Former kids day artist returns to festival as adult

Chris Rosenblum

STATE COLLEGE — Kirstin Demer once tried to sell her watercolor painting of a green tricycle for a couple of bucks. Nobody bought it. Now, it’s priceless.

CDT/Christopher Weddle

Kirsten Demer talks with Mark Messenger, of Centre Hall, at her booth on Fraser Street during the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts on Thursday, July 9, 2009. CDT/Christopher Weddle

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Framed and behind glass, it hangs in her Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts booth — a link to her last experience showing art on a State College street.

Demer, a 33-year-old paper artist from Chicago, participated in the festival’s Children and Youth Sidewalk Sale while growing up in town. Thursday, as shoppers flocked to the festival’s opening day, she began her first arts festival as a vendor since her childhood days selling grapevine wreaths and tissue paper flowers.

“I was always excited to be part of the arts festival,” she said. “It was a big part of the summer.”

She even acknowledged her start by naming her business Green Trike Press. She has come far in a quarter century. Her notepads and leather-bound journals sell from $10 to $150. Customers take away purchases neatly wrapped in orange paper, and she accepts credit cards.

But one thing hasn’t changed. In her first juried show, she likes chatting with customers and answering questions as much as she did along Allen Street long ago.

“I think I enjoyed people enjoying my work, coming by, appreciating it, wanting to buy it,” she said.

Her youthful sales helped awaken an artist. After studying sculpture at Penn State, Demer joined Artrain USA, a nonprofit traveling art museum that brings exhibits by train to communities nationwide.

Eighteen months and 23 states later, she left for Rosendale, N.Y., and an internship at the Women’s Studio Workshop, an artists’ retreat. There, she learned about making paper from raw flax and rye and binding books, eventually becoming a staff papermaker.

The work led her to enroll in the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago. Last year, she received her Masters of Fine Arts degree.

Today, Demer makes journals of various sizes and hues out of recycled and surplus leather, Strathmore Drawing paper and vintage buttons. She also creates quirky greeting cards with images clipped from 1950s encyclopedias.

“I love the idea of giving the material a second life, turning it into something else,” she said.

Dana Demore, a longtime arts fest visitor from Harrisburg, admired one small example of Demer’s alchemy so much he turned it into a gift for his daughter.

“I just love the craftsmanship — really appealing,” he said. “She does great work.”

It took a while to make enough to fulfill a dream.

For years, she came home to visit her parents, Andre and Rose Demer, and browsed arts fest booths. Some day, she imagined, her art would fill one of the booths.

“To be on the other side, I was really looking forward to that,” she said.

But once her graduate studies ended, she needed to build her inventory before applying to the festival. The good news brought her into not only a high-profile show, but also a homecoming.

On Thursday, a few shoppers stopping at booth R-03 were astonished to see their high school classmate again.

“I know someone who’s good enough to be in the festival?” said Val Alexander, of McConnellsburg, before warmly hugging her friend.

Mary Sullivan Dunlap, of Allentown, had kept in touch with Demer but had not seen her in five years. She left happy about Demer’s success.

“She was always the artsy one,” Sullivan Dunlap said.

Hours into her return to arts fest commerce, Demer also showed she could turn a profit, wrapping several journals in the company of her parents and boyfriend. She couldn’t tell if that constituted a blazing start.

“I think so,” she said. “I’m not sure what a good day is.”

Chris Rosenblum can be reached at 231-4620.