A place in the shade

Jennifer K Mahal

When the lights, color and heat of the Orange County Fair get to

be too intense, visit a shady little lane lined with trees where

artists quietly sell their wares. Crafters Village, nestled between

the Creature Feature and Collector’s Corner, is home to 19 vendors

who create everything from handmade light plates to stained-glass sun

catchers.

Wandering down to the end of the way, you can watch glassblower

Charlie Keeling work with melted glass in his heated oven. Or you can

see potters throw clay onto the wheel, working it with their hands to

create a vase or a flowerpot.

On a recent sunny day, Lexy Rogers, 8, and sister Rachel, 9,

stopped with their mother, Theresa, to watch Linda Miller shape clay.

As the wheel spun, powered by electricity, Miller applied pressure to

the outside, moving her hands up and down to form a stubby column.

“What is it?” asked one of the sisters.

“What would you like it to be?” replied Miller, a Santa Ana

resident.

“A flowerpot,” the child said.

The sisters sat at the edge of the platform, rather than on the

hay bales provided for the demonstration, watching as Miller worked

the clay.

“Should we make it skinny or chunky?” she asked.

The result was a pot-like vase somewhere in the middle, covered

with designs of a sun, a moon, a flower and a star. The piece will

need to sit and dry in Miller’s studio for a number of weeks before

it can be painted and fired in a kiln.

“This is great,” said Theresa Rogers, whose husband runs the

entrance gates and the arena at the fair. “Lexy has sat here for

hours. I can’t get her out of here.”

Miller, who teaches pottery at a senior center in Dana Point, said

she makes between 10 and 15 pots a day at the fair. This is her

second year of throwing pots for the public. The fair encourages

potters to demonstrate their art in exchange for being able to sell

some of their work.

Jack Murray doesn’t demonstrate how to make the stained-glass

pieces he has brought to the fair for the past seven years. But that

doesn’t make his pieces -- from glass boxes to unusual circular sun

catchers -- less beautiful. It takes about an hour and a half to make

a sun catcher, said Murray, who sells only at the Orange County Fair

and two shows in Westminster.

This year, stained-glass crosses have been the bestseller. Murray

had sold 185 of them by Wednesday. Last year, the Westminster

resident sold 98 throughout the entire fair.

“I thought I did well,” he said.

Rob Fremont thinks he’s doing well this year with his newest

venture -- weather vanes. Dragons, people playing golf, a fisherman,

frogs and more grace the tops. Though he designs some of the vanes

himself, some of them are created from clip art.

“We’re quite automated,” said Fremont, who also sells wind chimes

and other objects he has made at a factory overseas.

* JENNIFER K MAHAL is features editor for the Daily Pilot. She

may be reached at (949) 574-4282 or jennifer.mahal@latimes.com.