Bigger and better museum art fair

Well, it’s not just earrings and earrings and more earrings! The Tucson Museum of Art‘s Fall Artisans Market is not only larger this year, it has a greater variety of artists and craftspeople showing their works than in previous years. One example is the collection of handmade fabric dolls by Patrice Frassinelli Lange shown at the top of this post. Coming across these unexpectedly, I realized that I had never seen dolls like these in any art or craft fair. Better yet, these hand stitched and hand painted dolls reminded me of the fabric dolls my grandmother made for me decades ago. (I still have them.)

Adding more to the show: three artisans/artists are actually doing their work on site: a rug weaver from Mexico, a painter from Tucson and an indigenous painter from one of the Eastern tribes.

Rather than tell you more, I will show you a little bit of what you can see at this art fair this weekend.

Mel Mendez was weaving a rug in his booth surrounded by dozens of his rugs. The other two artists-in-residence are the landscape painter Barbara Mulleneaux whose studio is in Tucson and…

Daniel Ramirez whose work can be found on etsy. No photo of Ramirez, but here is one of his now famous paintings of indigenous women in their ceremonial, formal clothing. (Except for the bottom painting where some of the women are in contemporary clothing.)

Sculptor Adam Homan brought his clever metal figures. I hadn’t seen any of these before. Apparently the rhinosaurus he exhibited in a previous show has sold.

And here is a gallery of some of the other art and crafts on display, including a rather rustic pottery image of the ubiquitous Our Lady of Guadalupe in the fourth image.

If you are hungry after walking around the show, you can pick up food from a truck parked nearby or walk two blocks to the very popular Ceres which has open air seating on Washington Street. Their specialties are pastas and they have gelato, too. Note: the mural on the right is brand new and a great addition to the area.

The artisans market ends on Sunday, November 20th.

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