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| Four decades of art with a heart By STACY TREVENON--Half Moon Bay Review Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, August 31, 2005 3:54 PM PDT Forty-two years ago, a Kings Mountain needlepoint and craft group, the Pine Needles, decided to hold a sale to get rid of two years' worth of surplus crafts. A neighbor, John Wickett, offered his two-story barn. But a crisis arose: the Pine Needles didn't have enough crafts to fill it. The answer was art. And the Kings Mountain Art Fair was born It was an inauspicious birth. The barn was used to store cars, and organizers threw hay over the grease stains. They decided they liked the folksy look. Someone set up a popcorn machine. Someone else ran spin art. Neighbors, from hobbyists to Ken Washburn who had taught art at Cornell University for 20 years, pitched in their work. The fair drew "whoever saw it along the highway," said organizer and 43-year Kings Mountain resident Ardyth "Ardy" Woodruff. It made about $50 gross, which boiled down to $35 after popcorn and spin art supplies were paid for. But it planted a seed. This Labor Day Weekend, the 42nd annual Kings Mountain Art Fair will take place in and around the community center and fire station that it built over those four decades. It is now restricted to 135 high-caliber western region artists plus about 25 "mountain folk" artists in a section all their own. But in many ways it has not changed. It is still volunteer-organized and run by the 450-household Kings Mountain community, which shuns professional or commercial funding or promotion. There's no recorded music or entertainment. There's only the fragrant ambience of redwood trees and the ubiquitous, enduring art. The caliber of painting, sculpture, fiber, leather, jewelry, woodworking, toys and elegant-craftsy household d/cor, placed Kings Mountain in the top western United States fairs by the Harris List, a publication for art professionals. And it was named among the 200 "Best in the U.S." fairs by Sunshine Artist magazine. But there's something behind the art, residents will tell you. "It's important," said painter Rebecca Holland, who has sold her oil paintings of landscapes and redwoods here since the beginning. "In terms of the money and the way it feels to be here." "This is an art fair. It is not a festival," said Zanette Cornman 91, who co-chaired the fair for its first 15 years along with Woodruff. But that art testifies to a fair that is at once the pride, the heart and the saving of this community. THE THREAT OF FIRE In 1962, a local fire department was formed "basically as a good excuse to play poker and for the local men to 'bond,'" resident Kathy Kennedy wrote in an article about the fair. In tinder-dry 1964, a neighbor burned out some dead grass on his land. It was routine for him, but the blaze got out of control. "There was a 1,600-acre fire that our volunteer fire department was trying to fight with garden hoses and grit," said Woodruff. "We knew we had to get serious about fire protection." The little crafts fair took on a calling when organizer and co-chair Jean Cole, who ran an art gallery, saw it as a way to address a need. "Jean wanted it to be money-raiser," Woodruff said. "What do you do, hold a bake sale? She was the heart and the soul and the business." Cole envisioned a high-end, juried show. Woodruff championed community interest. They struck a balance: under Cole's guidance, the show became juried with a secret process that avoided personal politics, while Woodruff initiated the Mountain Folk Art and Kiddie Hollow (then the Small Fry Hollow) for community flavor. Jean's architect husband, John Cole, designed a fire station and community center on his own time. Land was donated by the Phleger family and fair funds went into building with volunteer labor. Forty-one years after the 1964 fire, the fire station and community center are now the necessary hub of the community. The fair outfitted the station too, says Kings Mountain Volunteer Fire Brigade Chief Jim Sullivan. Fair funds procured a Type 1 engine used in structure fires, a Type 3 engine used in wildland and structure fires, a rescue vehicle and a utility/support vehicle. The fire brigade, consisting of 18 volunteers from the Kings Mountain community, is busy. It answers from 150 to 200 calls annually, Sullivan said, of which 75 percent are medical assists or vehicle accidents, 20 percent are wildland or structure fires and the rest is for varied public assistance. "We have had every type of emergency you can imagine," Sullivan said. Off the mountain, the nearest fire assistance is 15 minutes away, he said. "If somebody has a heart attack, we're able to get there in a shorter time." The fair "is the key" for local fire protection, said new chairman Dawn Neisser. But the fire's shadow remains. "It is a huge accomplishment for a 450-household community to consistently put on a top fair with a 100 percent volunteer staff," she said. "We're motivated by our terror at the thought of another large forest fire." A 'SPECIAL' PLACE Jean Cole died in 1984, but her business-with-heart code lived on. Woodruff, who ran the fair for 15 years with Cole, stayed on, volunteering in different capacities. At 79, she has turned over a lot of her organizing duties to her daughter and neighbor, Michele Wilson. But she's a fair regular - and an avid mountain resident. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else," she said. Neither would Cornman, who visited the mountain in 1950 with her husband, scouting possible retirement property. "We never left," she said. Kings Mountain, she said, "is a pretty special place. There's something about the community - I don't know where you could find people so concerned with the welfare of their neighbors." "It's a small town without that small-town feeling of people running your life. They're just there to help if you need them," said Woodruff. "You can do for the community, or you can be a hermit. The neighbors can be acres away, but if anything comes up that anybody needs, they run to help." And the art fair reflects that community, participants say. "We live in the woods and love the environment. We want to share it with the people who come," said Holland, who credits the fair with giving her "my start" in her professional painting career. "That makes it different from fairs that are commercial." Publicist Kennedy offered her own clue to the fair's success. "There is still not a professional promoter," she said. "Just every man, woman and child making sure guests have a good time." ART IN THE FUTURE All ages participate in the fair, from veterans like Holland to Erin Miller, 6, who will volunteer for her third year this year, helping in the food area. "It's fun!" she says. They help in different ways. Woodruff still chalks out the booth plan on the blacktop at the fire station. Others drive the cable car shuttle that will ferry visitors to the site from their cars. Others pitch in to bake the required 3,600 chocolate chip cookies sold as "Grandma Jenny's Cookies," which fund another fair beneficiary - the Kings Mountain Elementary School. Those cookies have helped bring in teacher's aides, supplies and enrichment programs at the school. "It's a miracle to us" that the fair has survived as it has, having eschewed commercial promotion that has taken over many fairs, said Woodruff. "I don't know any other place that has a fair like this that goes on. But here we are." Does the art fair fight change? "In the old days, everyone did everything," remarked Woodruff. "But now, we keep records helped by computers" as opposed to the big, flat boards on which old photos are pasted, which longtime organizers treasure. "The more successful it gets, the more we are able to think about the experiences of the people who come," Holland said. The idea of acoustic music has been toyed with over the years, said 13-year mountain resident Neisser. A harpist now plays in the Fine Arts Hollow, and has been well received. But other experiments with music were nixed by the community and visitors. How long can it keep going like this? "Times change, artists change, the customers may be changing," said Neisser. "So we watch that carefully. The fair has been extremely successful for more than 40 years, so clearly, everything we are doing, we seem to be doing appropriately." |