Crowds sample wares at Sandpiper Art Festival
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POLSON — Huckleberry ice cream cones, huckleberry lemonade, smoothies and ice tea were all popular coolers at the Sandpiper Art Festival on Aug. 7.
Lots of visitors strolled across the Lake County Courthouse lawn during the event on a beautiful day, cooler than last year’s scorcher.
Margie Hendricks, Sandpiper Art Festival Chair, said, “Most of the vendors I talked to thought it was a good crowd.”
Artist exhibitor Mary Kelley agreed. She thought there were lots of people walking around, but they weren’t buying like they had been in past years. The crowd size slacked off about 4 p.m., just like it always does.
“It’s like someone rings a bell, and everybody leaves,” Kelley said.
Overall Hendricks said most vendors made fewer sales this year than last year, although smaller items such as earrings, jams and mustards did well.
Part of the smaller sales was the economy and part was the fact that the Bigfork Festival of the Arts was the same weekend, Hendricks explained. The Bigfork show is a two-day show, so many vendors chose to go to Bigfork. Although the Sandpiper Gallery board will have to decide, Hendricks said she would recommend the SAF go back to the second weekend in August so it doesn’t butt heads with the Bigfork festival.
Regardless of the date of the Sandpiper festival, ice cream vendors Dick Bratton and Sandi Farrell sold four big tubs of huckleberry ice cream and made inroads into two other flavors.
“Huckleberry (ice cream) outsold the others two to one,” Bratton said. “We ran out of huckleberry about 4 p.m.”
Bratton will be back next year, since they’ve been selling ice cream and popcorn at the festival for at least 20 years.
