Eats and Art on the Street

By Hope Wallace

Thank you, Van Wert! You all helped make our first Eats and Art on the Street event a whomping success. Thank you for enduring long lines at the food trucks and for being understanding when our rubber duckies rapidly became an endangered species as they sold out. Next year we promise, more ducks, more trucks and a very unique, interactive art exhibit!

Thank you for the smiles, the laughter and staying for a spell. Thank you for illustrating that spirits and events do good things for our community by offering vibrancy and fellowship and for leaving our space remarkably clean. Thank you to our forward thinking county commissioners for the use of the lot out back and the front-end duckie-dumping loader. Finally thank you to our partner Main Street Van Wert, our sponsors, performers, volunteers and staff who worked very hard to make the day bright.

Congratulations to our Duck Derpy winners: First place Laura & Ron Ditto $1,000, second place: Theresa Robideau $400, and  third place to Thad Lichtensteiger for $100. Our exhibit, Art from the Fort continues through August 7. If you haven’t had a chance to check out this exhibit by international artists, you still have time.

Our summer camp rapidly approaches next week! From July 21–23 we will host a camp for ages 6–15. We will be exploring perspective with chalk and photography, Native American art through by examining our Faces of Little Bighorn Collection and making rain sticks. Yeah, and we are even going to make clouds! We’ll be creating illustrations with melted crayons and study children’s author and illustrator, Shel Silverstein. Ages 6-10: 10–noon, ages 11–15: 1–3 p.m. Costs are $30 for art center members, $35 regular. Needs-based scholarships can be made available if a young person wishes to participate in our camp. Please contact the director.

An intense watercolor workshop by published watercolorist, Allen Hutton, Toledo, will be held September 8–10 from 10 a.m.– 4 p.m. Allen graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art with A BFA in Industrial Design. He is a regularly accepted artist in the Ohio Watercolor Society Exhibits, and has shown his work in group and solo shows across the country since 2002. He continues to be awarded in most of the exhibits he enters and will provide instruction on his unique style. Hutten strives to render the fleeting patterns of light and shadow with the simple purpose of preserving the reality of a landscape or still life in a particular moment in time and season. Costs will be $100 per day with a two-day minimum sign-up. Materials list will be provided. Please give us a call soon for this unique opportunity to paint the world in a different light.

Robert Milliard Mendez is next on the exhibit calendar and his found object sculptures that almost resemble toys will be installed the second week of August. Robert exhibits all over the country and his works are truly unique in execution and form. Check back for more information.

For more information on exhibits or to sign for classes and events visit wassenbergartcenter.org. The Wassenberg Art Center is located at 214 S. Washington St. (former Van Wert Armory). We can also be reached by telephone at: 419.238.6837, email: info@wassenbergartcenter.org and our website is: wassenbergartcenter.org.