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Arts Picnic: Grounds for new artists |
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Written by Dan England for NEXTnc
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Thursday, 26 July 2007 |
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 Before it became a business, the Arts Picnic was a playground for Ilana Zwiebel.
Zwiebel of Greeley was there when she was 1, looking in wonder at all the color in the park. She was there as a little girl running around with her friends and eating roasted almonds and kettle corn.
She was there at 11, running the booth with her mother, Jeanne, who had a place at the Arts Picnic for 20 years selling pottery.
Now, at 18, she’ll spend her fourth year as a vendor at the Arts Picnic.
She tried nail painting and making necklaces before selling squares of glass that kids can paint at her booth. Last year she made $600, about two weeks of flipping burgers for someone her age.
“There were times I had, like, more than a dozen kids around my booth painting,” she said.
 Zwiebel isn’t the only vendor who grew up at the Arts Picnic, which takes place this year during the weekend of July 26-29. She is one of the few with a steady income for many years now. She credits part of that to her early days at the Arts Picnic.
“I had a real advantage over other kids,” she said. “I knew all the basics. It was something I grew up with.”
She credits most of her success to her mother. Her mother, after all, was the reason she was at the Arts Picnic in the first place, and she was the reason Zwiebel became an artist. Zwiebel had limitless art supplies and bottomless coaching. She had an art mentor by her side. She will major in fine arts at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., this fall.
Funny thing, though, was Zwiebel got into oil painting, something her mother never touched. She taught her mother how to paint with oils and recently won several gold medals in a scholastic art competition.
“That could be independence,” Zwiebel said, “or it could just be that I love it.”
Aubrey Sacco used to collect rocks and paint them bright colors with glitter and sell them to her neighbors as paperweights, so it seemed only natural for her to open a booth of her own, where she’ll be selling jewelry, vases and other decorations such as a glitter globe, which she said is like a snow globe “but not as cheesy.”
Sacco, 20, graduated from Greeley Central in 2005 and attends the University of Colorado in Boulder, where she hopes to become an art therapist. She went to the Arts Picnic as a kid every year with her mother, Connie. Connie has had several photos in the Tribune’s Click! Weld County photography contest.
“That’s the thing my mother and I did together,” Sacco said about the Arts Picnic. “We would plan vacations around it. We’d get up really early and bring extra tote bags for all the stuff we were going to buy.”
Her time in college, as well as her time at the Arts Picnic, made her realize she didn’t have to be a strict professional to create and sell artwork.
“I thought you were either a freelance artist or you didn’t do anything at all,” she said. “But college and the picnic opened my mind about it. You don’t have to be a starving artist. You can take your creativity and use it.”
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TO GO TO THE SHOW
Arts Picnic
9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, July 28
9 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday, July 29
Lincoln Park, 10th Avenue and 8th Street, Greeley
More than 150 fine arts and crafts booths, food court, beer garden, etc.
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ARTS PICNIC MUSIC SCHEDULE
7 p.m. Friday, July 26
Tempa and The Tantrums
Saturday, July 28
Honda of Greeley
Center Stage
10-10:45 a.m. The Greater Metro Greeley Kiwanis Club Silver Cornet Concert Band
11:15 a.m.-noon
Scott Allen & The Island Time Band
12:30-1:15 p.m. George Gray’s Tribute to Elvis
1:45-2:30 p.m. The Dave Beegle Band
3:00-3:45 p.m. The Indulgers
4:15-5 p.m. Cool Shooz
Union Colony Bank
Plaza Stage
10:45-11:15 a.m. Pettit Brothers
Noon-12:30 p.m. Times Four
1:15-1:45 p.m. Art Terrazas
2:30-3 p.m. Sh-Bang
3:45-4:15 p.m. Hamling Hotties
Honda of Greeley
Center Stage
10:15-11 a.m. Sherwood Park Flute Ensemble
11:30am-12:15 p.m. Kream of the Krop
12:45-1:30 p.m. Halden Wofford & The Hi-Beams
2-2:45 p.m. Kizumba
3:15-4 p.m. Shawn Waggoner & The Tumblyweeds
Union Colony Bank
Plaza stage
11-11:30 a.m. Montie Mount
12:15-12:45 p.m. Fubar II
1:30-2 p.m. Centennial Blend Choir of Sweet Adelines International
2:45-3:15 p.m. Wild Nights | Only registered users can write comments.
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