Even as a kid I knew I’d end up involved in the arts in some way. I was as likely to spend an afternoon cutting up my mom’s Better Homes and Gardens and creating elaborate collages as writing skits my friends and I could perform for each other. But sometime around the fourth grade, my fate was sealed: I read Nancy Drew: The Hidden Staircase, and I knew writing great stories was what I wanted to do. Sadly, it turned out I could only serve one muse, and my collages fell by the wayside.

In The Writer’s Brush (due out next month), Donald Friedman reveals the secret drawings, paintings and sculpture of more than 200 famous writers who found themselves as comfortable at the easel as at the typewriter. Among the writer-artists’ works featured are Marcel Proust’s doodle of a jeune fille from his manuscript for In Search of Lost Time, the manuscript sketches that Fyodor Dostoevsky made of his characters, and Joseph Conrad’s racy pen-and-ink cancan dancers. On the cover of The Writer's Brush: Slyvia Plath's Two Women Reading (tempera).

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Woodland Art Fair in Lexington, Kentucky. Saturday was the perfect day to take in such an event: The heat index was somewhere in the mid-80s, the sun was shining and even a slight breeze found its way throughout Woodland park—not what we’ve become accustomed to lately in the Midwest (and definitely not the same scenario as Sunday). Sponsored by the Lexington Art League and held each year the third weekend in August, the fair featured somewhere around 200 fine artists and craftsmen, live music, food vendors, a beer garden, children’s activities and more—on Sunday afternoon there were belly dancers accompanied by a drum circle.

Our editor Kelly Kane was also there, and when we ran into each other we discussed our delight in the watercolor artists’ booths we’d seen. A few that stood out were Arkansas artist Nik Chamberlain’s transparent horses, perfect for the horse-breeding city of Lexington; still lifes, florals and landscapes by Tupelo, Mississippi, artist Carolyn Watson; landscapes by Bruce Allan Neville, from right here in Cincinnati; and gouache and ink drawings by Phillip Jones, of Lexington.



What festivals have you attended this summer?