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Art lovers flock to Moss Street for paint-in

It definitely ain’t just paint.
VKA-paint-1348.jpg
Crowds pack Moss Street for a car-free good time during the TD Art Gallery Paint-In on Saturday, July 16, 2016.

It definitely ain’t just paint.

The TD Art Gallery Paint-In that turned Moss Street into an upbeat 10-block mob scene on Saturday was about all kinds of art — glass, sculpture, pottery, jewelry and even neo-expressionist leggings, as well as pictures.

But it’s the street party vibe under sunny skies that takes it up a notch.

The 29th rendition of the combination of fine art and family-friendly festival required 250 volunteers to organize from Fort Street to Dallas Road, said event co-ordinator Ian Piears.

“We couldn’t do it without them,” he said.

Their work paid off for the crowds of art-lovers.

“It’s a lovely mother-daughter thing to do,” said Christie Burns, who comes every year with mom Lana Burns and lately scene-stealing corgis Henry and Penny.

“I’m so glad the weather turned out,” Christie said, referring to the overcast skies in the morning.

“It was a wonderful day, absolutely perfect,” Lana said.

“And there were a lot of different styles of artists this year, definitely more than last year — a lot of fantasy and abstract art, more than conventional landscapes that you would put over the living room couch.”

For the thousands of browsers who didn’t end up buying anything from more than 200 artists showing their works and how they are created — relax. Not all artists are starving in their attics.

Blown-glass artist Mieke van Orden, who trained for five years in England, was one of many first-time Paint-In participants and said her wares have netted her enough to buy a small house in Vic West at the age of 31.

“I struggled for so long,” van Orden said, wearing a chandelier of a necklace. She credited a Vic High course on silversmithing for setting her on the path to making jewelry and asymmetrical vases carved with an engraving lathe.

“I’m literally working pretty much from the minute I get up until I go to bed, but I love what I do,” she said. “I just feel blessed to be able to display my work.”

Handmade-tile artist Rosemary Murray, known for her mural at the Esquimalt public library, said she relies on custom orders and personalized tiles purchased for $1,000 apiece at fundraisers for B.C. Women’s Hospital. She gets paid $30, but has made thousands of them, so it works out.

Young mum Alison Hill sold a $495 depiction of a dystopian Disney castle, good news now that she’s having a studio built at the Shawnigan Lake home she shares with her bricklayer husband.

“It’s scary — it costs a lot of money,” she said, keeping an eye on daughter, Tazira, age 3.

Potter Libby Wray, a retired nurse who specializes in kitchenware in West Coast greens and blues, pots at her home right on the route.

Simone Cameron, 7, was taken by the whimsical miniature houses made of clay, and her mother even more so.

“They’re really great,” said Jeanine Demmler, admiring the charming little village.

There was everything from a graceful two-metre metal sculpture of a bare-breasted, headless woman by Darcy Gould — he’d like $10,000 or so for it — to a linocut laughing nun in full 1950s habit created by Leigh Buchanan, the nun being her mother before she chose to get married.

Painter Graydon — one name will do — displayed many arresting versions of his muse: black-haired silent-film star Louise Brooks rendered in 2016 mode. Meanwhile, sculptor Melanie Furtado created a small figurine from a life model clad in a leotard standing on the street.

“She was so still that people thought she was a sculpture.”

See you next year.

kdedyna@timescolonist.com