Craft Vendors at Festival a Diverse Mix

Outside of one tent, a Girl Scout twirls a bright red parasol; at another booth, a man is in deep conversation about customized name art. During day one of the Burke Centre Fall Festival, families wandered through crooked rows of tents, pushing strollers and keeping dogs in check while perusing local art pieces and conversing with local artisans. The products showcased ranged from the usual jewelry and photography options to the more obscure, including Bonsai trees and personalized golf markers.

Most vendors were Virginia residents, proudly selling handcrafted wares. Others had traveled from nearby states like North Carolina and Pennsylvania to share their creations. Though some of the vendors were full-time artists, most were hobbyists using spare time away from their nine-to-five jobs to let the creative juices flow.

Sandy Thunker of Gainesville, VA treats her greeting card design gig as a part-time job, a project she maintains while also managing rental properties. Though she has been taking photographs for years, it was only in the past year that she decided to turn her images into customizable greeting cards. "I was looking for a niche," she said, and so for the past year she has been working to showcase her crisp photographs on personalized, matted cards. "I played with things until they looked professional." While she says the greeting card concept is growing trendier, her booth of vivid animal-covered cards certainly stood out in the festival.

For some, the creative outlet is a new one. When Sarah Gayle Strickland first decided to write a children's book, she was just looking to pass some time while traveling. Soon her words and illustrations spun themselves into a whole enterprise, and her lushly illustrated fairy story sparked a new set of artistic creations including fairy houses and original art, which she showcases proudly alongside her book.

Other individuals have been lucky enough to turn their hobbies into professions, as Susan Bock of Gum Spring, VA has done with her unique photography alteration. Bock has a background in shooting black and white photography, but the project she showcased at the festival featured hand-tinted historic photos.

"It's taken on a life of its own," she said, flipping though a box of altered prints from the early days of the abolitionist movement. Bock collects and restores old photographs on a variety of themes – civil rights, women in the early 1900s, the rural south – and then paints them with a special set of oils until they become new art pieces. She is clearly passionate about each piece she creates, a trend easily noticeable throughout the crowd of vendors at the festival.

Enthusiasm levels were high during the afternoon, as visitors mixed and mingled with the crafters. Many of those running booths were husband and wife duos, or family groups coming together to support one main artist. That sense of camaraderie carried forth throughout the festival, bringing members of the Burke community together to celebrate art – an eternally worthy goal.