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Friday, November 12, 2010
Living masterpieces
By Isabel Sanchez
Journal Staff Writer
What you'll see at Artfest: etchings, watercolors, stoneware pottery, jewelry, stained glass, textiles, formerly stray Chihuahua mix, owner-surrendered tabby.
"Animals are art," says Mary Ann Weems, who has held the now-traditional, now-international Artfest for almost 30 years. "Art is our soul."
Weems says this near the front door of her gallery on Montgomery NE, where along one wall low shelves hold rows of ceramics, as she greets the dogs that are about to come inside. And one cat.
"Look at our soul there."
People bring their dogs in all the time; a sign at the door (with a painted dog by Weems) assures that Weems Galleries and Framing is pet friendly. "We've had 1,000 dogs in here," Weems says, a visitor tidbit that's due to Weems' own love of dogs in general and her love of her two dachshunds in particular, Oscar and Meyer ("Weems' weiners").
Weems and her Artfest have a history of supporting art education and of donating proceeds to good causes — the children's hospital, a breast cancer foundation, wildlife groups, schools.
Today, though, the five dogs and one cat are here to help publicize a lesser-known component of Weems International Artfest, the adoptions. Offering the opportunity to give dogs and cats new homes, animals that might not otherwise be seen outside a shelter became part of Artfest in 2002, at least officially. Weems says she doesn't remember when Artfest didn't feature animals.
Into the gallery they come, most of them from the city's West Side shelter. Gallery clientele often bring well-behaved dogs into the store with them; these animals, except for a Great Pyrenees, belong to no one. They behave beautifully, wagging tails and touching noses; nothing indicates they haven't been raised in the most perfect home ever. The breakables on the low shelves are safe, serene.
Bringing adoptables to the show, says Rhonda Buehren, Artfest's animal rescue coordinator, puts them in a spotlight. It lets them have the attention they might not otherwise get at local adopt-a-thons, or at city shelters, where among the hundreds of cats and dogs that are brought in every week, they're likely to be overlooked.
"These guys get a little better chance at getting a home," she says.
Except for Ailo, the stunning 6-year-old Great Pyrenees, these guys could easily be passed over. There's Tango, found starved and dehydrated and looking ancient, under a dumped couch in the South Valley.
He's being fostered by Sandy Johnson of the rescue group Enchantmutts. He's a cattle dog mix, now sleek and healthy, about a year old. He's "easy in the house," Johnson says. He's playful, gets along with other dogs, very smart.
"I'm thinking of teaching him to drive," she says.
There's a Chihuahua mix, medium-sized, from the West Side shelter that kennel supervisor Mary Soto says is 5, calm, "real mellow." He, too, was a stray. Another stray is a quiet, tiny Maltese mix, curly and white, whose potential beams as gallery personnel and visitors carry her around.
The one cat in the midst of this canine display is a 4-month-old calico, slightly long-haired, who even out of her cage is composed. She is in an art gallery, a sort of place she has never seen, full of people she has never met, and dogs. She tolerates having her picture taken in this crowd, and then naps in the arms of Carol Matz, who was on her way to the TJ Maxx next door when she dropped in at Weems to look for a display table.
The Animal Welfare Department will bring about 15 dogs and cats to Artfest at a time, replenishing them as needed. Adoption fees run from $20 to $60, and include spay/neuter, microchip, shots and more. Last year, 50 animals found homes at Artfest, Buehren says.
Also at Artfest is Enchantment Great Pyrenees Rescue, represented by Ailo, who is owned by Nancy Wood Taber, club president. "Animated snowdrifts," they're called, she says. "Gentle giants." Ailo wasn't a stray or surrendered by an owner; he's here to draw attention to the group that saves others of his kind. Adoption fees and criteria for breed rescues vary.
Great Pyrenees, like other purebreds, are just as likely as mutts to need new homes and families. People move and give them up, Taber says, or more recently, find they can't afford to feed dogs like Ailo, who weighs around 110 pounds.
Weighing a fraction of a fraction of that is the little Maltese, now being held by Matz, who has given the young cat over to a volunteer. Matz, who came into the gallery looking for a table, leaves Weems as the new owner of the white Maltese mix that was once a stray.
It's Artfest's first adoption of the year.
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