So, I’m a member of Olathe Visual Artists (OVA) and they’re putting on an art fair this summer. I wanted to post this call for artists here to help spread the word. Feel free to share this post with anyone you think might be interested.
Source: https://olathevisualartists.com/2019/01/25/call-for-artists-olathe-station-art-fair/
Apply at: https://www.zapplication.org/event-info.php?ID=7203
So, the reason I drew the Ogerita trolley car in the first place was to donate its limited use to the Olathe Station Art Fair. This is a street fair put on by Olathe Visual Artists, a group I’m a member of and serve as the webmaster for. They had a trolley on their material last year, because it’s held on Strang Line road, which was named after a historic interurban railway line that ran more-or-less through there from 1906-1940. Plus, the shopping center was named Olathe Station Shopping Center. So, the trolley theme was pretty obvious. But, unfortunately, the trolley image they used last year was not accurate. (No disrespect to the artist, she definitely knows her way around Illustrator better than me, but she wasn’t familiar with the material.) I knew I could do better, so I did. The Ogerita was one of the first two trolleys on the line and ran for only two years from 1906-1908. It was gas electric, so had no trolley pole. But it is the cutest one, with it’s short length, rounded windows, and decorative railing.
Anyway, this is one of the new logos for this year’s fair. It’s to be held on May 18th and 19th at the Olathe Station Shopping Center. 10-8 on Saturday and 10-5 on Sunday. This is the second year it’s running and it was pretty good last year, especially for a brand new fair. I think it’ll do even better this year.
I also sold (at cost) three prints of the Ogerita to the Overland Park Historical Society. Those should be hanging in their museum somewhere by now. They are also big on the Strang Line over there. I was pretty happy about that.
Prints of the Ogerita are available at my Zazzle store. And I’m sure OSAF merchandise will be available before long as well.
My Dad wanted a Christmas card based on the Ogerita trolley car I just finished. So, I Christmased-up the trolley for him. The card’s here on my Zazzle store, in case anyone else would like one.
Here’s something completely different.
This is the Ogerita, a gas electric trolley car that ran on the Missouri and Kansas Interurban Railway, known as the Strang Line, from 1906-1908. The railroad was owned by William B. Strang Jr., a land developer in Johnson County, KS. The car was named after his niece.
This image was created in Adobe Illustrator using historic black and white photos as references. (Thank you to the Overland Park Historical Society for those reference images.) Period news clippings mention at the railroad painted their trolleys vermilion, so that’s the color I used. I also consulted David Holland, an amateur railroad historian and my father, for additional references and explanations of how it all looked. (Thanks, Dad. I finally drew a train car like you’ve been wanting me to do for years.)
A print can be purchased here.
Edit: I had previously stated the car was named after his wife. It was actually named after his niece.
A footbridge over the Little Cedar Creek at Ernie Miller Nature Center in Olathe, KS.
Cedar Lake Park in Olathe, KS.
I had a wild neighbor pay a visit to my back fence a couple days ago. He came by around this time last year too, so maybe it’s an annual visit. This time I only got one decent shot of him.
Here’s a close-up of his head. Same image, just cropped and auto contrasted.
Last week the thought occurred to me, “Hey, I wonder if there are any local artists groups around here?” I live in the Kansas City Metro Area, specifically Olathe, KS. While that isn’t a metropolis on the scale of New York or Chicago, that’s still a decent-sized community. There are art galleries, an art school, art courses at all the community colleges, and the local SCBWI group meets in the area. There are artists here, so I wondered if there were any groups for us.
So, I did what anyone does in this day and age. I Googled it. And, to my surprise, not only was there an Olathe Visual Artists Association, but it met every fourth Thursday at a church just a block away from my house. I can literally ride my bike there in 10 minutes. There aren’t even any big hills between here and there.
I figured if the universe was conspiring to make it that easy for me, I really should show up and see what sort of group it is.
Last night was the meeting. I printed off some of my recent work, stuck it in a portfolio, and rode my bike right over there. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I’d never find out if I didn’t show up.
They were primarily discussing the upcoming 2012 Downtown Olathe Arts Festival which will be June 9th and 10th this year. That’s two weeks from now. They were discussing who was going to be in which tents (Don’t put a photographer in the same tent as a painter!), when to show up, what prizes to offer for second and third prize, how much to pay for a judge, and all that. I’m afraid I wasn’t paying close attention to it all for the simple reason that, because the event was coming up so soon, I sensibly assumed that it was too late for me to participate in it. I was mostly trying to figure out what the group was.
Then they asked if I wanted to participate. It was too late for an unaffiliated artist to get space at the festival, but the group already had 4 tents and were a little short on artists to fill them. My artistic genre was definitely different than everyone else, but they thought that some of them might sell as prints for kids’ rooms.
They gave me the name and contact info for someone to contact to make prints relatively inexpensively (about $5 for an 8 by 10 from EPG Imaging) and where to get the plastic sleeves to sell them in if I’m not going to frame them (Coldsnows). Everything I need to know.
So, now I have to decide if I want to participate in an art fair in two weeks. I’ll have to pay for prints and $40 to join the OVA group. I’ll have to spend the whole weekend at the booth, but I’ll get local exposure and maybe a few sales. I can always bring my promo postcards and fill out addresses to pass the time.
It does seem oddly like the stars have aligned to set this series of events in motion.
What do you all think? Should I take advantage of the opportunity?
I went and updated my website today. I added a few images to my online portfolio. Nothing big. When I added a note to the “What’s New” page for what I changed, I realized it’s been MONTHS since I touched the website at all. Like, six months. Geez. I need to do better than that. Not that I haven’t been doing stuff, but nothing’s gone on the website. So, anyway, I fixed that today at least. 🙂
So, I found this sitting on my hard drive. I made it SO long ago for no apparent reason. Since it was for no apparent reason, I don’t have it up anywhere on anything. So, I though, “Hey, why not stick it up on the blog.” So, here you go. Just a random happy icon. Enjoy.
Karen B. Jones - Illustrator 