Saturday Market craftspersons
face post-holiday inertia problem
By NICK GALLO
Of the Emerald
Portrait of the Saturday Marke
artist as a bank teller? A tree
planter? Hawaii tourist with a can
era and lei and one of those crazy
floral print shirts?
Christmas is more than the
usual swirl of turbulence for mar
ket craftspersons. Some start
jamming for that wild, frenzied
finale as far back as August. But
when it's all over, when the post
holiday catatonia sets in, what’s a
craftsperson to do?
"Probably starve,'' laughed Den
nis Werst, a silversmith who ar
rived recently in Eugene and is
working the fairs "If I do all right,
I d like to get into more creative
forms of working with a combina
tion of wood and gems ''
But craftspersons are unlikely
to starve The market has come a
long way since the days when
structures were illegal and there
was one sole jeweler with a hand
ful of rings in an egg carton. The
crafts mania could be peaking this
year In a town where potters may
outnumber loggers, the glut of
fairs serve to feed private fantasy
(. let's see now, when I get rich
I'm going to . .)
' Everybody expects to get rich
during Christmas season," exp
lains Jack Pickett, a leather
worker, "but they never do."
Pickett, a three-year veteran of
the market, wonders what it would
take to pack the market’s
craftspersons on a train, some
thing like the Freedom Train which
passed through the area this year,
and point it toward those glorious
untapped markets in the East
where everyone, of course, is
filthy rich
"But I'll probably end up tnm
mmg trees in the ram." Pickett
adds, his eyes still twinkling.
And then there's the two quilt
makers who will plant trees this
winter and the guy who makes
ceramic drums who will probably
bus dishes. The woman in the
black leotard top and silver scarf
has a plane ticket to Hawaii
"I know guys who bag sacks of
gram all winter long," says
Michael Murphy, who has aban
doned the market to do the week
Iona fairs throuahout the North
west. "I had someone making
jewelry with me who was a bank
teller."
“There's a lot ol Saturday artists
here," says Murphy, "which is
line,' he is quick to add "But a
true craftsman is a person who
makes his living by his craft.”
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i nese musicians are among the many craftspersons from the Saturday
Market who look for alternative means of surviving. Some bag sacks of
grain, some return to art for art's sake - and some starve.
And then there's always those
who would like to crawl inside a
dnftboat and wait tor steelhead all
winter long But for Ken Warner,
one of the market's "Horatio Al
gers” this year, it's back to the
drawing board Warner had been
married to an hourly job at a
Roseburg plywood mill when he
and his wife, who quit her recep
tionist job, decided to make back
packs. The two are storming the
area, but Warner wants to take
some time off to design some
special equipment like the request
for a pack that would fit a St Ber
nard.
There are those, too, who will
abandon crafts for a few months to
go back to their first love: art for
art's sake
Michael Caffrey wants to paint.
"I don’t care to paint to sell," he
says. “I'd rather do functional
crafts here and then paint for
myseff. But I've been saying that
for two years now ”
Murphy concurs when he says.
"Jewelry puts four squares on the
table and buys shoes for my kids. I
enjoy it. I don’t love jewelry, but I
enjoy it."
And last but not least is the pot
ter who had company for dimer
last week and ran short of dishes.
That's right, she’ll be making
dishes in the afterglow of the holi
days.
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686-4331