Patches of rain through much of the day on Saturday did not keep crowds from cramming into Bloomington’s Fourth Street Festival of Arts and Crafts.
The annual event featured 117 different artists.
If I were giving the award for best in show, it would go to Marie Rust from Bitely, Michigan.
Her ink and colored pencil drawings of wildlife caught my eye as I navigated the packed aisle between the tents lining Fourth Avenue from Grant Street to Indiana Avenue.
It was the print of the great blue heron that drew my attention. I have developed a fondness for that bird, since I first spotted one at Miller-Showers Park in November of last year.
Since then, I’ve seen lots more great blue herons—at Miller-Showers and Griffy Lake.
Rust told me she works from photographs—those she has taken herself.
I headed up to Griffy Lake this weekend hoping to catch a great blue heron in exactly the same pose as the one in Rust’s drawing. I did see a great blue, on the west side of the causeway on the north shore. But it did not oblige.
For this column, I settled for a shot of a great blue heron taken at Miller-Showers in the spring. As one old newspaper saying goes: Sometimes you go to press with the bird you have, not the one you might want or wish you had.
To wrap up, see if you can spot among the photos below a shot of an empty donut box. The donuts came from the staff of Kilroy’s on Kirkwood Avenue. On Saturday at the art festival, they were handing out free leftovers from their regular IU football weekend event called Breakfast Club.
The empty donut box is included, not because it’s art—but who’s to say it isn’t?
Photos: Fourth Street Festival of the Arts and Crafts (Sept. 3, 2022)
Dave. You do great work. I will leave it at that.
Happy the 4th st Arts festival was a success, despite rain