arts&life

fairs & festivals

Cellular Religion by Mark Zirinsky

Four Fairs
In

One

One event, four fairs
and 1,000 artisans
— and lots more —
take over Ann Arbor.

Chalk art by David Zinn

34

July 12 • 2018

Bracelet by Elaine Rader

jn

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

T

wo metal artists — one working large and the other
working small — are among some 1,000 artists show-
casing different media to enhance this year’s Ann
Arbor Art Fair, the largest juried art fair in the country.
Mark Zirinsky, traveling from Colorado, designs wall
pieces, generally from surplus aluminum, to look like weav-
ings. Elaine Rader, based in Georgia, fashions jewelry from
sterling silver with accents of 22-karat gold, precious stones
and semi-precious stones.
They share a celebration of second careers — he had
moved on from engineering and she had left banking.
The fair — joining together four award-winning, not-
for-profit fairs that launched in different years, spread out
between 30 city blocks — runs July 19-22 in the heart of the
city. While Zirinsky’s booth is part of the Ann Arbor Street
Art Fair, the original event launched 58 years ago, Rader
can be found with others in the State Street Art Fair, which
started 50 years ago.
Adding to the displays of paintings, multi-media, clay,
glass and other approaches for some 500,000 visitors will
be the Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair (48 years) and the
South University Art Fair (18 years). Accompanying it all, of
course, are food stations, children’s activities and entertain-
ment.
“This is my third year going to outdoor art fairs and my
first year in Ann Arbor,” says Zirinsky, who will be showing
one large Jewish star along with a host of abstract designs.
“I’ll have 35 different pieces.”
Zirinsky, who has created Torah breastplates to com-
memorate the bar mitzvahs of his sons, adapts machining
techniques refined with the use of jewelry and hand tools.