Hats off to handcrafters Annual festival celebrates local artisans

Author: Kelly Janis

"I am a particularly stammering idiot right now, because my heart is pounding," said Elissa Campbell above the din of shoppers milling about the Emerald Room of the Sheraton Conference Center in South Burlington. "Like, I'm hot and sweating and completely hysterical and about to pee my pants."

Campbell, a Montpelier, Vt. book binder who crafts journals, cards and photo albums for her company, Blue Roof Designs, had just made a big sale. "This is the most expensive thing I have," she said, describing what she dubbed the bridal suite - a boxed set containing numerous photo albums, a guestbook and a space for mementos. "I have never sold one. I am shocked beyond belief. I never thought this would happen to me today."

Such enthusiasm was the order of the day at the 55th Annual Vermont Hand Crafters Fine Craft & Art Show, held from Nov. 15 to 18 as the latest installment of a pre-Thanksgiving tradition spanning several decades. The show - billed as "Vermont's original, oldest and best fine craft fair" and etched on the Vermont Chamber of Commerce's list of Top 10 Winter Events - featured two floors of booths offering gifts, collectibles, clothing and home decor. The items for sale were crafted by over 150 of the state's most prominent artisans, all members of Vermont Hand Crafters Inc., the longest standing juried craft organization in the state.

The products offered were as diverse as they were plentiful, ranging from May Small's boiled wool hand knit felted hats ("They're warm, they're washable and they last for years," Small said. "They're a good, strong hat.") to Nancy Boehlen's sweaters for American Girl dolls ("I used to do ski hats, and a customer asked me to do a sweater and a doll sweater to match for her granddaughter," Boehlen said. "It just seemed to snowball after that.")

Money was not the only medium which traveled between shoppers and vendors as a flurry of quilts and cheese cake mixes and ornaments were transplanted from tables and shelves to plastic bags and purses. Just as heavily exchanged were the stories behind the crafts on display.

Campbell, for one, became what she calls "a total paper junky" during her years as a graduate student in Cambridge, when she took a job at a local paper store. There, she enrolled in classes in book-making which resulted in her becoming completely enthralled by the craft, and eventually writing her thesis on the use of book binding in the Expressive Therapies.

"I think the reason why books connect with me so much is, having been trained as an art therapist, I like to make something that helps someone else tell their story - whether it's through words, or through photos, or through sketches - and I also like the idea that I don't just make something that sits on a shelf," Campbell said. "It's something interactive. And when people use them, it becomes so personal, and it's absolutely one of a kind. I like making something that can do that."

Like Campbell, it was serendipity which lured pottery extraordinaire Heather Stearns to her craft. "I took a pottery class by accident in college," she said. "I had to take an art class. I didn't even know what ceramics was, but my friend was taking it."

Immediately, the class proved to be far more than a means of fulfilling a requirement. "I just got totally hooked," Stearns said. "Everything about that studio - the smell of it, and the kilns, and the fire, and the clay - was just so yummy. And once we got to the wheel throwing part, I thought, I have to be able to do that."

It wasn't easy at first. "I totally sucked at it," Stearns said. "So I just worked at it, and forgot about the other classes. I cruised through and changed my major to ceramics, bought a wheel when I graduated and just kept doing it."

Now, with two young daughters, designing functional, durable stoneware pieces for her Muddy Creek Pottery is tantamount to a balancing act between work and family.

"I'm trying to grow a business that works for me part time so I can still mostly be a mom, but still dig into this enough to feel that it's satisfying," Stearns said.

Alongside the more seasoned vendors was Lynne Berard, a watercolor painter who was one of several newcomers to the show this year. "I've been learning a lot," she said. "The show is awesome. There are a lot of beautiful crafts here. I'm really quite honored to be involved."

Berard described her business as the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. "I've always wanted to do this," she said.

In attempting to pin down her favorite piece, Berard gestured toward two paintings hung on the makeshift wall behind her - one of tulips, and the other of mountains flanked by the sunset.

"They came out of my head comfortably," she said, noting that the simplicity of both scenes appeals to her. "Some things are more of a struggle."

Many artisans thrive on this struggle, as emblemized by Ellen Spring's migration from ceramics to photography to acrylic painting before becoming smitten by the manner in which silk takes color, and roaring into high gear designing silk wearables in vibrant hues and rich earth tones. "Twenty years later, I still love doing it," Spring said.

Many of the artists cited less conventional phenomena as the most memorable aspects of their day. Boehlen, for instance, was occupied by watching people trip over the electric cord in front of her booth, while Stearns knitted and chatted with a neighboring vendor through a hole in the curtain which separated them, reportedly to the effect of convincing customers that she was talking to herself. Spring, however, adopted a more earnest perspective.

"The way most of us work is that we spend a huge amount of time by ourselves in our studios, relatively isolated," Spring said. "And the shows are the antithesis of that, where you get out and you interact with people and you get a response to the work."

"It's fun to sell the product, but it's also fun to meet the people," said David Walters, a South Burlington printer who merges letterpress printing with computer and mechanical drawing. As an example of his craft, Walters displayed a book he produced on his printing press, based on a story his son Tom wrote and illustrated at age seven, chronicling the misadventures of a young boy with a secret blue bag, and a girl who is eager to discover what is inside. (Incidentally, the bag contains a freight train.)

Still reeling from the sale of her bridal suite, Campbell heaped praise on the personalized nature of the event.

"I think for the people who have the opportunity to shop in other stores like Wal-Mart and get things really, really cheap, you don't get the connection that you do with getting something handmade from a person who has so much love in it," she said. "In this case, you know there's a quality behind it and that you're supporting a small business in Vermont."