Chimneyville 2012

I was a day late getting there, but I did make it at last.  Chimneyville is one of the two big craft/art events I look forward to every year.  I always have the best time with my friend and with the artists who come to show there.  This year was no exception.

I went on a mission.  I knew I wanted some very specific things, a piece from Michael Hayman who creates silver jewelry with Celtic and Norse motifs; an owl from Peter Rose who is probably one of my two favorite US potters; a dragon from Sam Clark, the other favorite; and another pen or something from Cadman and Cummings Studios, makers of all sorts of gorgeous writing instruments.  Anything else would just be gravy, but I had been thinking about these pieces for a long time.

I also wanted to find things related to mythology since I am VERY much on a kick with that right now, my natural and long-standing interest in all the stories and legends having been pushed into overdrive by the teaching of the course.  I thought my chances of finding interesting objects with their beginnings in myth might be better there than anywhere else.

The first piece I found proved me right.  A craftsman from Texas had wonderful metal creatures on sale.  I loved them all, cute, creative, and detailed as they were, but the small white Pegasus was perfect.  I reached, mostly impolitely, past a woman who was standing and staring aimlessly at the tree and plucked it up for my own.

Then it was off through the aisles.  It never ceases to amaze me what wonderful stuff people bring and how much diversity there is to the offerings.  Some people are there every year.  Some were newcomers.

Finally, though, my friend and I wandered onto an aisle that had Cadman and Cummings on it.  I looked at their selection, and my eye was caught by a beautiful bright red sketch pencil.  If you're not familiar with that concept, they have a very large lead in them, and the comfortably bulky pencil body allows for long use without as much hand fatigue.  I am not an artist, but I do sketch sometimes.  I have been wanting one of these for a long time, but the only ones I ever saw were from Levenger and they were bright florescent yellow.  Not for me.  This one has a body of turned red acrylic.  It has that same subtle sparkle that you might see in a bowling ball (which makes sense since they're both of the same material).  I used it as soon as I got home, and it is an absolute pleasure to write and draw with.  Piece one on my list accomplished.

The second piece came when we finally found Peter Rose.  Nobody was where they usually are this year.  I had almost given up finding him when we turned up a row and I saw his distinctive creatures peeking out from behind a divider.  As always, I sort of wanted everything.  It is so hard to choose between all the lovely things he has.  He had more ravens this year, some of them large and grand, some of them small enough to hold with one hand.  I love them.  No matter how many of them I have, they make me happy every time I see them.

He also had a variety of other things, and I tried to focus on the owls.  I have been saying now for about three years that I was going to get one of his owls for the collection I have at school.  Each year, some other piece has seduced me.  This year, I forced myself to look at other things before gravitating back to the ravens, and something else snagged me.  It was a hawk with a gorgeous Bizen-ish/Tokoname-ish red-brown glaze to it.  While the glaze was pure Japan, the shape was almost Egyptian, and all I could think of was "Horus."  The markings on the wings look almost like hieroglyphs.  When I picked it up and ran my fingers over its beautiful beak, I knew I had to have it.  Two other things should have told me I was looking for a hawk today, the fact that I'm teaching Ancient Egyptian mythology tomorrow and the fact that as I drove to Jackson today, a lovely hawk sat on the powerline right over the interstate and watched me go past.

One of the reasons I love so much to go to this show is perfectly exemplified in the buying of my hawk.  The artists like to talk to the people who come to see them.  It's so nice to be able to speak to such talented people.  Peter Rose is always fantastic.  I look forward to going by his booth every year as much for the conversation as for the art.  This year was no different.  He actually gave me a little raven to take with me when I was leaving.  I was overwhelmed.  It was so incredibly kind of him to do that. That little raven will join its brother from last year in my classroom, and now I shall have Huginn and Muninn together.

That left only two things on my list.  I had been by Michael Hayman's booth earlier, but I wanted to walk around and think about the piece I'd seen there and liked.  Before I arrived, I had been thinking about his pendant of Mjollnir, remembering it as something I might like to have.  I already have two pendants by him and a pair of raven earrings, but I had also been wanting something with Yggdrasil, the world tree, on it since I'd taught Norse mythology recently.  He had a pendant that has Yggdrasil with a tiny raven under it and a little acorn that dangles from the bottom.  Check, check, and check.  To me, even though the world tree is supposed to be an ash, the acorn stood for Ratatosk, the little squirrel who spends all day stirring up crap between the eagle at the top and the dragon gnawing the roots.  It was perfect.  After seeing everything, I still wanted it, so I went back and got it.  I'm wearing it now.  I'll wear it tomorrow.  It is exactly what I wanted.

Only one item on my list went undone.  (If you've been paying attention, you already know what this is.)  I had intended to get one of Sam Clark's reading dragons today.  I had the money and everything.  What I wound up without, however, was Sam Clark.  He has been at every single Chimneyville I've ever been to, and he, like Peter Rose, is one of the artists I most look forward to seeing and talking with.  No joy this year.  I hope nothing bad has kept him out of the festival and that he will return next year.  It just wasn't the same without him and his smiling, coffee-drinking frogs and wise, sly, grinning dragons.

All in all, it was a great day.  I have new things that will make me happy each time I look at them or wear them, useful things, lovely things.  I will remember the people I talked to, the time with my best friend.  Every year I come away from Chimneyville feeling refreshed and inspired.  I hope that maybe the people who exhibit there do, too, somehow despite the long hours sitting and the distance and difficulty of travel.  I'd hate to think they got nothing but money, as nice as it is, from it when those of us who go to see get so very much more than the tangible.