Festival of Art in harmony with music
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A perfect pairing of music and art set the tone for the Sandpiper Art Gallery to blend with the Flathead Blues Festival this year, where visitors and vendors gave the inaugural show at Sacajawea Park a standing ovation.
“The day has been excellent,” artist Julie Christopher said. “I’ve already sold some pieces.”
Christopher’s encaustic paintings created with beeswax and Damar resin drew people to her colorful display at the Flathead Lake Festival of Art. Her interest in the unusual, layered designs blossomed while melting crayons with grandkids. She studied and mastered the 20-layer technique, even successfully experimenting and breaking the rules, which resulted in a striking reverse image of running horses.
Horsepower was also on display as curious boaters powered by the lakeside festival. The show seemed to feature horses: equines made of wax, sculpted from metal and embellished on tipis.
The tipis intrigued Iris Deskins, 15, and her brother Loren, 11, who tried shooting a toy bow and arrow with foam arrowheads, sold by a tipi maker. Loren gave it twang but decided not to buy it.
“They were cool,” he said, adding with a grin, “I would have used it to shoot my sister.” The siblings from Missoula were visiting their grandmother in Polson.
Another grandmother cuddled her 6-week-old grandson while cool lake breezes blew through their canopied wares and her husband demonstrated his handmade acoustic guitars. Rick and Annette McCollum of Paradise, owners of Montana Guitar Shop, offer artistically crafted instruments using a variety of exotic woods — and local mountain mahogany hardwood he found in the Bitterroot valley.
“I always liked to work with wood, and I loved to play the guitar,” Rick said of how his business began nearly 25 years ago. “I burned the midnight oil learning the craft.”
In its first year, the Flathead Lake Festival of Art drew 47 vendors from the east coast to the west coast, according to Heather Holmes, director for the Sandpiper Art Gallery, a 44-year-old non-profit organization. Proceeds raised through events support scholarships and various workshops.
“We’re one of the oldest cooperatives in the U.S., with 70 members,” Holmes said.
The festival was held right on the heels of another big Sandpiper event, the Sandpiper Art Festival, held the prior weekend on the Lake County courthouse lawn.
