The Chicago Blackhawks were averaging one goal every six minutes during an improbable 10-1 season-opening victory, but one fan walked out of The Landmark Inn right in the middle of the game so he could watch a guy paint in the dark.
“He said, ‘I’m a big Blackhawks fan, but I can watch a Blackhawks game any time. How often do I get to see an artist doing something like this?'” remembered Lee Radtke, who was doing the painting.
Radtke had a light on his easel and another on his hat Oct. 5 as he painted in Northbrook’s first Plein Air Painting Festival, a competitive painting exercise that found 30 artists competing for fun and prizes.
Radtke didn’t win any prizes for his painting, but he got something that might be better. When the festival was over Sunday night, Northbrook Village President Sandy Frum bought his painting for $650. He sold two other paintings, too. That’s the sign of a successful plein air event, participants said.
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“We were selling some of these paintings before we could get them hung” on the walls of the Village Green Center, said Bruce Bondy, chief organizer for the Northbrook Arts Commission.
The paintings had mostly been created over three days. Painters could paint anywhere in Northbrook outdoors on Friday and Saturday, but only in downtown Northbrook on Sunday, where a “quick paint” contest was held.
“It was a phenomenal event,” said Frum, who bought three paintings, donating Radtke’s to the village. She said she got a big kick out of one she didn’t buy, the painting that won the $1,000 first prize in the main competition.
“It was a painting of Affordable Roofing on Techny Road,” she said. “She did the building, and the trucks, which were all pink. It was so much fun, because it was an iconic business in Northbrook.”
The pink-truck painter, Wilmette’s Christina Body, went through a lot of trouble to find her subjects. She found the hidden little industrial area far below Waukegan Road. The result was a much-admired painting of a rusting trailer and a neglected old boat.
“The fact that she went in there and found a great painting is one of the points of an event like this,” Bondy said.
There were multiple versions of the downtown “Save Ferris” water tower, the Techny Towers, Village Hall and the semi-circle railroad bridge over Techny Road.
But Wendie Thompson of Oconomowoc, Wis., was able to use the downtown water tower in a different way, in a painting that won a third prize in the overall competition. In her painting, the tower is a sort of witness to the main subject: the Metra tracks stretching north toward Deerfield. The tower tilts to the west, depicting the odd optical illusion that many people have experienced when looking at the downtown water tower.
Thompson is the president of the Wisconsin Plein Air Painters Association. There are many “plein air” – open air, in French – painting events in Wisconsin, but they’re rare in Illinois.
“We’re a beer state,” Thompson said of Wisconsin. “One of my goals is to separate people from their beer money, and buy art.”
She said that she thought Northbrook’s version was wildly successful.
“The artists were happy, and the community was really embracing what was going on,” she said. “This is good for the first one, and they can really build on it for the future.
Bondy said he thinks he has the support of the commission and the Northbrook Park District to do it again next year. There might be some changes, such as a longer event with more time to sell the paintings. Twenty paintings sold, which Thompson said was a good haul, but Bondy said there was opportunity to sell many more.
Thompson said continuing the festival would be a good thing, because artists at plein air competitions enjoy getting out of the studio and seeing each other, and prospective fine art customers get to see them, too.
“People get intimidated in galleries,” she said. “People might buy their first piece of original art here. They hang it on the wall, and everything else on the wall pales by comparison.
Twitter @IrvLeavitt