2004 Clay Fest

CLAY FEST 2004:
A PSEUDO-RELIGIOUS TALE

By Kanika Marshall

The Sun God slept while cool grey clouds sang their morning song when my son and I climbed into our fully-loaded Chevy van during the wee hours of the morning (7:30 AM on a Saturday “is” the wee hours!). Fifty minutes later we saw the big, friendly yellow sign welcoming us to the Clay Fest in Lincoln.

The usual hustle and bustle of booth set-up seemed to be more pronounced than in the past two years, as numerous eager artists lined their booths around the entire Beerman’s Plaza Park and the next street over. What a wonderful variety of artists and displays! Having the metal and glass artists was certainly a nice enhancement to the Clay Fest.

My Parking God, Pierre, was his usual helpful self in granting me a parking space right in front of what has become “Kanika’s Korner,” at the southwest edge of the park. The mighty John Mehr was already almost set up when we arrived, with the multi-level display of his bevy of distinctively-glazed pots beckoning customers to come take a look.

I was delighted when my son agreed to help me, as the Clay Fest is always one of my most challenging shows regarding travel distance, logistics and . . . the EZ-Up. The 10’ x 10’ EZ-Up canopy is a critical piece of hardware to have for outdoor shows. The company advertises that it can be set up in 60 seconds. And I’m sure that is true with four people tackling it. However, I usually just have myself, so having my son to help was a fabulous start to the day!

We heard our neighbor, John, wrapping up sales even as we were finishing our set-up, which was well before the “start” of the event (he happily confided later that this was perhaps his best Clay Fest EVER!).

After 10 AM, the Sun God slowly opened his large, yellow eye and kissed the pots so they shined, to the delight of vendors and customers alike. My son was glad to get his legs warmed up too!

For me, this was to be among the most memorable and blessed of Clay Fests. My actual sales were mid-range in $$$$. However, the quality and quantity of customers had obviously improved over the past couple of years. Many of my previous customers came, chatted, and bought sculptures. A previous customer who now works for the Lincoln Messenger took pictures and notes. Joni and Greg, two long-time customers who I lost track of due to their address changes, added to their Kanika African Sculptures collection. Phyllis, whose son used to travel up from Southern California with his friends to visit his mom and the Clay Fest, added to her collection. Several other people who have attended Clay Fest in years past were complimentary of this year’s effort.

As a testament to the brilliant marketing by the Sacramento Potters Group Clay Fest Committee, all of my NEW customer sales were from Lincoln residents who had seen the yellow sign and ads! Good job!

Many friends from years past were also there:

- - Paula and her husband driving down from Oregon. I wish we had more time to talk.
- Nicholas (“Money Bags”) Guerrero who wouldn’t share his ice cream but would share some funny stories and information about the Old Sacramento Co-op.
- Joyce’s sister Phyllis and her latest domicile news.
- “Terry-Fox-4-Governor,” a politically-critical friend who I worked with and walked with for 20 years during my day job (who now lives in Lincoln).

But I also had the honor of meeting a pre-teen girl, a mentee of SPG member/mentor, Sue Lyle, who chose one of my sculptures to be the first in her art collection!

It was also fun to meet a young, handsome African American couple (“young” meaning born in 1979 . . . when I graduated from college and got married!) They had taken some wheel-throwing classes at the California State University at Sacramento and were eager to learn more about the SPG, Clay Fest, Seconds Show, selling as a hobby, etc. I enjoyed seeing their enthusiasm about clay and about each other (ah young love!).

An elderly customer very carefully scrutinized my booth and me in my African garb. In all seriousness (but with a twinkle in her eye), she pronounced that I won the award for the person who most closely represents her artwork.

The live music lent another hallowed dimension to the show (OK, OK, it was more “lively” than hallowed!). Did Laurie get a chance to play her instrument? I couldn’t see the stage, but I could sure hear the music. In the olden days of the Clay Fest (mid-1990s), there was always live music: elementary school choirs and bands, Sweet Adelines, Mumbo Gumbo, Mick Martin and the Blues Rockers, South American Pan Flute band, etc. It’s probably too expensive to do much in the way of musical entertainment anyway, and hard to get everyone to agree on the type and volume of music to play, but it’s great to try various show enhancements.

As usual, Anita was away from her booth (smile), and she and Mary and Gloria walked around making sure everything flowed well. Millie was delighted with the payoff for her diligence in strong-arming the Great Art Show God into submission; she definitely won the brass ring for all of us! And Laurie had a ball with the music.

4 PM - closing time - came so fast! We were so busy the whole time that it snuck up on us. I was so thankful to acquire some of Cathie’s outdoor sculpture right after closing! The shell pot and mother and baby sea tortoises are now gracing the Serenity Garden outside my studio.

After loading up the van, my son and I luxuriated at the ice cream parlor down the street and enjoyed a much-earned scoop of Gunthers - just a little slice of heaven.

Yes, the Weather God smiled on the efforts of all of those intrepid SPG members who worked so hard to make this year’s Clay Fest a huge success. Many thanks to you all!

What WAS I Thinking?
By Laurie Kneppel

   Breakdown? Runaway? Needles and Pins? These are all things that can describe preparing for the Lincoln Clayfest. This year it was also Dreams and Takin’ Care of Business. Clayfest 2004 started VERY early in the morning. I had loaded up the Escape the night before and all I needed to do was put the ice and drinks in the ice chest, take a last look around the house and head up to Lincoln.

   Actually Clayfest 2004 started a lot earlier than that morning. Last June, after we spent our SPG meeting complaining about the small crowd and small profits of last year’s Clayfest I said some magic words that would come back to haunt me – “I’ll help work on next year’s Clayfest if we do it.” Months went by and in October we got word that the Kiwanis was withdrawing from doing the Clayfest and we were on our own. Around the holidays, Millie called the first meeting of the SPG Clayfest Organizing Committee. Yikes! Now it was for real!

   Somehow I found myself on the Entertainment Committee along with Connie Chadwick. We decided to see if we couldn’t get some live music back this year. People like live music; the trouble was people who play live music generally charge a lot of money to do it. And we had virtually no budget. Then I get what seemed to me to be a brilliant idea – I would see if my old band would like to do the Clayfest. We could play it as a reunion, since we had “retired” last July, and make it a big party. To my great relief they were not already booked for that weekend and said they would LOVE to do it. I thought “Yay! This will be such fun! I’ll get to do clay and play music all on the same day!” Connie contacted the First Street School in Lincoln where she knew they had an elementary school chorus and I tried to get a kid that played Led Zeppelin on the bagpipes, but he was already booked, and we were off and running. Weeks of phone tag we finally produced a schedule and we were off and running. I would bring CD’s to play through my guitar amp until the kids got there and then the band would play the rest of the day after the kids were finished. We were pretty proud of ourselves for having learned so quickly how to be an entertainment committee.

   The evening before the Clayfest it finally dawned on me that my small SUV that is usually more than adequate for hauling either band equipment or clay booth stuff to various places was going to have to haul both things to the same place at the same time. With the large Fender amp taking up valuable inventory space I had the Escape stuffed to the ceiling. With my trusty guitar riding in the front seat I headed up to Lincoln in the cool dawn. This is about the time my mantra became “What WAS I thinking?” It was a long busy day but I did finally figure out what it was that I was thinking – I was going to have FUN! And I DID!

   I would like to thank Cindy Hagman and her students for putting up with my improvised sound system! Zane, the young soundman was a big help! I hope next year we will do even better! And a huge thanks to The Cat McCarthy Gang – good friends and good musicians!