Sandpiper Art Festival welcomes artists, crowds
Berl Tiskus
Dion Albert gets to know his birch bark creations including two he calls Mr. Happy and Mr. Sad.
Berl Tiskus
Bidders check their item as Life Savers Animal Rescue holds the final day of their silent auction at the Sandpiper Art Festival.
Berl Tiskus
Landscape quilts of Glacier National Park scenes made by Monique Kleinhans are available at the Sandpiper Art Festival.
Berl Tiskus
Using tiny Delica beads, artist Janice Brooks creates tapestries, including Native American pieces.
Berl Tiskus
Beads and stones of many colors go into Janice Brooks’ work.
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
Carved from an antler, “the watcher” serves as a closure for a woven bag made by Dion Albert.
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
ion Alberts wears a traditional berry basket he made, mostly from birch bark.
Berl Tiskus
Photos from Swan Valley Images are on display at the Sandpiper Art Festival.
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It’s a good mix — the Sandpiper Art Festival on the Lake County Courthouse lawn and the Summerfest car show on the downtown streets on Aug. 9.
Lured by the more than 80 vendors at the art festival, the quality and quantity of art and the shady venue kept visitors happy.
Paintings, ceramics, sculpture, stained glass, woodwork, beadwork, metalwork, quilts, stonework, photographs, jewelry and other art made the 43rd annual Sandpiper Art Festival a special one.
The festival also offered entertainment at center court, beginning with aerialist Jennelise, a Seattle performer, who brought her own rigging, according to Sandpiper Art Festival chair Paula Craft.
Jennelise specializes in static and spinning trapeze, corde lisse, tiny ring and aerial fabric.
As well as entertainment throughout the day, hungry and thirsty visitors could buy cold lemonade at the Lemon Tree, lunch at the St. Andrew’s booth, Italian ices from the Ninepipes Museum or ice cream cones and popcorn from Dick Bratten and Sandy Farrell.
Lifesavers Animal Rescue brought their painted chairs, created by local artists, to the festival for a final day of their silent auction fundraiser.
Craft said the Sandpiper takes a percentage of each vendor’s table for operating expenses. A portion also adds to the Sandpiper fund, open to any Lake County resident who’s attending art school.
Craft estimated about 3,000 to 4,000 people visited the festival this year.
One vendor, Janice Brooks, uses tiny beads, beading thread and gems to create tapestries, jewelry and beaded flowers. Brooks has been to most every Sandpiper Art Festival for the last 10 years.
For her tapestry work, Brooks uses Delica beads. Delica is a brand name for perfectly uniform cylinder beads made by Miyuki of Japan.
“Delicas are very flat. In a tapestry, they allow you to achieve the detail you need,” Brooks said.
She also uses round seed beads because “they make nicer fringe.” Her pieces in the Sandpiper Gallery are made with size 11 beads, but she has used as small as size 20s. With beads, the bigger the number, the smaller the bead.
Sometimes Brooks said she’s gone through 100 needles on one project.
For a first-year vendor, Brooks’ advise was to set up the booth as professionally as possible. “Use only two or three colors in the booth, and don’t display all your work,” she cautioned.
Brooks also recommended featuring signature pieces on the right side of the booth since research shows customers usually go to the right when they enter.
The Sandpiper Art Gallery was the first business Brooks visited when she moved to Polson. She wondered if they were interested in her jewelry. They were, and she’s been a member ever since. As well as the Sandpiper, Brooks shows her work at Ninepipes Museum and at the Red Poppy in Ronan.
Not far from Brooks’ booth was Dion Albert’s booth. He brought birch bark berry baskets, round containers and woven items.
“Birch bark is his medium,” Tara Albert, Dion’s wife, said.
He learned to work with birch bark as a child from his dad, but they mostly made items for gifts.
“I took ill two years ago,” Dion said.
His doctors said he couldn’t go back to construction work so he wondered what’d he do to make a living.
“’Your art,’ my mom said,’” Dion said with a laugh, so now he works with stone, beads, birch bark and hides.
“I love to carve — stone and wood,” he said.
His sister, Angelique Albert, whose work is in the Smithsonian, taught him to bead two years ago while he was ill.
Dion beads a lot of knives, making up his own patterns. For weddings, he’s also made prosperity baskets — birch bark baskets lined with cedar, trimmed with buckskin and decorated with a cowrie shell. He also does custom birch bark pieces for people.
It’s a family affair, too, since a niece and her boyfriend tan hides. A nephew goes out in the wood in search of the downed birch trees.
The Alberts try to hit all the powwows with Dion’s art, and they send work to Omak and Oregon. He also sells work on Facebook and Etsy.
“I just want to keep some of the Native arts going,”
