Summer Celebration Art Fair is home to 20 unique artists including Alex Farnham and Doug Burbeck

For the fourth straight year, Cherie Lingelbach has been in charge of assembling a plentiful pool of artists for the Estacada Summer Celebration Art Fair. Fortunately for Summer Celebration attendees, for the fourth straight year, Lingelbach has struck gold.

With artists of nearly every kind, this year’s fair on July 28 will feature woodworkers, jewelers, glass blowers, painters and many other artists eager to show off their work.

“We want to promote local art and art expression in the community,” Lingelbach said. “We do a call for artists in the winter, and then it goes out to a mailing list of artists around Oregon. People submit an application and then it’s juried and we try to select a wide variety of art so we’re not over-represented in one particular medium.”

At the moment, Lingelbach has secured 20 artists and still has room for one or two more artists if anyone is interested.

To get a better idea about the type of people coming to town, we sat down and spoke with a couple of this year’s participants, Alex Farnham and Doug Burbeck.

Alex Farnham

Growing up in New Jersey, Alex Farnham, 50, has taken an interesting route to Oregon, including historical reenactments, a degree in biology, and, finally, a passion for glass blowing.

After coming to Oregon, Farnham attended Lewis & Clark College, where she studied art and biology. While at school, Farnham met her boyfriend and they moved to Sandy and opened the Elusive Trout Pub, which they sold 15 years ago.

No longer in the restaurant business, Farnham is a full-time surgical technologist — the person who hands the surgeon his or her tools during surgery.

In between her 12-hour work shifts, Farnham still has found the time to practice the unique art of glass blowing.

“My dad was a hobby blacksmith who wrote about antique tools, so we went to a lot of reenactments,” she said. “I was attracted to the fires, and one day I was at a fair and there was a guy blowing glass, and I was just a teenager wearing a miniskirt, so he asked me if I wanted to join him, so I worked with him a few times.”

With a newfound passion, Farnham set off on a journey that eventually led her to the Pacific Northwest College of Art and Red Deer College, where she began taking classes years later.

“It’s a lot of experimentation,” she said. “I studied painting at Lewis and Clark, so I’m very painterly, involved in colors, and then as a chemist I like to experiment with colors.”

To blow glass, Farnham begins by dipping her blowpipe into the molten glass, which she slowly shapes into a skin.

“I liken it to making balloon animals and wrestling an alligator,” she said. “Because it’s always changing, so it’s a challenging process. It’s a balloon of glass.”

As for what things look like when she has finished, Fanham has a large selection of items that are artistic and functional.

“I make a lot more functional work than artistic stuff,” she said. “I make some fancy, pricy work, but most of my stuff I want people to take home and use.”

Some of the items she makes are tumblers, bottle stoppers, vases, olive oil pourers, plates, bowls, jewelry and bird sculptures. She said vases start around $20-$25 and can be as expensive as $125.

“I’ve met a lot of wonderful artists in Estacada, and that’s why I’m here,” she said.

For more information on Farnham and her work, visit her website at farnham-art.com/Alexandra.

Doug Burbeck

With Bill Clinton, George Harrison and Joe Cocker among his past clients, Doug Burbeck might be the most accomplished artists at this year’s fair.

Burbeck, originally from Danville, Calif., has been painting on ceramics since 1969 and has been a full-time artist since 1978, developing his own technique of under-glazed painting on un-fired ceramics.

In addition to large ceramics, Burbeck also has begun creating jewelry that he calls miniature fine-art.

“He can’t even draw with a pencil anymore because he’s used to such a fine brush,” his wife Linda said. “It’s virtually impossible to do what he does in that medium.”

While many artists allow culture and fashion to dictate their work, Burbeck lets his feelings and emotions dictate his art in a classic sense.

“His love of nature and music and spirituality come out in all his pieces,” Linda said. “He has a great connection with animals, so his cat and animal pieces are very popular.”

Burbeck’s work begins with a hunk of mud clay that is either rolled out into very fine pieces or placed into a homemade mold. From there the piece is sanded in an effort to get it as thin as possible before it is painted and glazed.

“It’s not machine perfect, but it’s very refined,” Linda said. “It’s not heavy and lumpy, it’s wafer thin.”

Among his most popular items are earrings and pendants, but it was actually a necklace that he made that has brought him the most joy.

“His favorite was the tiger necklace that Joe Cocker wore when he won song of the year,” Linda said. Cocker won a Grammy for Song of the Year in 1983.

As for former President Bill Clinton, Linda said he picked up a panda pin that Doug had made in a gallery in Georgetown.

“The owner sent us a copy of the receipt with President Clinton’s signature on it, and they called to tell us because they were very excited,” she said.

With the excitement of celebrity purchases mostly behind him, Burbeck is still producing top-notch work, much of which will be on sale at the art fair. Burbeck also spends his time as part of the Mossy Rock Ramblers, a local band.

“We always talked about retiring out here to move closer to children and grandchildren,” Linda said. “We discovered a host of wonderful people, and we’ve been out here eight years.”

The art fair is Saturday, July 28, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Broadway.