As Miranda LaPolice talks, she grips one of her creations — a tufty, ewok-like creature with an oversized green heart stitched to its front, glowing eyes, and a downturned mouth. Both her arms wrap around the critter and her hands make its little legs dance to the techno beat in the background. LaPolice, one of the Lowbrow Art and Craft Fair’s co-organizers, says she made the first in her line of stuffed creatures a few years ago as a Valentine’s Day gift for her fiancé.
“This one’s not for sale,” she says, clutching her creation closer to her chest.
LaPolice, 34, of Hatfield, says her creature collection — named Unfortunate Art — grew out of her desire to create a stuffed toy that wasn’t striving for a contrived sense of happiness.
“I wanted to make something that lets you sit with your feelings,” LaPolice says.
As a preschool teacher, LaPolice says she encourages her students to “feel their feelings,” reminding them negative feelings are natural. The creatures, she says, serve as an endearing reminder that everyone feels sad, nervous and unsure sometimes.
With charming trinkets and handmade soaps to “monster wash” and up-cycled alien figurines, the Lowbrow Art and Craft Fair is far from ordinary. Sitting behind tables filled with their art inside the First Churches of Northampton, its organizers say they wanted to design a craft fair that is accessible to everyone, one where you’re buying crafts from the artists themselves. Here, artists keep all their profits, and the fair itself does not make money. A table at the fair costs $20 to $30, and with around 20 artists, that is enough to cover the day’s rent. If there’s extra, it goes towards next year’s fair and all profits from their raffle — $110 this year — are donated to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.
By lowering the financial barriers to participate, Lowbrow has opened up doors to the weird and fantastical.
“It’s a little bit punk rock; it’s a little bit kitsch,” says one of four co-organizers Kat Reisbig, 31, of Holyoke. “We try to cater to the unusual.”
The air at the fair is warm and welcoming. Smiles and laughter abound as the artists excitedly discuss their work and explain their processes.
Reisbig, rocking a top hat and a brown handlebar mustache that discretely straps around her ponytail, sits behind a table covered in crocheted black, brown and hot pink mustaches of various sizes. When she got the idea to craft the ‘staches four years ago, it was a growing trend in the roller derby community for players to tattoo handlebar mustaches on the inside of the index finger. A player can sport her mustache by placing the tattooed digit just below her nose. As a derby player, Reisbig wanted to hop on board the mustache train, but as a lawyer, she felt a tattoo on her hand would affect her credibility in court. Instead, she began crocheting and selling them under the name Mustache Envy.
Across from Reisbig’s mustaches sits Anne Thalheimer, another co-organizer, and her monsters. Her table is covered with her work — fleece hats with fanged lids and googly eyes on top, shoulder bags with pointed teeth hanging over the opening, catnip toys with one-eyed monster faces, and monster coloring books. Thalheimer, 40, of Holyoke, started out as a cartoonist and will now “monsterfy” anything, she says.
“I think there’s something at this fair for everyone,” Thalheimer says.
Ben Kimmel, 11, of Florence shares a table with his father, Rob Kimmel. The father-son team touts up-cycled action figures and bow ties made of duct-tape. The action figures are quite a spectacle — who knew a rat’s head could look so natural atop a muscled action figure’s body? The table is covered in dozens of the otherworldly creations. A figurine wearing a flannel shirt and jeans has only a transparent dome for a head, with a long red wizard’s beard spilling out the bottom.
“Once you get in the groove they just make themselves,” says Kimmel, 44, of his craft.
The Kimmels heard about Lowbrow when Thalheimer taught a monster-making workshop at Ben’s school, Jackson Street School in Northampton.
“I think we’re kindred spirits, so it was kind of inevitable that we become friends,” Rob Kimmel says.
Terri Pajak, whose table is marked by an unsettlingly large-headed baby sporting one of her printed onesies, is the fair’s fourth co-organizer.
“It started with the earrings,” she says, pointing to the attractive, pie-shaped vinyl danglers she’s wearing.
Pajak, 40, of Easthampton, says she started brainstorming ways to re-purpose old vinyl records and thus her earrings and Wonder Woman-esque wrist cuffs were born.
Pajak says she met Reisbig, Thalheimer, and LaPolice through roller derby. They were involved in the Stars and Skulls Crafty Craft Fair, another local alternative arts fair, and decided they wanted to do something on their own.
“We looked at each other and said, ‘We could do this ourselves,’” Pajak explains. LaPolice came up with the name, she says, and the rest is history.
Even while the fair is in full swing, Heather McQueen continues her needle felting work. The craft is all about “jabbing” unspooled wool into the shapes you want, she says. Snowmen and bearded Santa ornaments hang above her station.
“If you’ve ever been frustrated by knitting or crocheting and wished you could just jab stuff into place, you should try needle felting,” McQueen says, poking a white blob of wool with a blunt needle as though it were trying to escape her.
Fair-goers move from table to table with wide-eyed curiosity.
“I’m super-impressed by the variety and quality of art,” says Becca Bodner, who lives in Northampton and is new to the area. “Stuff like this makes me realize how fun and vibrant this community is.”
At the end of the day, Pajak and Thalheimer talk with Malea Rhodes about how best to approach the clean-up process. They, too, met through derby, they explain — they discuss their derby scars and point out how many current and retired skaters there are in the room.
“There’s so much overlap and it makes sense,” says Thalheimer. “Derby people get things done.”•
Contact Amanda Drane at adrane@valleyadvocate.com.
