It’s a rare art festival that’s held in surroundings as artfully designed as the works themselves. Art in the Garden, scheduled Saturday and Sunday at Toad Hollow Daylily and Iris Farm, is that sort of festival.
Nina and Gaylord West’s home at 1534 Road 170 is full of shaded pathways, rock retaining walls and borders with hundreds of varieties of green plants, benches and rock steps for resting and enjoying the surroundings, and the daylilies and irises for which Toad Hollow has become well-known.
The Wests were hosts for two weekends last month to the farm’s annual iris tour and this weekend they will not be surprised to welcome at least 1,000 art-fairgoers. Thirteen local artists will have their works on display from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is free.
Toad Hollow can be found by driving four miles east of Emporia on Interstate Highway 35 to Exit 135 and following the signs.
Food and refreshments will be sold by Camp Wood representatives, with proceeds used to benefit programs for the camp. Donations also will be accepted.
A silent auction is planned to benefit the ESU Art Department.
The Emporia Arts Council Artmobile also will be at Art in the Garden with supplies for hands-on artwork for children who attend, and for adults, too.
“We’ll be making butterflies, recycled art with coffee filters, maybe some butterfly bracelets,” said Brenda Hollenbeck of EAC. “Those that are working for us tend to make several of them while they’re standing there waiting, so adults are more than welcome.”
Painter Peggy Lyon and photographer Dave Leiker were at Toad Hollow last week in preparation for the exhibit.
“I think it adds a lot to our community to have this festival,” Lyon said. “I’m hoping that it continues to grow.”
The number of invited exhibitors fluctuates from year to year, but attendance is increasing steadily. The fair grew from an idea begun by two well-known Emporia artists.
Terry Maxwell, who continues to exhibit his vibrantly colored paintings, and the late master glassblower Hal David Berger initiated the show as a pre-Christmas event.
“For years and years, Terry and Hal did it,” Lyon said. “They did one at Hal’s house.”
It appears from records available that Maxwell moved the show to Toad Hollow in 2004, after Berger’s death from a heart attack in 2003.
No glassblower has taken Berger’s place at the show, though the genres represented now are diverse, ranging from lighter art made of fiber to heavier pieces of iron and stone.
Lyon and Leiker talked about another of the area’s artists who will exhibit this weekend, Alan Tollakson, stone sculptor with a national reputation for his architectural stonework. His art has been incorporated into buildings at Kansas State University and Houston, and in front of the Lyon County Historical Museum; individuals display his detailed carvings in their gardens and elsewhere.
“Alan Tollakson’s going to be replacing some stuff on the state capitol, and he’s going to have to rappel down,” Leiker said of the project and Tollakson’s willingness to take on personal risk for art’s sake.
Tollakson, like Lyon, has participated in the fair long enough to have a favorite spot to display his work. Leiker, who only in recent years returned to photography, agreed and added that a consistently shaded area is best for both the artists and those who attend the fair.
“It’s fun to see people you see every day, and they see a different side of you,” said Leiker, whose day job is Web site and media manager for the Emporia school district.
He is lucky, he said, to have a job with the “geeky tech side” and the creative aspect, too. He previously was a professional photographer who found that taking studio portraits did not satisfy the need to create, so he put aside that career and developed another.
“I really didn’t touch a camera for 20 years,” he said.
In the short time since he brought the camera out of retirement, he’s found plenty of places to exhibit his photos — or the places have found him.
His work is on display and for sale at Amanda’s Bakery and Cake Shop; the Emporia Arts Council has given him “a lot of exposure” and he was invited to have an exhibit at the Skyline Room at Emporia State University. As part of the Emporia Main Street’s Artist Walk, he helped people take self-portraits that he has posted on the galleries at flyoverpeople.net.
“It’s not anything that intentional, it’s just kind of rolling,” he said. “But it’s fulfilling.”
Leiker’s work ranges from a soft, dark Impressionist-like skyline to a sharply detailed landscape with an endless depth of field.
“It looks like an avalanche but it’s just sky, just sky,” he said of the former painting. “... I like the subtlety of Kansas. I don’t go for the epiphanies, the storms.”
Toad Hollow is another unsought opportunity for Leiker.
“It seemed like such an honor to be invited,” he said.
Lyon, an art teacher in the Chase County school system, has shown different types of artwork each year since the Toad Hollow fair began. She calls herself a summer painter because of the limited time available for painting during the school year. Teaching and enjoying the personalities of the students are pleasures she isn’t willing to give up for full-time painting.
“I love my kids (students) — they’re just hilarious — but this, it just adds so much,” Lyon said. “I like creating artwork. It’s so fulfilling.”
Lyon said she had exhibited at the Strecker-Nelson Gallery at Manhattan and has been commissioned for numerous paintings by businesses and individuals. She currently is finishing a commission for multiple paintings for a retirement home in Manhattan.
“They’re re-doing their dining room, so I’ve been painting food,” she said.
She also is giving thought to going back to landscape painting, as well as the cut glass she so enjoyed working with earlier in her career. Cut glass brings the satisfaction of the work itself, and the changes that take place when something is placed inside a cut-glass vase, for example.
“What I like about cut glass ... it turns into an abstract. It turns into a design,” she said. “I guess I’m not through with it yet.”
Other artists scheduled to participate in Art in the Garden, and their genres, are:
Barb Say, fiber; Dave Edwards, ironwork; Faye Stevenson, engraving; Laurie Brown, stained glass; Kat Dorcas, ceramics; Paula Hanlon, stained glass; Susan Fowler, jewelry; Jerry Schrock, photography; Terry Maxwell, painting; and Nina West, iris and daylilies from Toad Hollow.