Heading for an art attack

SHERWOOD KIRALY

Cartoonist Joe Martin once drew a “Willy ‘n Ethel” comic panel in

which Willy sits on his front steps, having painstakingly whittled a

rocking horse out of a block of wood. A well-dressed businessman

stands on the sidewalk at the foot of the steps, staring at the horse

and saying, “Quick, man -- how long would it take you to make a

million of those?!”

This image of art meeting commerce comes to mind because we’ve

once again reached the opening of the Sawdust Festival, Laguna’s

unique, celebrated arts-and-crafts summer show, and our own artists

are in the process of filling their just-built booths with as many

masterpieces as possible.

The rules for Sawdust exhibitors are more stringent than you might

expect.

They’re written to ensure that the artwork is original and

handcrafted by the exhibitors themselves, which essentially means

that you have to create something -- you can’t just sell Slinkies out

there -- and you’re supposed to make it all by yourself. Each

exhibitor is allowed no more than one helper in producing his or her

artwork -- the one-Santa, one-elf rule.

My wife has been a Sawdust exhibitor for 20 years, and in order to

maintain an inventory of stylish but under-$50 jewelry she works

year-round, sometimes with an elf, more often alone.

Each summer Patti Jo oversees her Downtown shop and her Sawdust

booth, hires and schedules booth-sitters, and makes rings, earrings,

bracelets and pendants. She twists and cuts wire, solders, buffs and

pounds. Her nerves pinch, her neck stiffens, her back aches, her

carpals tunnel and her mind gets overcrowded. She doesn’t snarl. I

would snarl. She occasionally says things like, “I can’t think about

that now,” and “Who are you?”

She tells of another Sawdust artist who, also at this time of

year, was roused out of bed one night by the police, asking if she

really wanted to leave her car in the driveway with her purse inside

and all the doors open.

The other night Patti Jo went to a bridal shower, a long-planned

break in her schedule. She handed the gifts to the bride-to-be, wrote

down who gave what, handed off the final gift, stood up and said,

“OK, that’s the last one, now let’s all go home and make jewelry.”

She doesn’t have to make the same thing a million times, because

the customers at the Sawdust like variety. So do the artists, if it

comes to that. So every year there are new paintings, new jewelry

designs, new sculptures.

On opening night, with all the booths up, the lights on, the music

playing, and the pieces on display, it looks glamorous, in an

artsy-craftsy way.

But as you stroll through the grounds, keep in mind that those

horses took a lot of whittling.