You’ll find unique creations at the Berea Craft Festival

Glass artist Paula Marksbury of Athens, Tenn., created this delicate bowl by weaving strands of glass. She will be at the Berea Craft Festival this weekend for the first time. Photo courtesy of Berea Craft Festival

By now, you’ve hit the free-for-all Fourth of July sales and stocked up on loads of mass-produced flip-flops, last season’s fashions and other summer staples. Time for a shopping experience that’s a little more personal and a little less antiseptic.

At the 27th Berea Craft Festival this ­weekend at Indian Fort Theater in Berea, ­visitors will see handcrafted furniture, ­ceramics, jewelry, sculptures, baskets and more.

Walk from booth to booth at the outdoor festival, and you can meet more than 100 artists gathered to exhibit and sell their unique creations. A number of them, such as Tater Knob Pottery, are familiar names, but one-fourth of the festival’s crafts people will be there for the first time.

Among the newcomers are two women who bring their own style to works in glass.

Paula Marksbury of Athens, Tenn., is fearless when it comes to trying new techniques to fashion her one-of-a-kind fused-glass pieces — combing the glass, sandblasting it, incorporating metals, finding new hues.

“I’m very much a color person,” said Marksbury, who recently started working with iridescent glass. “This winter I got a huge new kiln that opened up my possibilities.”

Now she’s been turning out wave ­sculptures meant to float on a wall in the owner’s home. One of the artist’s most intricate pieces is a bowl made of individual colored glass strands woven together to form a graceful container.
Berea glassblower Michelle Weston, who has a studio in Old Town Berea, has been blowing glass for 18 years. “And I’m still learning new things every day,” she said.

She is an artist who works in extremes. Starting with 130 pounds of liquid glass in a 2,050-degree furnace, Weston pulls and blows the intensely hot glass and ­transforms it into elegant yet functional pieces including vases, pitchers, pen holders and clocks.

“At day’s end, everything goes into an oven to cool overnight,” she said. “The next morning is a little like Christmas, opening the kiln and seeing how all the pieces from the day before turned out.”