Autumn and Art: in perfect Wichita weather, art in all its sensations

Autumn and Art organizers couldn’t have picked a better day.

Nature set up the perfect outdoor studio and exhibit space Saturday, with sunny skies and invigorating temperatures. Thousands of people visited art booths along Bradley Fair Parkway behind Bradley Fair shopping center at 21st and Rock Road. In the fourth straight year of the Autumn and Art festival, visitors got to experience art in all its dimensions, hues, angles, media and sensations.

Jeannie Foster displayed her paintings of weathered and vintage cars and trucks. She has hunted the back roads of Kansas and scanned the remote plains from Kansas to New Mexico looking for glints of chrome bumpers and stainless steel trim that reflect what she is looking for: an aging hulk of a 1950s Buick or a 60-year-old Chevy pickup sunken in a pasture or poking out of a shed. Nature has etched and painted the old metal bodies with shades of rust over factory mint greens, snow whites, royal blues.

She studies the shading that time has worn into the paint.

“I work really hard to get that patina,” she said. “Color is my thing.”

She takes pictures so she can paint the vehicles later.

“The hunt is sometimes more fun than the painting. You know, they’re disappearing” from the landscape. “I think they’re works of art, all by themselves,” she said.

“I’ve probably been into every small town in the state of Kansas. You get off the highway. That’s where the fun comes.”

Foster knows to approach an old car with caution when nature has taken over the vehicle and populated it with critters. She has encountered hornets and “things that slither.”

“The really cool ones, they’re just full of tumbleweeds,” she said enthusiastically. “I mean, just literally the whole cab is full of tumbleweeds.”

Foster’s was only one of dozens of booths. Together Wichita 2014 set up one of its 10-foot-tall fiberglass replicas of the “Keeper of the Plains” statue by Kiowa artist Blackbear Bosin. The giant statue is Wichita’s signature art symbol, rising from the ground at the junction of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers.

Together Wichita 2014 is a community project involving 22 local businesses and groups to feature what makes the city unique. It is the 40th anniversary of Bosin dedicating his art to the city. The idea is to have artists, including high school students and well-known professionals, decorate replicas and have businesses showcase them in a public art project.

According to Together Wichita 2014, each replica costs $6,000, which includes the sculpture artwork and a special coating to preserve the statue and its base. For more information, contact Heather Denker at 316-371-7377 or heather@togetherwichita2014.com.

So far, companies have bought 14 of the replicas.

At another exhibit, sculptor Craig Campbell invited people to add their own touch with dabs of clay to a bust he had created of a girl with a gracefully sloping nose and leafy headdress.

“Fingers are just an extension of your mind,” Campbell said of the hands-on work of sculpting. To understand form, he said, you have to think about how things move, how anatomy fits together. He used the midmorning light from the east to illuminate his work. His tools include a case full of brushes, hand-sized rakes, spatulas and little spears. “Anything could be a sculpting tool,” he said. Even chopsticks.

Saturday’s art displays also were multicultural. The Saudi Student Association at Wichita State University set up a display of traditional Saudi utensils and textiles. The Saudi students offered a printed handout with “Fun and Interesting Facts about Saudi Arabia.”

One of the displays was art on wheels: a sleek silver and black 2010 Audi R8 luxury sports car with a price of $124,950.

At another spot, Scott Hartley sat behind his display of multicolored, sculptural art glass, including a coffee table.

“The whole point is to show the fluidity of the glass,” the Benton artist said.

“Glassblowing is the perfect merger, a dance of sorts, between science, art, and physicality,” Hartley said in a handout describing his background and his art.

“Glass and art have allowed me to deal with the diagnosis of both of my daughters with a rare, genetic, neurological disorder,” he wrote. “The joy, the sorrow, and the love that envelops my life are expressed with each piece that I complete.”

When he creates with glass, he said Saturday, “It’s therapy. For me, it’s meditation as well.”

He brings his daughters into his studio. Their vision is impaired, but they can connect with the activity around them: the noises, the torch and the sensation it gives off.

“They just love the warmth of it,” he said.

The art show and sale continue Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This story was originally published September 13, 2014 at 6:15 PM with the headline "Autumn and Art: in perfect Wichita weather, art in all its sensations."