Crowds browse, eat and enjoy

COEUR d’ALENE — A slow wave of people circled up and down Sherman Avenue this weekend, looking at all the beautiful creations and fun goods being sold at the Street Fair. The wave arched over Taste of Coeur d’Alene at City Park and crashed on the beaches of North Idaho College at Art on the Green.

Artists from around the country swarmed Coeur d’Alene this weekend to set up shop and sell their merchandise. Booths at the Street Fair sold food, handmade soaps, essential oils, jewelry, wood carvings and more.

Coeur d’Alene residents Debbie Manes and her husband, Don, have a booth at Third Street and Sherman Avenue, selling jewelry and jewelry organizers. Don makes the organizers to look like old shutters or doors. They have door knobs and hooks on them for necklaces and a screen across the surface to hang earrings.

Debbie makes the jewelry. She’s been crafting necklaces, earrings and bracelets for a long time and has a large collection for herself at home. This is her first time at the Street Fair.

“I’ve wanted to come to this fair for about five years now,” she said Friday morning as people started strolling through the tents. “I was afraid because it was expensive to be here and I didn’t know if I would sell enough to make it up. You never know until you try.”

Further up Sherman, plants that look like jellyfish hung down from Joanna Valli’s booth. Urban Dirt, her business, sells air plants. She finds hanging glass balls that she fills with colorful pebbles and an air plant so people can hang them anywhere.

She has started to make displays in vases and other larger glass containers, but the people inquired most about the jellyfish. Valli found a way to put the aloe-looking plant into a sea-urchin shell and hang it upside down. People loved it, she said.

About two and a half years ago, Valli lost three relatives in a very short amount of time. Out of grief, she said her husband threw himself into his work, but as a stay-at-home mom she didn’t have any work to occupy her. So she started making air plant displays.

“At first it was a way to stay busy,” the Rathdrum woman said. “But now it’s fun.”

Down at City Park, Taste of Coeur d’Alene fed the hungry and quenched the thirsty. With frozen lemonade, shaved ice and a beer garden all a hop, skip and a jump away from the lake, fair-goers could cool off and relax for while.

“I come to eat the food ... the art’s nice, too,” Rob Presnell of Hayden told The Press Saturday afternoon as he bit into his corn on the cob. He said he tried most of the food and his favorite “is between the Italian sausage and corn dipped in butter.”

Food trucks and stands sold tacos, sausages, funnel cakes and crepes.

Las Brasas, a new Mexican food truck in Coeur d’Alene, got a surprise Friday when they sold out of almost everything they had.

“We stayed up all night to prep for today,” owner Ivan Guitron said on Saturday. “We made about 10 times as we had Friday, so we came a bit more prepared today.”

Guitron said he was excited to be part of Taste of Coeur d’Alene because it gets his company’s name out there. The three-week old business separates itself from competition with its flavors and authenticity, Guitron said. He wants to keep his food true to the style his father passed down to him.

On the other end of the spectrum, Ekness Catering has been at every single Taste of Coeur d’Alene “since it’s inception,” said co-owner Keith Ekness.

His family’s company is known for the Idaho Beer Ball — a ball of homemade sausage with jalepeños and chillies.

“We love this festival and we love the community,” Ekness said.

With live music, trampolines, aerial acrobatic performances and a children’s area where kids could spar with foam swords and make fairy crowns, Taste of Coeur d’Alene had plenty of family fun.

A quieter scene greeted people who mulled about Art on the Green at the NIC campus.

Brad Shern walked around “the green” with his wife, talking with as many artists as he could. His grandfather once had a booth at Art on the Green where he spun pots on his pottery wheel. Shern comes to the event every year.

“It’s the summer ritual,” he said. “I like it because I get to talk to artists about their medium and see what’s possible in the art community.”

The featured artist of the event was Ben Joyce from Spokane. He took part in Art on the Green for a long time until his work brought him to a national market. He recently made installments in Las Vegas and at Gonzaga University.

Now, Joyce is glad to be back. He is featuring his limited edition collection at the show this year. He duplicated original art pieces into smaller pieces and prints. This way, he said, people can share the emotion of the piece without needing to spend as much money.

His collection, focusing on sense of place, contains artwork with local lakes.

“The smaller pieces allow more people to have that message,” he said. “If someone is looking at their paper edition and can feel the same sense of place, that gives them the same gratification as the original piece.”

All three downtown events run through today on Sherman Avenue, in City Park and on the NIC Campus.