The 76th annual Chadds Ford Elementary School Art Show and Sale came together smoothly with a steady stream of art lovers and buyers despite some soggy weather.
The event, started by the late Betsy Wyeth, is a fundraiser for the CFES PTO, and principal Danielle Clark said the money raised is both appreciated and well spent.
“Most recently, in the past year we used the funds for a greenhouse in the back of the building so we’re really looking forward to getting that as part of our curricular resources,” she said. “This coming year they’re allocating some funds to full-day kindergarten and using some of the funds to use for outdoor space improvements.”
She continued by saying “It’s benefitted our playground; they used some money on redesigning our playground three years ago. So, it’s been really beneficial. All the proceeds from the show that the PTO makes, they directly give back to the school. It’s been really exciting to see what they’ve been able to do.”
Jessica Eldridge, this year’s event chairman, didn’t give a dollar figure for this year’s goal but did say they reached a goal of having more than 60 artists, with many new to the show this year. She also went on to explain the new format.
In years past, this was a two-day event, but constraints led to it coming down to Saturday only, with no Friday night reception. There’s also a change in how the PTO gets its money. Instead of giving a percentage of sales to the PTO, artists keep what they take in but pay a rental fee for space to display their work.
“This year we implemented a tiered pricing system, based on the number of screens [where artists hang their work], proximity in the gym,” Eldridge said.
She further explained that the stage area where there used to be the featured artist, is now a premier space.
Costs to the artists range from $125 for a single screen, to $650 for each of the three stage spaces.
And while the event is for the PTO and the school, it’s also for the artists. Not just to sell, but to have the chance to hang out and get social.
Kathy Ruck has been showing at the CFES art show since about 2017 and noted the format change with artists handling their own sales, and was a little disappointed in no longer having the Friday night reception.
“But the good thing is everybody gets to come out and meet the artists since the artists have to be here the whole time, so [visitors] can interact with the artists,” and commented about being with other artists. “It’s so much fun seeing everybody. It’s a big artist family.”
Ruck was not the only returnee, of course. There was Shawn Faust, Jacalyn Beam, Nicki Wandersee, and a multitude of others, but there’s always room for some newbies with their own unique brand of work.
This was Susan Lowenstein’s first show at CFES. Her approach is what she calls diamond painting. She explained that diamond painting starts with a person’s personally chosen photo that Lowenstein sends to a vendor which sends it back to Lowenstein as a canvas. She then adds pieces of crystal with a chart for the coloring.
“Each piece is glued on separately,” she said. “The chart correlates with the canvas. There are numbers on the pieces for different colored pieces of crystal]. It’s like paint by numbers.”
Two others at the show for the first time with their own approach were Rachel Coleman and Frederick Swarr.
Coleman calls her art fluid art.
“Fluid art is taking acrylic paint and making it very liquidy by adding a medium. That way I can manipulate it the way I want on a canvas…The colors then stay vibrant when you move the paint around the canvas.”
Coleman said the mixture is a pancake batter type of consistency.
She said acrylic “doesn’t have any movement. When it comes out of a tube, you squeeze it and it just kind of sits there in a clump.”
And then there was Frederick Swarr, a former teacher out of Montgomery County. He overlays sheet music with a portrait of the singer.
“I start out doing a sketch of the celebrity. Then I go online and get the actual sheet music for a specific song from the artist I want to portray. I cut out sections of the music and try to fit that where the face would be. I glue that on the canvas and do the rest of the painting on top of it.”
Some of his work on display at CFES were portraits of Mick Jagger, Jimmy Buffet, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and Jennifer Lopez.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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