Woodworker Doyle Borntrager of Goshen poses in his booth at the Village Art Fair on Saturday, June 1, in Winona Lake. He was one of 69 artists selling at the fair.

Text and Photos
By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WINONA LAKE — Summer has officially started in Winona Lake, according to The Village at Winona Managing Director Nick Hauck.

That’s due to the Village Art Fair happening on Saturday, June 1. People may still come out for the event’s second day on Sunday, June 2, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., in The Village at Winona.

“(KCV Cycling Club’s) Fat & Skinny (Tire Fest) is kind of the kickoff of the summer season, but Art Fair is (the beginning of) the true festival season for us,” said Hauck on Saturday, explaining that’s because Fat & Skinny is all over the county whereas the fair is just in Winona Lake.

Hauck noted he was happy that the rain held off at least until early afternoon Saturday, allowing for plenty of people to come to the fair.

“I don’t know how many thousands of people were here, but traffic was backed up all the way to the roundabout all morning,” he said. “Between the farmers market (at Miller Sunset Pavilion), and here, there had to be several thousand people. We had a shuttle running up the hill all morning, so it’s been great.”

“This is our 24th year. Every year is always bigger and better. The community came out today for sure,” said Hauck.

Background on Artists

One of the 69 artists selling items at the show was Doyle Borntrager of Goshen.

The woodworker had live edge pieces for sale, including furniture, through his Knarley Knot Wood Goods.

It’s his third year at the show.

He said he’s been working with live edge products for “eight or nine years now.”

“I’ve been working with wood for most of my adult life,” said Borntrager. “I do contracting, building, finish carpentry.”

He said he likes making things out of live edge pieces “because you get to see all the character parts of the tree that you don’t see in just regular lumber, all the little knots and the different colors and the grain pattern.”

“It’s kind of like sculpture. You start with a piece and kind of decide what it’s going to be, so it’s kind of a design-build process,” said Borntrager.

He said most of his pieces came from Elkhart County trees, with “a lot of different kinds of wood: walnut, cherry, apple, maple.”

Also selling at the fair was Ron Mellott of Bloomington.

His booth featured his nature photography.

He said he’s been taking pictures “since the fourth grade.”

Mellott said he came back for a second year to the fair because “everything about the show is so well-run.”

He said his photography is focused on “more intimate landscapes, so it’s not things that everybody else sees or places that other people go.”

“It’s kind of my own vision of places. So my trips are usually three weeks, and that’s all I concentrate on is photography and nothing else,” said Mellott.

He’s taken pictures across the U.S. and internationally.

“Photography to me is about vision. It’s not about the technology that we use,” Mellott explained. “To me, it’s traveling around, what I see, trying to decide, OK, I really like this vision here, but I’m not here at the right time, so when do I need to come back?”

He noted one of his pictures “took three years to get and seven trips, but when it happened, I love the consequences of what happened which was a picture people just fall in love with.”

“You get rewarded with … seeing what it can be with your vision and then having it play out the way that you see it happening,” said Mellott.