Some 50 years ago, Nancy Lee Bedard took part in her first Stockade Villager’s Outdoor Art Show.
Just a teenager, she had never displayed her work before she and her dad set up a table in Schenectady’s historic Stockade district. On it, Bedard placed tiny, 1-inch paintings she had made, each mounted on a toothpick painted with shoe polish to look like an easel.
By the time the show closed, Bedard had sold just about all of her two dozen creations, and the stage was set for her to return to the Stockade just about every year since.
I do quite a few art shows, and this is my favorite, Bedard, of Rotterdam, said. `I love it. I think it’s the most exciting art show. It’s like being in Greenwich Village.`
Bedard isn’t alone in her enthusiasm for the show, which will be held this year on Saturday, Sept. 11, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with a rain date of Sunday, Sept. 12. Artists will line the streets of the Stockade selling paintings, photographs, drawings and other kinds of art ` but nothing else. After a few years of trying to incorporate crafts and other projects, organizers decided to keep the focus strictly on art, a move that participants welcomed.
`I always sell something, because people who come are looking for art,` said Linda Biggers of Broadalbin.
Biggers is one of roughly 115 artists expected at the show this year. She will be selling her eggshell mosaics, which she makes by painting eggshells, then breaking them and forming them into pictures. It’s an art form she kind of stumbled on while doing a `lot of experimentation, playing around,` she said.
Biggers first displayed her work at the art show several years ago when she was looking for shows to attend and heard about the Stockade show from a fellow artist. Like Bedard, she enjoys the festive atmosphere in the Stockade.
`It’s a great show,` she said. `It’s a lot of fun.`
Dianne Tracy of Schenectady goes so far as to call it `my favorite art show in the whole world.` Tracy is particularly appreciative of the emphasis on art, nothing there are `no jewelry, no T-shirts … you can’t even have greeting cards.`
Tracy has been a mainstay at the show since the mid-1980s. She had always wanted to try her hand at art, but she took a more practical career route, going to business school.
`I hated it,` she said flatly.
After her kids went to school, Tracy decided to give art a try. After working in several mediums, she decided watercolors were her strength. She first showed them off in the Stockade when a cousin who is a photographer offered to share his space with her, telling her he had only enough photos to fill about half his table.
`I sold half my inventory,` she said. `It gave me a boost.`
Tracy opened a gallery on Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks and started attending more than 20 art shows a year. But the Stockade show will always have a special place in her heart.
`I wouldn’t miss it for the world,` she said. `They put so much energy into it. It’s a camaraderie thing.`
`I think it’s a place where people come to meet other people,` co-chair Connie Colangelo agreed. `You’ll see people with dogs, people with baby carriages.`
For the past 20 years or so, the show has been held on the same weekend as St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church’s Greek Festival, which is across Erie Boulevard at the Hellenic Center on Liberty Street. The festival features Greek food, dancing and crafts as well as rides and games for kids. Schenectady’s Little Italy festival is also that weekend, sandwiched between the Greek festival and the art show on Jay Street and offering Italian cultural exhibits, Italian films, contests, children’s activities and special guests.
`It’s just a great way to enjoy the downtown area,` Colangelo said. `You’re bound to find something you like.` “
