VIRGINIA BEACH – The boardwalk is filled this weekend with large landscape paintings, colorful glassware and handmade sculptures of dogs doing yoga.
The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art is celebrating 61 years of its Boardwalk Art Show, an event that draws artists from all over the coast.
The festival, which benefits MOCA, attracts about 250,000 people annually, according the museum’s website. Of the roughly 700 artists who apply to join, 250 are selected. The fair began Thursday between 20th and 35th streets and continues through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
At one booth, more than 100 sculptures surrounded artist Helen Weichman’s of GroundHog Blues Pottery. Some were dodos and dragons, but most were dogs of all kinds with goofy expressions.
“I like dogs, they make me laugh,” Weichman said Thursday.
Weichman, who works from a home studio in Reeders, Pa., said she never runs out of ideas. She has made pottery from scratch for about 45 years and has been selling pieces at the boardwalk fair off and on for about two decades.
“I love this show,” she said. “We have a lot of collectors. They come back every year to see what’s new.”
A visitor perused Weichman’s work. Carolyn Blaisdell of Fredericksburg, Va., chose a small clay dog to go with the one she bought at last year’s fair. It will go in her son’s dog-themed nursery.
A few booths away, Cheryl Mackey Smith displayed works of small pieces of rolled and twisted clay arranged in neat columns on white backgrounds. The patterns and textures are inspired by leaves, river rocks and other items from nature, Smith said.
Her piece “Voices of Earth” evokes a calmness with its neat rows of cylindrical clay, while some fire-burned pieces create a sense of disaster. She said the tiny holes in the clay symbolize “the voices of earth,” some with a clear opening, others contorted and displaced.
Her art sells well at the Boardwalk Art Show, and has won her a judge’s choice award in the past, she said.
