Fall Arts & Crafts Fair Features Local Vendors During HarborFest Weekend in Sag Harbor

No matter your price point or desire, there is a unique treasure waiting for guests to unearth among more than 50 vendor tents at the waterfront Marine Park in Sag Harbor during HarborFest weekend.

HarborFest, including the Fall Arts & Crafts Fair, is run by — and supports — the Sag Harbor Chamber of Commerce, a fundraiser that Chamber President Ellen Dioguardi says is integral to ensuring the organization has the funding it needs to support the business community and keep bringing events to Sag Harbor’s downtown year-round.

“The money we raise makes it possible for the chamber to continue to provide the holiday lights and Santa’s visit and the Ragamuffin Parade, etcetera, as well as promote our members, improve our website, a whole legion of things,” said Dioguardi, calling Chamber of Commerce member and longtime organizer of the Fall Arts & Crafts Fair Marilyn Holstein “our MVP just about every year.”

The Fall Arts & Crafts Fair in Marine Park is the second fair of the year, noted Holstein, with the first taking place mid-June. While some vendors told Captain Bob Bozek they prefer the June show, Bozek said he sold 21 paintings during last year’s HarborFest celebration, versus nine this past June, though weather might have played a factor.

“It’s very weather-dependent,” Holstein said of the fairs. “My favorite incident is when I was called at 11 o’clock at night a couple years back because someone’s tent had blown into Billy Joel’s boat.”

Painter Melinda Neger experienced her own runaway tent incident some years ago, but the only yacht memory she has of the fair is a happy one.

“I did sell a painting to this couple who owned one of the very fancy yachts that dock there, and they turned out to be massive art collectors from Miami,” Neger recalls of selling her largest painting that season to the owners of Kisses, a yacht that anyone who has spent time on Long Wharf in the summer season would recognize as an annual visitor to Sag Harbor. “They came up and said they had just taken down a painting and had a hole in the wall they wanted to cover and what was the biggest painting I had, then they bought it! We didn’t know who they were at all, but they asked if my husband could carry it home for them. They said, ‘We live just over there on Long Wharf.’”

Neger is a prime example of the kind of vendor who treasures Holstein ensuring local artists have space at the fair. “This is one of the few places where someone like me can exhibit and sell paintings,” said the once-upon-a-time Wall Street Journal editor turned painter who delights in how differently the left-brained activity engages her mind and body. “The Shelter Island one is also very homespun.”

And it’s not just the Sag Harbor community that benefits from the fair having strong local participation. Take Remsenburg-based brothers Alex and Aiden Kravitz of the Relic clothing brand and sustainability organization. For every piece of clothing they sell, they add five oysters to growing local reefs with seed sourced by Cornell Cooperative Extension. Over the last three years, they have also installed more than 80 beach cleanup stations in 15 towns across Suffolk County. “It’s called the Coastal Collaborative,” Alex Kravitz said of Relic Sustainability’s latest program. “We’re just giving people the tools to pull trash and plastic off of our beaches.”

Speaking of creative spoils for good works, one of the most popular local vendors at the Fall Arts & Crafts Fair — two of the half-dozen folks interviewed for this piece brought her up by name when asked about the event — is known by fellow artisans for posters she creates for the Rell Sunn Surf Contest & Benefit, held annually in July in support of the East End Foundation, which raises money to help support families in need. Though she now lives in Springs, illustrator Alison Seiffer used to live in Ditch Plains in Montauk, where the contest just celebrated its 25th anniversary.

“It’s a wonderful cause,” Seiffer said of the event. “It was something my friend, Roger Feit, felt strongly about and I did a little research on Rell Sunn, saw that she really was an amazing person and thought it would be a worthwhile thing to do work for the East End Foundation.”

Sunn was an influential surfer and activist who was a surf champion in the mid-1970s and opened the door for gender equality in competitive surfing. The contest was founded by Feit and Alice Houseknecht and has been a showcase for up-and-coming surf talent.

Seiffer’s posters are among the many pieces at the fair with an on-theme maritime feel — like Jim Levison’s photographs of local waters — although most shoppers will be able to find just about anything to fit their taste. Merchandise expected at this year’s festival include iconic evil eye jewelry by Ibek Acar, unique ceramics by Mastic Beach potter Jessamyn Go of Femme Sole and wares from The Clay Art Guild of the Hamptons.

“It turns out that a lot of the things I make for fun are the things people are attracted to, so that’s why I’m bringing more and more of that [to the fair] and transitioning more homeware to being web/in stores only,” Go said of choosing passion over collection for HarborFest and the pleasant surprise it has been to see customers responding well to more creative objects. “It’s fun. I get to sell work, share the process, talk pottery nerd stuff with other potters in the community — plus there’s good food. My husband and I love to go to Sag Pizza.”

Experience all the Fall Arts & Crafts Fair has to offer in Marine Park during HarborFest weekend, September 16 and 17.