Bear's Mill breakdown

After a month of regular sales checks, repeated ego boosts, and total sales that exceeded our expectations, John Bundy and I removed our installation from Bear's Mill today. It is hard to categorize Bear's Mill as I have been unable to find any venue that is even vaguely similar ANYWHERE!!!! And I have really looked. The combination of a historical mill that has been totally and lovingly restored, ongoing for nearly thirty years with a program of monthly art shows with dual artists just does not exist anywhere else, if you find such a place please let me know so I can contact them.

John and I are are old pros and are eternally optimistic, even in the face of overwhelming defeat. This was not a defeat, but a victory. Although it was a lot of work to take three truckloads of our stuff seventy five miles to Greenville, Ohio, we have been both flattered and financially rewarded by our show there. We will also be represented by some ducks, tables and picture frames we have been fortunate to be able to leave on display.

We will also be present for the twentieth or so annual fall open house the first weekend in October. It is difficult to see the beauty of the surroundings of the mill in the jungle of summer. It will be much easier in the fall to see the surrounding loveliness.

John treated me to a wonderful lunch at Montage, a lovely restaurant in downtown Greenville, where I enjoyed a pastrami sandwich and a wonderful spinach salad in the old-fashioned downtown former furniture store. The twenty foot high ceilings and the period ambience was hard to leave. I highly recommend it if you are in the area.

It is hard to put yourself back in the world of the 1840's. Driving on the road, highway 36 during the day with large industrial farms, semis and all, it seems impossible. Driving the road late at night, as I often have, it is easier. It is a far cry from sliding effortlessy along the road at a mile a minute, to clopping along through
the mud with an oxen cart at a mile an hour.

I am always reminded that my great grandfather, Thomas Eddleman, often traversed these roads as a rural mail carrier back befor the turn of the century before last, bouncing along thes same roads in a horse drawn buckboard.

The mill itself dates back to the times fifty years earlier. Ten miles then was a days work.

If you like experiencing the past, please plan to visit Bear's Mill, if not during their open house, at any time during the year, where you will find a new and refreshing display of quality art.