Lake Villa's Art in the Park

gleclaire@dailyherald.com

More than 22 artists participated in the Art in the Park Art and Music Festival on Saturday at Lehmann Park in downtown Lake Villa.

The second annual festival has doubled in size from last year, and a blue sky and warm weather brought more visitors to the art festival than last year, organizers said. All media were represented including watercolor, oil, acrylic, jewelry, photography and pottery.

Artist Rodger Shule, a retired from teacher from Antioch, was displaying matchbook art, large replicas of classic matchbooks created with wood and paint.

"Matchbooks were the social media of their time. It was a way to get advertising to the people would pass them on to others," said Shule, who started creating 12-by-12-inch replicas of the matchbooks eight years ago that his father in-law, Howard Hicks, had collected, and now makes larger versions.

"I just liked the art work that was on the old classic matchbooks," Shule said.

Besides the fine art, eight musicians and groups performed throughout the day for the festivalgoers.

Jimmy Liggett, a Northbrook carpenter by trade performed solo bluegrass songs and continued to play his guitar as a loud cargo train traveled past the park telling the crowd, "I beat that train by finishing my song before the train cleared the area."