On Saturday August 25th I met sister Vienna, her husband and their kids Minya (5) and Kitten (not quite 3) at the rather undynamically named Senior Citizens Park for the Bucktown Arts Festival. I've gone to the Bucktown Arts Fest almost every year since I moved to Chicago four years ago and my sister, who is an artist and a photographer in her own right, has been making it a point to go there for even longer. Overall it's a really high quality show with some truly excellent artists showing.

Robert Snell is a favorite of both my sister and myself. He's a soft-spoken blonde man who hardly looks older then a teenager and makes amazing, intricate little drawings with ballpoint pens, markers, maybe a little paint here and there. These drawings are only a couple inches in size but are dense in layers of line lines. Matted and framed they seem like illustrations or panels from a film noir/horror/science fiction comic book. There's a Tim Burton quality to Snell's drawings. They're equally cute and frightening, dark and bright. They aren't very expensive either, just $50 each for the original drawings. Because the prices are so low, my sister is usually able to pick up a couple at every show she sees him at (he also does Around the Coyote) and has amassed a fairly large collection. She also gives them as gifts so I have two myself. I wasn't able to afford an original drawing but I did get a $15 print of a blue girl before a window with fishnet tights and spider eyes of empty darkness.

Another artist I've been fo really like who was there was Kass Copeland (kasscopeland.com/). She does collages of old fashioned looking images juxtaposed with leaves, flowers and birds. Most of them are mounted on wooden blocks making them seem like fantastic relics of a 19^th century where strange little girls with fairy wings an antenna posed from tintype photos.

I also really liked the work of Amy Arnold (peepwool.com) who makes felted wool stuffed toys that are really cute and crazy. I would have dearly loved to take an armload of them home with me but sadly they were well beyond my price range (in the range of $150 to $200 a piece).

Oddly enough, among the most innovative artists at the show was a gentleman in a red fez and bowtie who goes by the name of Smarty Pants (www.smartypantsworld.com/parties.html) who works with balloons. I'm not kidding, this guy was brilliant. Easily the coolest balloon twister ever. He took one look at my nephew and made him a red and blue hat that actually looked like Spiderman and then proceeded to make him a webslinger-it looked sort of like a red gun with grey and black twisted balloons coming out of it as webs. He made a little girl a Little Mermaid hat and another pink flamingo hat. He made pirate hats with skulls and crossbones. The guy was just miles beyond any balloon twister I've ever seen. There was a woman with him named Miss Dena who was dressed as a fairy princess and did face painting. She was also really good and could pretty much paint anything on a kid. I was very impressed which is saying a lot because I'm dour and sour and have no love for clowns or mimes or birthday party fun or anything like that. My little nephew and niece were more or less beside themselves with delight.

Drawing by Robert Snell