Craftspeople at the Faire

Ahhh . . . the old days.

The Craftspeople:

When the faire began and into the early years there
were no crafts shows. There was no crafts market.
Those who came on at first were people who did it for
the love of it. They did it because they had an
affinity for wood or stone or metal or bone. They did
it because they loved the act of creation. They were
hobbyists because there was no market to be a
professional.
The first year that my wife did the show (1971) we
built a rather pitiful booth and slept in the dirt.
Jessica made about $700 that faire - - - a fortune!
Who would ever believe that you could do something
that you so loved that you would do it for free and
make enough money to keep on doing it?
This meant that you could spend even more time pushing
the boundaries of your craft, progressing, growing and
ever raising the standard.
We were proud to be in the company of so many creative
people. So many fine actors. So many talented
musicians.
So many sculptors, leather workers, clothing
designers, dancers, jugglers, mimes, metal smiths,
glassblowers, bronzeworkers, jewelers, toymakers and
etching artists. So many rogues and scoundrels, so
many beautiful women.
It was a roiling cauldron of primal energies and in
that foamy brew we found ourselves. We found our
selfs.
This was the world that, as children, we always
believed we would grow up into. What was happening in
that other world was a sad disappointment---a lie.
This was truth.
On opening day you were hard put to find a crafts
person in their booth because we were all walking
around checking out the work of our fellows- - - we
knew that the real masterpieces wouldn't last long and
we wanted to a least see them before they were gone.
The patrons knew it too. They would flood into the
faire on opening weekend and arrive at our booth
breathless but excited to see the wonders that Jessica
Overstreet had created over the year.
>From the beginning we had cultured an audience that
loved the arts and saw the value of what we were
presenting. We were the cream of the crop and they
were hungry kittens.
Status didn't relate to your gross sales. It related
to the quality of your work.
Later, the lifestyle and the money and the freedom
brought people who took up a craft not for the love of
their art but as a ticket to ride.
To us the faire was the means to pursue our craft.
For them their craft was a means to take part in the
faire.
There began the slide down the slippery slope.
A small few remain who hold or even remember those
values. But some of us do.
Just as many of the acts at the faire are now designed
around the art of collecting hatfuls of money so are
many of the craft booths designed to fill cash boxes.

Pity.

Steven Overstreet