The Road to Oregon Country Fair 2024

I’m from Washington State and have spent my whole life in the Pacific Northwest. I always heard about how great the Oregon Country Fair was but somehow I just never made it out there. Even after living in Portland for almost three years I still had never set foot on the property. Until now. 

Earlier this year I applied to be a vendor with my artwork. I kind of expected to get turned down because I’ve always heard that it’s really hard to get in and that most people try for years before they get accepted. That said, my art apparently appeals to their demographic because I was accepted my first try. I was surprised. But worried. Let me explain… 

I have a tendency to try and do too much at once. It’s a thing I do. And its hard to let go of certain projects because I get locked into a certain idea about something I’m going to do and get too narrow in my thinking, which can throw the rest of my life out of balance. Obsession is known for that. 

Case in point: I recently decided that when my apartment lease is up in August I’m going to put everything in storage and go live in Peru for 3 months or more to train with a tobacco shaman. You know, just your average trip to Peru.

I had been really locked into that idea and was completely putting all of my energy into that, and planing everything around that goal. And so when I was accepted to Fair I knew it was going to be a ton of work and I kind of panicked! How could I do both? It didn’t seem possible. At first I honestly decided that I’d stay focused on the Peru trip and put prep for OCF in the background, doing just enough to get by. I wasn’t letting the importance or excitement of OCF reach me because I was too obsessed with running off to Peru by an arbitrary date that had somehow become etched in stone. At one point I even considered saying no to Fair. I was stressed out, worried and loosing sleep. 

Then something shifted. I realized that I was being too controlling with my goal of going to Peru by an exact date and I let that goal take a back seat to preparing for Fair and although I had already bought my plane ticket for early August, I planned to push the trip back by at least a month so I could focus on OCF and afterwards have time to rest and pack up my apartment without rushing. 

The booth as I found it in June.

Around that time I was notified of my my booth number (380) and I drove down one Sunday morning to check it out. I was told it was a shared booth and when I got there and saw the booth my heart sank a little. It was so narrow! It was a cool spot but I couldn’t imagine cramming two vendors in there. I expressed my concern and the wonderful folks at OCF said they were actually thinking the same thing. So it was all mine to do whatever I wanted with.

Still I was facing some challenges the way the booth was designed with a small narrow front end and then a whole back area that wasn’t really visible from the road. I was going to need a BIG sign and a concept that played to the limitations of the space. The back part of the booth had a couple small trees growing up through the middle of it and was flanked on both sides by tall, cobbled-together, weather-torn wooden fence with moss growing on it. What a great place to show my art I thought! I saw the sign in my imagination: Moksha’s Mysterious Forest Gallery. 

My first quick sketch for the Mysterious Forest Gallery sign.

The back of the booth would become the Forest Gallery.

This was going to be the best place my art has ever been hung I thought. Could there be a better place for spiritually-driven nature art then out in the mossy woods?

I started to brainstorm and drew up some concepts on ways to best utilize the space. For one thing I didn’t have room for bulky tables and clunky floor standing print racks. I wanted to have everything on the walls and it all had to be designed to fit in with the existing funky old structures that have been eroding away out there in the woods for the last 50 years.

What happened next was pretty special. I can say that in preparing for Fair I tapped into some kind of magic that was laying dormant in me. I learned a lot about the way my creative muse operates and what gets me excited: creative problem solving and CHALLENGES!

I respond to challenges. I have a pretty big imagination and I can figure out how to do anything if I get excited enough. The problem is I often don’t challenge myself enough and have a tendency to fall into the humdrum pattern of repeating the same old motions. But with the tight deadline and the spacial challenges of the booth I was thrown into a bit of a creative frenzy that was enriching to say the least. I was forgetting to eat and drink water. I couldn’t stop thinking about design and how to build things, all this with a very limited work space and limited tools and materials. I built several wooden wall-mount print racks and designed and built wall displays to present my oracle deck and large collection of stickers in a refreshing, simple and classy way. 

I designed a sticker display that could be wall mounted instead of taking up room on a table

One block down the street from my work studio is a wood shop that puts out on the sidewalk a ton of free wood and so started riffling through their stash and bringing back armfuls of wood to work with. I was lit. After about 2 weeks of 12-14 hour days with no breaks I started to enter into a kind of psychedelic state that felt like a creative apex with heightened focus and energy. Food was unappealing, and even sex. I didn’t have time for anything but work, and yet it didn’t feel like work. I was too excited. As a result I was thrown into a place of pure bliss. I felt high as a kite and yet I was sober as a rock. My excitement felt unique. When was the last time I felt this way, carried away on a creative cloud of bustling energies, little bolts of lightning striking the ground around me…?

