Oregon Country Fair

• July 10, 11, 12
• Veneta, OR

Humboldt Artisan's Crafts & Music Festival

• December 4,5 & 6
• Holiday Fine Arts & Crafts festival, featuring live music
  and the best of the Pacific Northwest's artisans.
• Redwood Acres Fairgrounds, Eureka, CA
• Contact: (707) 444-8817

Willits Community Christmas Fair

• Friday, December 11—12 to 8 pm
• Saturday, December 12—10 am to 5 pm
• Music, Crafts & Food
• Willits Community Center
• Contact: 459-3411

Jon and I have always been artists, so it was a natural direction for us to sell our artwork at crafts fairs. In the 1970’s, we became craftspeople when we had a booth at the original Renaissance Faire in Novato, California. It was a requirement that all the crafts offered had to be made by the craftsperson. No imports or mass-produced crafts were allowed. Everyone made their own costumes and built their booths. As the years went by, many smaller Renaissance Fairs started up, and the quality of the crafts was not as important as filling the booth spaces.

Now, at most of these fairs, over half of the craftspeople do not make their own work, they buy imports from another country and resell them. Because they do not make the work, they do not have a personal connection with the art they are selling, and it becomes an object with a price tag on it. We have always felt that one of the best things about buying art at a crafts fair, rather that a store, is the opportunity to meet and talk with the artist you are purchasing the item from.

One of our favorite parts of making our work is meeting people at the fairs and on the phone, who share our love of the Celtic tradition, and appreciate the research and time we put into our work. They share their stories with us about travels in Ireland and Scotland, their Celtic heritage, and we learn a lot about Celtic art from each other.

There are less and less artist/craftspeople in the United States today, because it is a difficult way to make a living, and the fairs are not art fairs anymore. But creating garden art by hand is what we love to do. Since we are participating in only a few crafts fairs now we look forward to sharing our work and thoughts with you on our website.

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