New England Arts and Crafts Festival

Yesterday was the day of the New England Arts and Crafts Festival in Milford Connecticut where my father-in-law made his artistic debut with his stone engraving work. Given the amount of work that each piece involved we set the price rather high and so were not really expecting to sell anything. But we did indeed sell one piece to a happy and excited buyer.

We also had a chance to wander around and admire other art of course. I came upon a stand that was unmistakably Zimbabwean. I went right up to the artist, radiant with delight, and said "Are you from Zimbabwe?" Indeed he was and we shared a few words about how difficult the situation is there at the moment. He comes to the US every summer to do art shows and then he is able to return to Zimbabwe with precious foreign currency and do very well for himself and his family where Zimbabwe dollars have become all but worthless. I loved his art too! The soapstone sculptures that he was selling for someone else were so familiar but his own wire art, which is also so very Zimbabwean, was ingenious and creative. I bought a few items. The lizards and chameleons remind me so much of some of my favorite childhood wildlife friends. I had geckos on my bedroom walls all the time and I loved them so much. And every now and then my father would bring me chameleons from the bush to entertain me or I would even discover one in the garden. I also bought a wire bicycle. I asked him if as a boy he had made wire cars to play with and he said that was how he got started. Little boys in Africa pick up left over bits of fencing wire and make wonderful cars that they push along with a stick. They can be really quite sophisticated.