I had long dreamed of making a slick display for my oracle deck…

Having never been to Fair before I didn’t have much to go on in terms of matching the vibes of the space but I just focused on my vision of a humble little art gallery in the trees and pressed on and let intuition be my guide, which is the best place to let your creativity come from. I’ve learned to trust my intuition by now, so I was never worried, except that maybe I was running out of time to complete all the things I wanted to do. 

All in all it was an exhausting three weeks. I over-did it in the print department. Ordering far too many large canvas prints as well as over a hundred paper prints. All those prints needed to be signed and packaged, backings cut to size and such. That was three solid days of work, then I had to stretch 11 canvases! All the while Portland was experiencing a heat wave and the warehouse where my studio is was like a giant oven. I was a bun baking in the heat, and yet mostly too focused to have time for misery.  

The finished Mysterious Forest Art Gallery sign.

On Monday, the day before I was to leave for Fair I was finishing the main gallery sign and packaging a few last prints. Then running around gathering lights and extension cords and all the other stuff I hadn’t had the time to think about. The morning of my departure I hurriedly packed my personal things and camping gear, stuffed the cooler with chai and kombucha and somehow managed to cram all that art and everything into the Honda Element, but just barely. I mean it was really crammed in there. No visibility out the back and blind spots that were outta sight. I might have to drive all the way to Veneta Oregon with my hazards on, I thought. 

In 104 degree heat I unloaded the car and started to clear the area of old debris and fallen branches.

When I arrived at the site that Tuesday before Fair it was 104 degrees and the booth was absolutely trashed with old debris and fallen branches; a years worth of forestly matters of all kinds from floods to windstorms. That day was devoted to clearing the booth. Luckily it was pretty shady where I was in the trees up on Abbey Rhode, near the Ritz.

After cleaning some of the old tables that were blocking the booth entrance and clearing fallen branches, I hung the sign.

After the clearing the real fun began. I started hanging the art and putting up some lighting and then all the millions of other details like putting name tags on all the art. I was still getting ready as the first people started to visit my booth on Thursday afternoon. I wanted a day to rest, maybe go find a river to jump in but that was not in the cards. I had exactly enough hours per day, for the last nearly 4 weeks, to get everything I planned done with not a minute to spare.

I had officially surpassed tired, flew by exhausted, and landed in a clown village of surreal dreams celebrating the joys of humanity and the playfulness of the human spirit. It was also just utter absurdity in the best of ways. There was no stop sign or even a yield sign. I just blew out of the staging area into the main arena with out even getting into costume. What is this place?! And how did I get here? Don’t ask questions, Bub, the Gnome on stilts whispered in my ear…

Finally the fun starts: hanging some art in the Mysterious Forest Gallery.

In the end The Fair itself was of course magical and mysterious and beautiful and nonstop. I somehow managed to work the booth all day, being briefly relieved once in awhile by my partner and another friend, and then venture out at night until late, sleep fairly well and then repeat…all weekend long, standing and talking and selling art. 

Finally the booth came together with lights and all.

I was in such a state by Monday morning, high from the experience, that everything it had taken to get there was just a fuzzy lint ball of a memory. I was there, I did it, it was a huge success, and now it was over. I thought I would dread the deconstruction and packing up that morning but it was the easiest part of that whole nonstop grind to get to Fair and get through it with grace. Without falling over. 

I waited till most of the other vendors had already left before I drove up to the booth to pack the car and get out of there. By the time I drove out that evening they were getting ready to close the gate for the night. I was temped to camp there another night but the promise of sleeping in my own bed sounded to good to put off for another day. And so I drove home, a cloud of fine dust billowing up off the car the whole way home. A stop at the closest gas station was essential so I could clean the dust off the windows enough to see the road.

After it was all taken down and I was about to leave. See you next year OCF!

Back home late, the car was left packed and I stumbled into bed and fell asleep faster than a narcoleptic panda. Wish I could say I slept for 24 hours or something like that but I was awake the next morning by 6am. I’m just like that I guess. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

Anyhow, now I’ve been to Fair. I get it. It’s like family. It’s fun. I like peaches. I’m not a fan of dust. I value art and good community and thoughtful crafters and artists. Salute to those who have built a place where once a year we can all gather and put forth our best, hustle and sell and then shape-shift into playful night fairies with blacklight reactive wings…buzzing around forest dance floors and playing like maniacs all night long. This is how it’s supposed to be. This is an artist’s dream. I can’t wait to return next year. 

I could keep writing about this for hours but this post is already too long. I doubt many have made it this far but that’s okay, I’m doing this for myself more than anyone. If you did read this far and enjoyed it, drop a comment below. Have you been to Fair? What did you think?