I moved to Cleveland Heights, Ohio, in the fall of 1984. I attended my first Cain Park Arts Festival the following year and haven’t missed one since. The last few years have been disappointing for me. There seemed to less and less of what I would call Fine Art and more and more crafty/arty stuff. And jewelry, way too much jewelry.

After a walk-through Friday afternoon, I was so convinced that this year is exponentially different that I felt compelled to return (partially because I saw something I wanted to buy) on Saturday for a second, slower stroll. And to blog it.

This afternoon I brought my laptop and a clipboard. I had to push my way through a much larger than usual crowd of petition gatherers and Lee-Road employees passing out flyers and coupons. Once in side, I used the list of artists and booths (not entirely accurate by the way) to move slowly through the tents taking note of those that drew me inside.

This is how I gauge art shows. If I stop outside a booth it gets a one. If I go inside a booth, it gets a two. Last year I did not go inside a single booth. This year, I was initially drawn into 10. (I added an 11th at the end of the show, but more on that later.)

It may have been a sign that when I walked through the Lee Road entrance to the park I was captured by the red, blue and yellow, especially the yellow, pottery of Rodney Lemonier (Booth No. 1) from Evening Shade (what a great name for a town), Arkansas. Lemonier has been making pottery and glazes for more than 30 years. You might think from his name that the startling yellow came somehow from his name. It didn”t. It’s called Jenny’s Yellow.

The story goes like this. Lemonier”s daughter came home from college to announce that she wanted yellow for her wedding. When he told his daughter, “Honey, you know I don”t do yellow,” she responded, “You”ve got nine months, dad.”

Directly across from Lemonier are Norm Darwish and Connie Mettler (Booth No. 2) from Coldwater, Michigan. Darwish and Mettler. They”ve been in this spot for a number of years and I”ve always liked their hand-tinted photographs. Dawrish”s shots using natural light with black and white film.

He prints the pictures using a developer that enhances the graininess of the film and then hand printed and sepia toned. Outdoor images are shot with infrared film. This film is heat sensitive rather than light sensitive and gives a very dramatic look to the landscape.

Down around the first curve is the mixed-media art of Ummarid Eitharong (Booth No. 22), a Thai native living in Orlando, Florida. Eitharong is another Cain Park veteran. His collages evoke a pre-War II era.

Nearby is another mixed-media artist whose work spoke to me. Chirstopher Stangler (Booth No. 31) from Lockport, New York, paints on three-dimensional canvases of scrap wood. What drew me into his booth were memories of playing in old barns in Southeastern Ohio and the way the landscapes looked through the cracks in the walls.

I’ve always loved etchings, and those of James Skvarch (Booth No. 73) from Syracuse, New York, have exactly the right gothic quality. What makes his etchings work is that the detail holds your eye and pulls you in.

Not far from Skvarch are a cluster of three artists whose art delighted me. Jane Frenke (Booth No. 85) is a fiber artist from Berkley Springs, West Virginia. Frenke definitely needs to find a good webpage designer. The one picture of her work I found on the web does not do her vibrant quilts justice. The colors and fabrics dance, but it is the stitching, like swirling blood vessels, that makes the quilts come alive.

Next to Frenke is yet another mixed-media artist. (I sense a theme for me this year, have I been feeling too two-dimensional of late?) Looking at the collages of Benjamin Frey (Booth No. 87), New York, makes me think of 19th century desktops and trunks hidden away in under the eaves in the servant’s wing.

Across from Frenke is Cleveland artist: William A. Gould (Booth No. 86). His watercolors are primarily architectural and simple, but, like all really good watercolors, capture the core of what the artist sees. One of the things that drew me into his booth is a large bin of small, unmounted watercolor sketches.

I have struggled for years to master Japanese ink-and-rice-paper art. I’ve yet to find that Zen space where the circle is round and as complete as it needs to be. Michael Kopald has found that place. In this show, his Bamboo In The Early Morning Mist is my favorite.

The last stop on my list was the potter whose work had caught my eye the night before. Robin M. Morris (Booth No. 100) is from Corry, Pennsylvania. It was her Ocean Blue that grabbed me even before I was 50 feet away from her booth. (I confess that an artist friend I chatted with for a few minutes while walking has alerted me to the blue, so I was looking for it.)

