The Michigan Daily-Wednesday, July 22: 981-Page 5 Fair '81: The triumph of On a muggy July afternoon some half dozen Ann Arbor Art Fairs ago, you could turn the corner at South Univer- sity and Tappan and step straight into a fairy tale. Descending from a large Law Quad tree overhanging the sidewalk was a wondrous, confoundingly intricate mobile holding several dozen multi- colored pane glass birds. The device Coming Apart By Ch ristopher Potter was so large and diffuse as to almost cradle anyone who stood beneath it; if you looked straight up, you would swear those turning, transparent winged creatures actually changed color again and again as they spun and shimmered endlessly in the afternoon sun. THE RADIANCE of that creation still bedazzles. Mounted by an artist ap- parently rejected by the Fair's major- domos but who still wanted to con- tribute, the mobile contained enough luminescent beauty to eclipse a thousand "official" entries that sum- mer. And yet official remains the name of the Art Fair game. You're not likely to see that mobile this Fair or ever again - the rules no longer allow for such rank imposters. Once upon a time our town's yearly exercise in artistic bacchanal was a very free-wheeling affair. Though smaller than the current edition, the Fair was also a much more fluid and diverse animal. Unpredictability was the password: Coinciding with the san- ctioned displays on South U, East U and Ii ii== =. Main Street, out from the cultural woodwork would flock a garrison of semi-clandestine painters, craftspeople and hucksters, displaying and hawking their various works and wares up and down the perimeters of the Fair proper. MUCH TO the chagrin of the licensed artists, these extralegal entrants would dot the Diag and much of State Street, usually multiplying as the Fair moved into its final hours. Some of their output was ingenious, much of it was pure junk; yet the varying quality of in- dividual work paled beside the fact that a genuine contributory happening had begun to evolve. A once haughty, closed affair was fast metamorphosing into a large community festival of joyous give and take. The sheer spontaneity of events was contagious: Once a year you could do your thing in an atmosphere not merely of freedom, but of giddy, neighborly en- thusiasm. The Fair was becoming a general rite of participation, a festival of the spontaneous and the unexpected. You could turn any given street corner and suddenly come upon a human body sculpture, an impromptu magic act - or a tree-hung mobile dispatched straight from Eden. IN 1975 THE rite was snapped at the jugular. Fed up with "unwarranted" intrusions on their turf, the head hon- chos of the South U, East U and Main Street fairs banded together to ram through a city ordinance prohibiting "unauthorized artists" from exhibiting or demonstrating their talents anywhere within Ann Arbor's limits. Violators were subject to arrest, fine, even a possible jail term; special police now patrolled campus and downtown to shoo and scatter any and all "poachers" - the official label local guilds now attached to all unlicensed artists. The crackdown was piously defended by the powers that be: The infusion of the poachers was dragging down the ar- tistic quality of the Fair, transforming the festival into a gross exercise in cultural mediocrity. Moreover, they claimed, the interlopers' presence created a mushrooming circus at- mosphere which was turning the Fair into an unwieldy Frankenstein mon- ster, a mob scene impossible to control or police.. A third, unspoken motive was the embarrassing fear that the illegitimates might be cutting into the sales profits of the legitimates. Of cour- se, to acknowledge such apprehension would be conceding either that the have-nots might sometimes have more talent than the haves, or that the buying public was too stupid to discern art from quackery; to admit to either seemed a distinct minus in the PR department. THUS THE establishment launched its crusade solely in the name of un- sullied art and riot control. The Diag was cleared, the hidden nooks and crannies were restored to their original pristine emptiness. The outlandish and the unexpected were resolutely ferreted out, and propriety and order reigned once more. The Art Fair had been saved from itself. Yet saved for what, and for whom? What a dull, gargantual affair it has now become. Everything is or- chestrated now, sedate and stagnant. The Fair has evolved into a charmless, hulking exercise in corporate overglut: It stays exactly the same year after year, its huge stable of artists atrophying into booths many staked out two decades ago. A veteran spectator could walk through the Fair blindfolded and blithely identify spot after spot where given artists have set up shop for the umpteenth time. SURPRISE HAS been abolished from overglut this ceremony. The same paintings, sculptures and crafts show up in each booth summer after summer, mocking the maturation process that is the essence of any artist. Commercialism reigns supreme: Why risk arcane ex- periments when urns, woven baskets, and facile cartoons sell so much better? True, each artist still must submit his or her work to the local Artists and Craftsmen Guild for approval; yet to deny entrance to an established Art Fair regular is about as likely as Jerry Falwell inviting Hugh Hefner to lunch. Once accepted, an artist usually has a home for life. In the process, the local touch has been lost to the out-of-towners on both sides of the marketplace. The Fair's much-denounced "unwieldiness" of the early 70s was surely unwieldiness of the most benign sort - one would be hard- pressed to unearth any significant physical altercation amidst the reigning communal good-naturedness of the time. Those festivals were hardly less un- manageable than the ugly, impersonal gargantua the Fair has now become. Upwards of 300,000 onlookers will tromp, litter, and belch through town this week, then pull up stakes along with 95 percent of the artists and head for the next fair - leaving Ann Arbor a bit wealthier but culturally impervious. THE ANTI-POACHER ordinance is not totally without merit. All official en- trants must fork over a stiff permit fee merely to obtain a booth; why, they reasonably argue, should the poachers be able to market their wares when they didn't pay for their privilege like everyone else had to? A utopian might suggest freeing the Fair from such fee restrictions entirely, yet economically reality brusquely See SPIRIT, Page 18 r WELCGUlSYo TN TH ART FAIAR! Comen v 0,:cov'erOur t.e/ieo43Assrfr#ent #~tc an eodc4 "I did-it-myself at Megatrames on North Main Street across from the old Post Office. They had plenty of parking behind the store and a convenient rear entrance." Come in and let us show you how simple and rewarding it can be to frame-it-yourself and save money.too. 205N. MAIN STREET7" ANNARBORMICH PHONE 769-9420 e 995-4@S . a J xx , ~ _ v A iG 4, )i' w .;. 4 a_--. .