Meeting Hairy Potter at the Boston Arts Festival

September 14, 2007

==by Stephanie Sguigna==

Saturday, September 8 marked the beginning of Boston’s arts and crafts fair, playfully dubbed the “Boston Ahts Festival” by locals. An annual event that takes place on the first weekend of September, the festival featured arts and crafts made by local talents. The high for the day was 95 degrees, and I was one of the dozens in attendance, fanning myself with my writer’s notepad and scanning the quirky artworks on display.
Visually, the festival was beautiful. I strolled down the sidewalk and peered into dozens of tented showcases set up under the wisteria-laden arcade by the harbor; each tent featured one vendor selling painted postcards, beaded jewelry, pewter figurines, abstract mosaics, and other handmade arts and crafts.

One such vendor, Kurt Kuss, aptly nicknamed the Hairy Potter, hosted a tent filled with ceramic bowls, plates, and decorative cookware. I stopped inside his tent and casually browsed through his display as another customer decided on her purchase—a bowl painteda deep shade of blue—for a friend, she said.

As Kuss wrapped the customer’s purchase, I asked him how business was going thus far (mind you, it was only 1 p.m. on the first day of the festival), to which he replied, “That was my first purchase of the day. [I’m] basting in my own juices!” he laughed. But so far, “[I am] encouraged in the reaction to my work—that’s a stroke!” For a while we chatted about the Disability Act of 1990, his and his wife’s seeing-eye dogs, and the functionality of his ceramics. Suddenly, he picked up a shallow, miniature bowl—something I would use for dipping sushi in soy sauce—and handed it to me.
Kuss happily told me I was free to take it. I turned it over in my hands, noticed the $6.00 price tag, and uttered the obligatory, “It’s beautiful. Let me pay for this!” To my surprise, instead of insisting I walk away with the trinket, he heartily said, “Okay!” at which point I unwittingly became his second paying customer that day. I wished him luck and walked away absolutely stunned—I usually have much better resilience in the face of cunning salesmen, and yet I had so quickly failed when confronted with the Hairy Potter.

In an effort to regain my confidence, I made my way to the harbor and sat on an empty bench. Directly in front of me, an African dance performance was taking place on the stage set up at the end of the stretch of grass. Energy was in abundant supply everywhere I looked. A father grabbed hold of his son and tipped him upside down, causing his small Boston Red Sox hat to fall on the grass beneath him. By the fountain, tentative toddlers dipped their hands in and out of the flowing water with inexplicable fascination, giggling and looking to their parents for approval—granted, of course.

In the background, the African song ended and I could hear the low horn of the Harbor Islands Ferry as it pulled into the harbor. The afternoon heat had smoothly transitioned from roasting to scorching. I could only have been more uncomfortable if I were one of the poor performers dressed in long-sleeved black cotton T-shirts and pants singing “Zoot Suit Riot” on the stage for a not particularly captive audience.
One audience member, taking vain refuge from the heat in the shade of a sapling, was Jay, an elderly man in his mid to late seventies. I got up from my bench and took a seat next to him in the shade. Friendly and talkative, he flashed me his toothy grin as he bragged about how only a few moments earlier he had met Mayor Menino while talking to one of the vendors. “I tapped him on the shoulder,” he said, “and he turned around and thought that, you know, I was someone he should know. So I got a big hello from him!” He cackled a little and pulled out the Boston Arts Festival T-shirt he bought at one of the tents. “That’s such a great name—the Ahts,” he said with an authentic accent, “I’m very impressed.”

I was impressed too, as everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. At 2 p.m., as I was taking one last lap around the tents, a painting of a woman in a sari standing at an angle that hid the subject’s face caught my eye. I was wondering to myself if somehow the painting was political in nature, when the artist, Lucilda Dassardo-Cooper, introduced herself. Dassardo-Cooper has been exhibiting her artwork at this event for three years, and her watercolors of Caribbean scenes have been on display in the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts in New Delhi, India.

When I asked her about her impressions of the festival this year, she said, “It feels a lot more low-key than previous years. They put backs on the tents so it is a lot less interaction.” With a rich accent influenced by her childhood in Jamaica, she explained to me how the colors and poses of her subjects lent them expressiveness and individuality—proving herself to be a seasoned expert in showcasing her work.

I thanked her for her perspective and resolved to make my way back to campus where my air-conditioner was awaiting me. Regardless of the weather, from the outset the festival was an impressive success, both for vendors to showcase their work and for customers to gain hands-on experience with local artists and craftsmen. My experience was certainly positive—perhaps even bewitching. But you can blame the Hairy Potter for that.