I’ve been looking for a tall, thin mug to put tea in for some time. While I was looking for a Zen black, the brilliant Ocean Blue was too good to pass up. I also bought a cereal bowl.

While I was walking I had been on the lookout for a power source to leach off of. All of the lamp posts in Cain Park have outlets, but I wasn’t sure if the city would have them turned on or not. The first one I tried was, and at 1:30 p.m., I settled down on a wrought iron and wood-slat park bench to start blogging. There were six signals in the vicinity, but all of them were secured, so I popped open Word and started to write.

I’d prepared a new laptop sign for the back of my screen that has my Have Coffee Will Write logo and the phrase I’m Blogging This… above it.

As soon as I settled back and began to write people began turning to read the sign as they walked past. Quiet few stopped to chat. A few were curious about what Blogging is, but most asked what I was writing about. People told me how much they were enjoying the show. Again and again I heard people echo my impression that this was the best show in several years.

My biggest mistake was not bringing my business cards with me. Quite a few people asked for a pen to write down the blog name.

One of the comments I heard most often was that the quality of fine art was up and that they show seemed brighter.

That was a comment that Tim Smith repeated as we talked. The recently married Smith — a Coventry Yard alumnus remembered as half of the Tim and Scott musical duo — was working as one of the show managers. He remarked that he thought the Jury had made an effort to find brighter works for the show. Tim also remarked that he saw more challenging works in the show, Art that made you think.

I told him that I thought even this year’s t-shirt, designed, says Tim, by the person in charge of scene painting for the Cain Park Amphitheater, was the best I remembered seeing.

The crowd size seemed, to me, to be optimal; busy but not so full that you felt jostled. I noticed that the artists’ tents on the north side of the park had been pushed back 10 to 15 back from the pathway to allow more room. As I watched I was pleasantly pleased to see quite a few of the members of the Cleveland Heights Jewish Orthodox community out for a Shabbat stroll. I had followed a mother and her two daughters as she walked them from booth to booth giving them art lessons.

The bench I settled on was diagonally across from John R. Willer (Booth No. 58) from Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Willer’s oils didn’t grab me as I walked past. He has an impressionist style and an affinity for Jazz scenes. But sitting there blogging, I found myself also listening to his music — a soft trumpet lead with a ballad feel to it.

When he walked over to toss some trash in the can next to me I asked who the musician was and he returned with the CD case. It was Roy Hargrove’s Moment To Moment. Hargrove’s music captures the mood of Willer’s oils perfectly.

On my way out I stopped into chat some more with Willer and he invited me to step around and take a look at the paintings hanging in the back of his tent. There were two there that, if they’d been visible from the outside, would have drawn me in and made Willer No. 11 on my list. The portraits are of two of three sisters that have sat for him. I would have loved to have taken the one titled simply Redhead home.

One of the fun moments was eavesdropping on a conversation between some of the staff and the wife of one of the artists. It seems that one of the other artists was committing the sin of displaying reproductions. By the time I left the show, I didn’t see any art taken down, so I don’t know what the outcome was, but it was obviously perked some people up to have something to talk about.

My presence was also unusual enough that two people stopped to take pictures of me. The first was David, from Pittsburgh, and Corina, from Lakewood. They are 20-something swing dancers. Because of the blog sign our conversation turned to coffee and they said they were interested in where to find a good mocha in Cleveland Heights. I sent them to Phoenix Coffee on Lee, of course. David promised to eMail a copy of the picture to me when he got home.

Another pair of faces that showed up was Claire and Chuck of the Kram-A-Lot Inn. They made it back safely from their spring trip and had a thoroughly good time.

I was actually surprised at how few people I knew (I only saw three) were at the show this afternoon. I usually see at least a dozen or so people. It’s probably a factor of the time I was there.

As I was getting ready to leave I thought I’d move up to the food court and capture a little bit of the crowd there. I made a pass through the food court, but the prices were so jacked up that I decided to pass. And there weren’t any readily available outlets to plug into so it was back on the bike and home.

My Soundtrack: people buzz and nature by Cleveland Heights.