Today’s Special: Steaming Piles of Art

Eat it, it’s good for you

That beautiful image you’re looking at is the official poster for the Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival which is taking place this weekend just down the street from where I live.

No, despite its name, this is not a festival featuring art drawn on sidewalks.

Although that sounds like fun, doesn’t it? And I hear it’s a thing in some cities where chalk artists convene to show off their skills on concrete.

I’ve never attended such an event, but I can only imagine that when festival-goers want to buy something they have to use jackhammers to remove the slab of concrete, haul it home in front-end loaders and hope like hell the hangers they bought at the hardware store will do the job.

Yes, art endures. But their walls won’t.

***

The Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival —”one of the oldest, largest and most prestigious in the country,” according to its website—has been calling itself that since it started 66 years ago.

These days, it draws so many people you can’t even find the sidewalks.

I’m talking tens of thousands of people, spilling out from the sidewalks and onto our quaint, bumpy brick streets, which exist mostly to keep local muffler shops in business.

I find it encouraging that there are so many art lovers here in Florida, which is too often portrayed as a place where culture goes to die.

This is absolutely not true.

As I write this, there are vast throngs of Floridians consuming art in Winter Park.

Then again, my definition of “art” extends to funnel cakes. And festival-goers are consuming a whole lot of those.

My favorite art form

***

Many of the artists at the festival felt compelled to post an official “Artist’s Statement” outside their booths. Apparently such statements are necessary to explain what drives the artists to unleash their creations on an unsuspecting public.

And trust me, from what I saw, some of them have a whole lot of explaining to do.

Here is an actual statement I read outside a booth where a bunch of glass bowls were on display: “I find inspiration at the intersection of humanity and compassion, nourished by the synergy of color and fecundity, and reflecting the common denominators of resilience and spirituality.”

Having read that, I looked at the display again, hoping to spot some fecundity or synergy that might have eluded me at first glance. But no, it still looked like a bunch of glass bowls.

The funnel cake stand didn’t have a statement, but if I were a funnel cake artist, which is becoming more and more appealing, my statement would read: “I find inspiration by pouring batter into hot grease, frying it and sprinkling sugar on top. That’ll be seven dollars.”

***

The first day of the festival, my lovely wife and I took a stroll downtown to expose ourselves to art (I am happy to report that art did not press charges. Ba-dum, ching …)

We stopped at an official art festival booth that was selling this year’s poster, along with t-shirts and coffee mugs and other stuff emblazoned with the poster’s image.

My wife asked the young volunteers working the booth: “Do you have stationery?”

Long pause.

Young volunteer #1: “What’s stationery?”

Young volunteer #2 (light bulb going on in his head): “Oh, you mean like pens and things to write with? No, we don’t have any of that.”

My wife, for the record, is the World’s Foremost Writer of Notes. If you’ve ever met her and you have a birthday or an anniversary or are celebrating an engagement or a bar mitzvah or an appendectomy or whatever, then you will get a sweet and thoughtful handwritten note from her. For what she spends on stationery each year, we could treat the whole world to funnel cakes.

We eventually did find a booth that sold stationery and my wife bought a box of it. The moment we got home, she said: “I should have bought more.”

That meant I had to return to the festival with my wife the next day and risk exposing myself to more art. Thankfully, our first visit had built up my immunities and I survived. Still, I had a hard time finding a front-end loader to bring all the stationery home.

***

This is a good place to credit the artist who created this year’s festival poster.

His name is Andrew Spear and since I am not paying him for using his art here, I figured I would at least pimp his website.

Here’s one of his t-shirts. It carries a powerful message.

“Thou Shalt Not Care About the Opinions of Others.”

***

I should probably tell you that my wife will no longer allow me to attend the Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival unless she accompanies me.

That’s because several years ago I wandered off from her, found a piece of art I really liked and bought it.

It shows a flock of sandhill cranes (one of my favorite Florida birds) flying over Paynes Prairie (one of my favorite Florida places.) Here it is:

My wife hates it. And when she found out how much I paid for it, she immediately went out and bought hundreds of dollars worth of stationery in retaliation.

Still, my wife loves me. And she let me hang this beautiful artwork on one of our walls. That the wall is right outside the downstairs bathroom and there’s not enough light to see it very well does not in any way diminish the love she has for me.

But it does bring us to Today’s Poll!