For an Allentown Art Festival weekend, it was mostly sunny skies and good crowds. However, festivalgoers could not escape the news from Orlando that a lone shooter had killed dozens and wounded more in a popular gay nightclub.The two days of packed art drew the usual tens of thousands, who meandered past everything from lots and lots of earrings to an artist making his copper on clay sculptures. The crowd also ate just about every kind of food available.
Mike from Pops Skillets said the slight breeze was great for those cooking everything the customers wanted to eat. "Italian sausage, home-make onion rings, fried bologna and onions, roast beef on weck," he was making for the crowds.
Allentown Village Society President Rita Lippman said it was another great art show. "We have very high quality, we feel, and it's a wonderful show," she said. "The weather cooperated and we have a lot of people down here."
Judging by the shopping bags moving away from the exhibitor's booths, businesses were also selling well. Photographer Michael Mulley said people wanted his pictures of Buffalo, old and new. "A little of both. Silo City is a big seller. People are really interested in Silo City," he said.
"Canalside to some extent," he said. "But, you know, the Cotter fire boat, the Psych Center, Shea's, Kleinhans, the sort of the monoliths of Buffalo are really, really my big sellers. They always have been." Mulley was in his first year at Allentown, after being at the Allen West show for two decades.
While the photographer had his pictures on display and ready to go, painter Paul O'Brien was making his own as crowds watched him work. O'Brien was painting all during the show.
"That's where the commissions come in. They usually want something a little more than what I have here now," O'Brien said. "Usually, when you sell a painting at a show like this, it's the end of the day. So, they come and they get it and they go home."
Gini Weslowski won a first prize in jewelry, a large category of exhibitors. "I do bead embroidery and bead weaving. So I do work with stones and seed beads and Shibori silk and anything that I can find and looks nice and goes with the piece and I make statement pieces," Wesolowski said. "They are all one of a kind and unique and unusual and fun and colorful."
Linda Lucas was a first place winner, this time in watercolors. The Buffalo native used her Florida base to study sea shells. "I did a painting that was called 'Seaside Cafe.' And I did a little research with the shell shape and then I went into the botanicals and matched them up with some beautiful flowers that resemble some of the accent shapes that are created with the painting of the shells," she said.
