art in bloom

Last Saturday, we hit the annual Art In Bloom festival in downtown Medford. It's a fun little festival the city puts together every year to showcase local artists and performers and plant nurseries. While I didn't find the perfect piece to take home, it was still a lot of fun to see our community's artists and to enjoy all the fun activities. The selection was very typically Oregon: earth-goddessy jewelry (beads, unicorns, fairies, etc.), picturesque watercolors, and a lot of wildlife photography. We did see some live ice sculpting that mesmerized the girls and there were some really cool little wooden toys. I was very tempted by the wooden propeller plane! Sam may need one. And there were some fun clocks (though the ones he was selling at the festival were cooler than the ones on line.)

Making Mother's Day cards

There is also an art form unique to this area called smudge pot painting. Smudge pots are deisel heaters that were used years ago to keep the fruit trees from freezing in winter. When you drive past the pear orchards around here, you can see these abandoned, rusty pieces of metal laying by the road or tossed in a forgotten corner. Artists reclaim these old smudge pots and then paint or sculpt them into pieces of art. Some were hokey, but some were pretty cool, like the giant kaleidescope smudge pot. Sadly, we were juggling snow cones and tired kids by this point in the festival and I neglected to get any pictures. Maybe next year! Here's one, thanks to the internets:

Hola, smudge pots!

The snow cones that captured our attention instead of the smudge pots.

The kids loved the children's activities: Mother's Day cards, giant canvases to paint on, the ubiquitous face painting, marigold planting. I'm looking forward to going again next year. The kids will all be a year older, so maybe I'll be able to steal a little more time to look at the booths and hopefully bring something home. But not so much the crystal unicorns.

Eve at the communal canvas

I love the look on Sam's face. I think he was very happy to be freed from the carrier.