Hundreds turn out for rainy Craven Arts Festival

Those who think arts are an umbrella for universal expression found Craven Arts Festival giving that a literal voice Saturday.

New Bern Riverfront Convention Center’s lobby was full of umbrellas with more covering the heads of the hundreds who attended the event.

“The rain hasn’t bothered it a bit — raincoats, umbrellas, everywhere. It’s been absolutely wonderful,” said Carol Torkarski, Craven County Arts Council executive director.

“The kilns are going at the sidewalk and they are doing an aluminum pour under the covered entranceway, just hiding out from the rain,” Torkarski said.

Craven Arts Council President Judy Avery said: “There has been a steady crowd since we opened the door.”

Inside the convention center, Jane Horner’s installation sculpture hung questions submitted by people attending on lantern-like four-dimensional frames graced by flowing white fabrics and ribbons.

The questions on inch-high strips of white paper asked things like, “in which way do you stretch yourself to make your artwork grow,” and in Horner’s case the answer is every way.

The multimedia artist, who has lived and created many years in Vermont, moved to New Bern in 2009 to help care for her father and has stayed, she said, even after he passed on. Her work often appears in windows and lobbies and she seeks to include a sense of movement even with the still media she uses in sculpture, assemblages, and acrylic and watercolor paintings or drawings.

Farther inside, 35 booths representing an enthusiastic group with diverse artistic media entertained, taught, sold — and in some cases gave — visitors their art.

New Bern potter Ben Watford, 79, a retired high school chemistry teacher and college professor, was throwing pottery inside and giving children who watched the process answers and a piece of his previously completed work.

Emmy and Sarah Ingalls of Greenville, granddaughters of oil-on-canvas artist Susan Hamrick, who was displaying her work nearby, watched Watford intently as he threw clay onto his wheel and made a vase right before their eyes.

“I liked it best when he pulled it up,” Emmy said.

Watford threw mostly vases on Saturday but said: “I now do more face jars than anything else at my shop at home.”

He will be hosted by Nells Art Gallery in Greenville Oct. 7 for a one-man show of his work including some ECU Pirate face jars.

Hamrick was having a good day at her own Simply Susan booth. She said a sale while she was setting up paid her booth rent.

Torkarski said many of the artists said they paid for their booths on sales at the Friday night exhibition preview party for participating artists and ticket-holders. That event, attended by 225, included wine and desserts and entertainment by John Van Dyke performing show tunes.

Saturday’s main event was free to the public, with 15 paid seminars including principles of aluminum casting, Chinese brush painting on clay, jewelry making, printmaking, photography, drawing, raku, sculpture, Ikebana flower arranging and others.

Avery said the council’s first festival showcases New Bern as an arts destination. “We see this festival as providing great visibility for the tremendous talent and resources in our community.”