B and I, along with a couple of friends, strolled through the East Lansing Art Festival this weekend. We saw lots of remarkably cool paintings, prints, photographs, sculpture, pottery, jewelry, tapestries. We saw plenty of not-so-interesting stuff too. But I suppose that's to be expected from a small-scale midwestern art festival like this one. What is good art anyway? It's entirely an 'eye of the beholder' situation. If you like it, it's good.

The work displayed in several booths really caught my attention, but one booth made me stand and stare more than the others - for a reason you'll find easy to believe. This particular booth displayed Michigan trout and steelhead paintings, prints and sculptures by a local Grand Rapids artist and fly angler, Derek DeYoung. Derek is a very nice young man, and was willing to talk fishing with interested folks like myself. The image above is one of his paintings. I've stolen it to encourage readers to click through to his web gallery and look around. In several of his prints, I recognized exactly which fishing locale Derek was painting - he has included important landmarks on the Grand and Flat Rivers in several pieces. His use of unusual perspectives and watery reflections, and humor, made me stare and smile at his paintings. B and I liked his partially-submerged brookie prints enough to bring one home.

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