Art Fair earrings made from skateboards, Trump protests and gravel pit worries
- Last updated: July 20, 2025 | 09:57
An oil painter, when he struggled to run my credit card, let me take home a small print — a still life labeled “skull and ivy” — without cost.
I looked in awe at large, textured landscapes and colorful abstractions I would have loved to prominently place in my living room (in the vain hope the pricey pieces would go unharmed by NERF bullets, basketballs or any number of makeshift projectiles).
And I purchased — after excessive deliberations over color and shape patiently tolerated by the booth attendant — the coolest earrings. They are playful, graphic and cleverly crafted from broken skateboards by North Carolina artist Tara Locklear. (Yes, I assured my co-worker, I will wear them.)
Oddly, I know, for a journalist and life-long Michigan resident, I had never been until this week to the Ann Arbor Art Fair, which kicked off Tuesday and began in earnest Thursday, and I quickly came to realize I’ve been missing much.
I long heard local warnings of traffic tangles, parking perils and insufferable crowds. Sure the mild Thursday weather helped, but I found none of those things, not really. On a work break, I spent longer than I should have and I could have spent far longer perusing those many tents.
Puffer fish flying above the sea. A watercolor Brussel sprout composed on a paint color sample. Antlers sprouting from a coral-like clay pot. So many beautiful, unusual or unusually beautiful items.
I didn’t buy a lot; my art budget is small. But I found joy in the looking, the exploring.
Eventually, I did return to work.
Art Fair has taken over the town, yes, but it’s not the only news of the week.
For one, protesters again hoisted signs in opposition to President Donald Trump. “Good Trouble Lives On” demonstrations were planned throughout the nation and Ann Arbor in honor of U.S. Rep. John Lewis on the five-year anniversary of his death Thursday, July 17.
Reporter Nicholas Alumkal was there to collect activists’ thoughts.
“It just seems like our country is being led by an incapable madman,” said Lois Maharg, holding a sign with the initialism GOP standing for “gutless, obsequious panderers” near Veterans Memorial Park. “Our whole government is just being canceled. Democracy is canceled, and I am very concerned about that.”
In Ann Arbor Township, residents are concerned about the Vella Pit, a gravel and sand mine on Earhart Road. Operator Mid Michigan Materials seeks a permit to create an approximately 59-acre lake to extract material from below the water table.
This comes after some residents’ drinking water wells ran dry and a lawsuit alleging the gravel pit is responsible is pending; settlement talks are underway, the township supervisor told Jen Eberbach last week.
Michael Watts, a resident, said there are “ongoing issues,” and “distrust” of the mining company, as wells slowly recover.
Back in Ann Arbor, in another lawsuit, two taxpayers are challenging city ballot proposals A and B, up for an Aug. 5 vote, as perpetrating a “fraud upon the electorate.”
Voter approval would allow the city to sell the Library Lane property to the Ann Arbor District Library and undo a 2018 city charter amendment declaring it must become a downtown urban park and civic commons.
The ballot wording, which city officials say would be legally compelling, states the city could sell the land “for the purpose of building a mixed-use development that includes additional library services, housing, retail and programmable open public space.”
Opponents and the complaint, however, argue the library could do whatever it wants with the property after the city transfers it for $1.
Mayor Christopher Taylor called it “campaign disinformation in the form of a lawsuit,” and district library Director Eli Neiburger, in response to critics, said the proposals aren’t giving away the property to developers.
In tragic news, a 25-year-old father of four, DaJon Ryans, died in an Ypsilanti shooting. Two men have since been arrested and charged, but not with murder. Reporter Jordyn Pair is revealing the details. At the University of Michigan, the Board of Regents agreed to fire a professor in the School of Music, Theatre and Dance, and two Ann Arbor institutions — one of them UM — were awarded millions for startups and entrepreneurs. To end, as I always like to do, on a softer note: 11-year-old Tucker Lambert of Saline Township is doing some heavy hauling to fund his UM ambitions. Farmers’ pains — field rocks — are dollars for the quiet, young entrepreneur.
Enjoy the Art Fair! I might have to return. I keep thinking of these small, ceramic vases sold by a Florida artist...
If you would rather not, I hear there are a whole lot of chicken dinners available this weekend in Manchester.
Tribune News Service