Fort Myers Art Fair

Nine years ago we sold our house in Inver Grove Heights and bought 36 acres of rolling farmland in Lanesboro Minnesota. We built our “Dream House” a 6,000 SF straw bale structure that was as much an artist studio as a house. That same year we rented the ground floor of Brewster’s Red Hotel in town and started Strawhouse Studios Art Gallery. We had decided to get into the” lucrative” business of making and selling artwork to tourists. Our plan was to operate our gallery, making art in our studio on the hill during the summer, and then travel the warmer climates during the winter selling our wares at various art fairs. With lots of help and encouragement from our friends and families we managed to do most of this except for the art fair part. What happened? We found out that we were simply not cut out to do retail. Other than that, the desire, ambition and who knows, maybe even the ability was there.

So, now this many years later we had the chance to visit one of the finest art fairs of exactly the kind we were aiming at right here in Fort Myers. The weekend affair was well organized and well attended. Hundreds of artists from all over the country and Canada presented jewelry, sculpture, glassware, painting and photography of the most upscale variety. For example, here's a painting of some Florida birds --- you almost expected them to walk off the canvas they were so realistic.

There was food, music and even some free stuff. The weather was great and parking was “no problemo”. We walked the entire 6-8 blocks and were never disappointed. The sculpture pictured below was incredible and larger than life. The feet were probably 24 inches long and the figure roughly 12 ft. tall. The glass sculpture on the left was also incredible. It was basically hot poured glass drapped over a metal rod and stood about 4 feet high.

Halfway through we stopped and had some lunch and listened to a guy playing his saxophone. Listening and talking to the artists was the best part though. Knowing how close we had come to being the artist in the booth next door was our little secret. We admired all these daring entrepreneurs with all our heart, but we were glad it wouldn’t be us tearing down at the end of the show, loading up our trailer and heading off to the next town. Instead we stopped back at a booth to pick up a painting that Wendy had bought earlier and headed back to the RV for a snack and then early to bed.

Check out this last photo. Do you see Wendy reflected in the glass in the upper left corner? She's taking this photo and ended up being part of the piece :)

The Captain