Graue Mill festival puts focus on art
At the Graue Mill Fine Arts Festival, the art is the thing - the only thing. There's no food, no music, no carnival games, no thrill rides - nothing to distract the senses and dilute the intended focus.
"This is just strictly an art festival," co-chair Virginia Reisner said. Reisner is a fiber artist who will be among the festival's exhibitors.
The Oak Brook festival is staged both outdoors and inside the historic miller's house. Admission is free, but there is a fee to visit the mill and museum.
About 25 juried artists, most from the Chicago area, will display oil and acrylic paintings, fabric art, weaving, garden art, surface design, jewelry, ceramics, photography and watercolor paintings, Reisner said.
"It's a very small venue so we can't accommodate too many artists," co-chair Deeda Cordin said. "I personally like it that way because it allows people to look at all of the art work. At some of those big art fairs, they've gotten so big it's hard to see everything."
Cordin has been finding and vetting the show's artists for the past few months.
"We just (had) an artist this week sign up from Vail, Colorado. She's here visiting her dad," Cordin said.
Painter Susan Myers stopped in Cordin's Hinsdale shop and showed Cordin a few of her creations that had been stowed in her car.
"She has a small collection of paintings she was actually working on," Cordin said of Myers, who grew up in Hinsdale. "She does very impressionistic oils. She does big pieces, florals. I was very impressed with her paintings."
Unlike Myers, most of the festival's artists are from the area.
"We have some artists who have been coming since the first" year, she said.
Cordin said the annual art festival began in 2000, and she's been helping organize it since the outset.
The festival has always been a low-key event aimed at showing off the work of local and regional artists, she said.
Cordin is a watercolor painter and a former member of the Graue Mill board of directors.
German immigrant Frederick Graue opened a gristmill on the site in 1852 to grind wheat, corn and other locally produced grains, according to the Graue Mill and Museum website, grauemill.org. The mill operated for 70 years before technology rendered it obsolete. The land is currently owned by the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County.
Cordin owns the Deep Creek Art Gallery in Hinsdale.
"I'm an art teacher. I own my own studio and I own a little art school," she said.
As festival co-chair, she said she won't be exhibiting her own work.
"It's too hard to oversee everything and sell your own work at the same time," she said.
If you go
What: Graue Mill Fine Arts Festival
Where: Graue Mill and Museum, 3800 York Road, Oak Brook
When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, June 3 and 4
Admission: Free
Info: grauemill.org