The Lincoln Arts Council will host the 2009 Lincoln Arts Festival this weekend at the SouthPointe Pavilions Shopping Center. The event runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday and will feature 99 artists, running the gamut in geography, medium and price.
"We've got a wide variety of wonderful art," said LAC director Deb Weber. "And we've asked artists to bring a variety of price points. So there will be pieces of art that anyone can afford."
The fest will feature about 50 new artists this year, a handful of whom have never shown their work at any fest before.
New this year will be a raffle for a free one-year lease on a BMW 328i donated by Husker Auto Group. The raffle funds will go to the Lincoln arts community.
Also new this year is an interactive children's art center where young artists can make their own works.
The fest will feature live music by No Better Cause, Sarabande Strings, Sarabande Jazz and Release Time.
The Skinny: Hartley has worked in glassblowing for the past 10 years, but before that he'd never worked in a sculpture medium. Growing up outside Wichita, he did plenty of painting and drawing, but nothing 3D.
He attended Southwestern College in Winfield, Kan., as an art major. But when the program was 86ed, he switched to biology. He was done with art. For a time.
Years later, Hartley was teaching high school biology in Wichita, breaking up lectures with a series of art projects related to biological content. The kids loved it.
And suddenly Hartley, who was very happy with his life at the time, realized something was, in fact, missing: art.
Through a string of events, Hartley ended up visiting a glassblowing studio. He was smitten. He'd never worked with glass, but he knew instantly it was something he wanted to try.
A decade since, the former biology teacher has his own studio. He's swamped yearround with orders, and his intricate work has received some national attention. A few pieces were featured on the program "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in 2006.
"It's pretty amazing how everything I've done in my life has prepared me to do what I do now," Hartley said: The science of glassblowing. The chemistry, the physics, the math of the glass. Art and science couldn't seem further apart sometimes, but in this medium Hartley's found a cross-section of his backgrounds, a sweet spot of mutual passions.
"This," he said, "was just how it was meant to be."
Reach Micah Mertes at 473-7395 or mmertes@journalstar.com.
By MICAH MERTES / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Wednesday, September 24, 2009
Posted By: Daniel Moss
Thursday, September 24th 2009 at 7:43PM
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