Yesterday my wife and I visited the Festival at Waterford, Va. In a quaintly rustic town there were an incredible amount of old world artisans who adhere to the original craftsmanship techniques. Their wares are unique and vivid. There were metalsmiths, pottery makers, wood crafters, rug and material loomers, original musical instruments and musicians, civil war reenactors (Southern sypathizers, of course, "Give 'em hell, Bobby Lee!"), punchneedle works, basket weavers, floral artisans, Old World sign makers, and paint artists. The return to a simpler era began with a 3 hour drive from the Philadelphia area to Waterford, Virginia. It was worth every second. We went back in time to a town that holds the traditions and ways of a town that treasures its roots. We visited and spoke with James Stewart the sign carver (www.woodsunlimited.com), Judth McKellar, a sculpture artist from Warrenton, Pa, Joanne Evans, a wonderful coutry painter, among others. We hope to get these people and others that we have met to exhibit their terrific work on our site, www.artiqueandcraftmasters.com. They embody the vision that I have for this site and hope that you will be seeing their work shortly on our site.

In the summer of 2004 my wife, Robin, and I spent a great deal of time looking around various arts and crafts shows in the Delaware Valley. We had noticed a great deal of very talented people had no on-line prescence. They had no web site or if they did it was poorly put together and rarely updated. I expressed to several business associates my thoughts and they suggested that I survey patrons in various locations. The results confirmed some suspicions that I had. One, very talented and creative people are under-represented on line. They develop various visually pleasing objects with their innovative minds and talents. Within this space in the future I will attempt to highlight and describe some of the truly talented people that I encounter in my travels. I will focus the individual posts on their craft. If they have web sites and a web prescence, I will provide links to them and I will attempt to highlight them on my newly created site, www.artiqueandcraftmasters.com. Please feel free to rebut my opinions and provide sites and shows where you feel that talent is exhibited. I would like to get into a useful and intelligent dialogue with various art fans who may have an opinion on exactly what constitues art.

Signed, Art Fan