Sandpiper Outdoor Art Festival draws big crowds, great weather
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Poised on a piece of driftwood, the rainbow trout looked as if it would soon dart into deeper water or rise to pick off a tasty salmon fly.
Although it looked ready to swim off, the trout was a piece made by local artist Dion Albert from thousands of seed beads. The fish formed the scabbard for a hunting knife that’s handle continued the color pattern of the rainbow’s body.
Albert’s fish and birch bark work joined more than 60 other artists’ work at the Sandpiper Gallery’s 44th annual Outdoor Art Festival. Each August the gallery holds the show and sale on the Lake County Courthouse lawn, a shady space for visitors to stroll, buy unique art and enjoy the food and drink vendors. The art festival is one of the stalwarts of summer in the Flathead.
Another artisan not only makes her items locally, but she pedaled them into town from her home on Rocky Point Road. “A semi-local resident,” Liz McGoff spends six months in Polson and six months in Bozeman. And she’s always working. She recycles T-shirts and inner tubes by cutting them into strips and then weaving and crocheting them into vases, bags, wine totes and bowls.
She knew people made rugs from T-shirts.
“If you crochet them too tight, they turn into a bowl,” McGoff said, explaining how she invented her craft.
She collects innersoles from people who buy new footwear and don’t want, then uses those for bottoms or bases for her creations.
Ladies of the Lake, a belly dance group, entertained throughout the day as did a variety of musical groups.
Julie Christopher and Carole Carberry co-chaired the event. Carberry said the show was very successful and she’s looking forward to the gallery’s juried Flathead Lake Festival of Art on Aug. 15 and 16.
