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Some morning rain fell as Oriental’s First Celebration of the Arts began on Saturday. But ultimately sunny weather and even sunnier spirits prevailed as Hodges Street — from the Oriental Marina to the Old Hotel — became the showcase for the works of about 50 artists from both Oriental and away.

Marlene Miller, one of the two chief organizers, says the arts fest “ brought a lot of people to Oriental who might not necessarily have come here”. The feedback she got, she says, was that most artists and Hodges Street businesses did well and supported holding the otherwise “low-impact” event again next fall.

Miller says the event could become Oriental’s “fall color tourism.” The flat-land area may not have the changing autumn leaves, but Miller suggested the color comes from another source: the artists “by avocation or vocation,” who live here. (For the event, the organizers invited artists from away to take part, too.)

No entry fee was charged. Instead, artists were to give a percentage of their profits to the Heartworks charity in Bayboro. Miller says $800 was raised, with more expected to come in.

Bill Watkins of Durham says he heard about the arts fest on-line at the last minute and decided to come and sell his dry gourds. Mostly, though, he says he “just wanted to come to Oriental” and wasn’t expecting much beyond that.

Saturday afternoon he seemed surprised at how well his dry gourds were going over. Not enough to quit his day job as a project manager at GlaxoSmithKline, but enough to keep him contentedly weaving pine needles in to the tops of dried gourds.

Just down the street under another crape myrtle tree was Lou Powell, selling “wood sprits’ that he’d handcarved out of “cypress knees” from his land in Vanceboro. This was the first ever art show for the horiculture instructor at the prison in Bayboro.

Powell says he’d recently enquired about taking drawing classes at Pamlico Community College and the instructor there spied the piece of wood that he’d been whittling- something he says he does a lot of the time. She encouraged him to enter the show in Oriental and there he was Saturday, selling the gnome-like creatures he called, “wood spirits”. Some people thought they were, as Powell pronounced it, “Santers” but he says they can be “whatever you want them to be.”

Getting an early start on the Christmas holiday season — in a subtle way — was Cliff Hill, who had mistletoe for sale. It wasn’t a bunch of green leaves and white berries, but rather vases that he turned from mistletoe wood.

Technically speaking, this wood was a fusing of the parasite — which mistletoe is — and the tree it had invaded. That mix makes for some distinctive patterns in the wood, Cliff says. He had a chunk of the raw mistletoe wood on display next to the finished products, some of them a smooth olive green, others with spalted — sections where rot had set in — that gave the vases their off-kilter look.

Mary Jane Westphal meanwhile, had people looking twice thru the screens she’d painted.

They’re good, the Oriental resident says, “if you have an area that’s not a good view.” The screen in this case, keeps out bugs and bad vistas…

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Posted Sunday September 16, 2007 by Melinda Penkava