GULFPORT, Fla. — Picture it.
St. Petersburg, Florida.
1976.
The city threw its first Mainsail Art Show to mark the country’s bi-centennial celebrations.
And that show continues nearly 50 years later — one of the biggest festivals of its kind in the country. More than 100,00 people are expected.
This weekend Vinoy Park will once again be packed with creators and their works.
That includes Fiber artist Dawn Waters.
We caught up with her in her Gulfport studio, and she showed us her first ever felt art.
It was her dog Chico.
And she even added a few wisps of felt around one of Chico’s eyes to show how felting is done.
She placed it and poked it until the felt blended into the lower rim of one of Chico’s eyelids.
“It’s like tattooing but with wool,” Waters explained. “You just keep poking until the face you want emerges.”
A former advertising and communications executive, Dawn Waters has been a fiber artist for about six years.
Waters is working toward this weekend’s 48th Mainsail Art Festival at Vinoy Park in St. Petersburg.
It’s where more than 100,000 visitors will stroll the aisles of creators and their many works.
“That is a huge deal, a huge art show,” Waters said.
Art shows are how she meets her potential audience.
That’s why getting accepted to show into Mainsail is so clutch for Waters.
“My work when you see a picture of it, it doesn’t really convey the conventional and tactile nature of it,” Waters explained.
When people realize there is no paint in these portraits, they come closer to understand. Their reactions let Waters know she’s created something they connect to too.
“They always want to touch it,” she says, of curious adults.
But she asks please to touch with your eyeballs.
Waters is having an open house at her studio in DRV Gallery at 5401 Gulfport Boulevard.
The date is Saturday, May 20, from 1 p.m. until 4 p.m.
Spectrum Bay News 9 is one of the Mainsail Art Festival sponsors.