What's Happening: Artist never hesitated about coming back

By the end of last year’s Omaha Summer Arts Festival, Nate Knott’s pottery tent had a sign posted on the table.

Lost tent: $200

Broken pots: $2,500

Beer to cope: $25

Pride: Priceless

“I got a lot of sympathy,” Knott said with a grin.

The Lincoln-based artist estimated that a sudden storm that swept through the festival last year actually cost him between $3,000 and $3,500 in broken pottery. It was his first Omaha Summer Arts Festival, and he also lost one of his tables.

“It just disappeared.”

But he never hesitated about coming back.

“It was great,” he said. “Saturday was the best day I’ve had ever selling pots, that next day. Part of that was probably because of the sympathy I was getting with the sign, but at that point I was going to take it.”

By 3 p.m. Friday, there was a little wind whipping through the outdoor fair, which runs along Farnam Street from 10th to 15th Street, but nothing to worry the crafts people. Families walked along the street sipping from drinks or spooning crushed ice treats, while contemporary Native American band Brule drew a large crowd.

Sue Cathcart of Missouri Valley, Ia., was showing her friend Karen Lawton, of Jefferson, Ia., around the festival.

“Beautiful art and good vendors, and a good variety of things,” was Lawton’s verdict. “And we haven’t seen each other for a while, so we’re having a good time together.”

Papillion’s Jane Nielsen was having fun, as well.

“We come for the food and the drink, and I bought some earrings and a paperweight,” she said. “I buy earrings every year.”

Teresa Brown, a Kansas City photographer with the tent next to Knott’s, broke into laughter when asked about last year’s storm. She showed off a metal tent pole that had been bent into a curve by the storm’s 90-mile-an-hour winds.

“It came on pretty suddenly, so we didn’t have much time,” she said. “All I could do is get things off the corners where my tent’s most vulnerable.”

Brown took shelter in the lobby of the Paxton, “so unfortunately, we got to watch it all. . . .It was devastating.

“But I was one of the lucky ones. I still had a tent and some work.”