buy more paints or whatever they needed," he recalled.
Brenda and Andrei Ritter of Vestaburg are also veterans of the Traverse Bay Outdoor Art Fair, having first attended when their daughter was six weeks old. Eighteen years later, they are still coming, minus their daughter this year for the first time.
The Ritters each take a booth, hers selling baskets and his selling pottery, and have been attending about 28-30 art shows a year for 30 years. Andrei started first with his pottery and Brenda took up basket weaving while pregnant with her daughter, not wanting to work outside the home after she was born.
To help pass the time at shows, Brenda weaves baskets between customers, keeping up her stock of hundreds of baskets. Both love traveling and meeting people at the shows and consider many of the artists they meet on the circuit year after year like an extended family.
"At home, everybody else works during the week and you are gone on the weekend," said Brenda Ritter, who also works at a nursing home. "A lot of the artists here become your family and community. Even after 18 years I still really enjoy doing shows."
Like the Ritters' daughter, Shepard's children have grown up on the art show circuit around the country.
"Working at shows, kids learn responsibility and about different people and cultures all the time," he said. "We've been all over the United States doing shows and they loved it."