It’s already another whirlwind of a week, and I’m a little short on pictures, but have been up to plenty! I’m working on a design for a new photo album with leather covers, and I also just finished sewing up a coptic stitch photo album from the gorgeous green dotted paper from Kunokuniya (pictures soon!).

Today I shipped off 12 books and 40 cards to Campbell Steele Gallery in Marion, Iowa. You might recognize the name (it’s mine!), and you might be able to infer the family connection. My parents opened Campbell Steele in 1991, shortly after our family moved into the Kendall building in downtown Marion, of which the gallery occupies the first floor storefront. I’ll elaborate at another time about spending one’s formative years living in 8,000 square feet of open space (no dividing walls!) but, suffice it to say, we’ve got a lot of history in that not-so-little building.

At any rate, the reason I shipped all those books & cards off to Campbell Steele today was to stock up the gallery for the business that is coming this Saturday, May 17, during the 16th annual Marion Arts Festival. Not only am I proud to be even remotely familiar with such an incredible event, this is also a family affair.

In the Campbell-Steele family spirit of making our own solutions (however frantic, illogical, fun, and manic), my mom & dad, Priscilla Steele & Craig Campbell, founded the arts festival in 1992, as a means of creating a high caliber artistic event to strengthen the little community they happened upon in 1991 and have called home (& work!) ever since.

My mom has done outdoor art fairs since before I was born, including one 2 days after I was born, so they’re events that have become pretty commonplace for our entire family. After traversing the midwest countless times each year from Denver to Milwaukee to Rockford to Ann Arbor to Peoria to Minneapolis to Omaha to Des Moines to Kansas City and pretty much everywhere else in between, between about 1979 and 1991, my parents looked at the little town they had landed in in east central Iowa and decided, why not here? Indeed, the question behind most of the things our family has done may very well be, “Why not?”

From the germ of an idea in the early ’90s until now, the arts festival has grown from a locally-recognized to a nationally-recognized and -appreciated event, featuring 50 of the highest quality fine artists in the country, and drawing thousands of people to Marion, Iowa’s City Square Park.

Each of my parents will rather modestly distance themselves from the festival’s reason-for-being when grilled but, rest assured, just like much of the loveliness they’ve surrounded themselves with, it’s almost entirely thanks to their brilliant ideas and desire to make wonderful things happen, and the devoted people they’ve known along the way who’ve helped them to make those things happen.

This Saturday, even if you’re nowhere near downtown Marion, think good thoughts for sunshine, warmth, and amazing energy among those 50 artists who are hauling their work out into the elements yet again, just a few of the many, many people who believe powerfully in their work and work hard to make it happen. And think a few good thoughts and for the 2 people who created me who have always hauled themselves out into the elements for what they believe in.

For The Future
Planting trees early in spring,
we make a place for birds to sing
in time to come. How do we know?
They are singing here now.
There is no other guarantee
that singing will ever be.
- Wendell Berry