Above photo features the Lazy Daze Arts & Crafts Festival crowd through Debi Dwyer Designs stained glass. All photos courtesy of Elizabeth Brignac.
Meet the Seven Artists Who Won Jerry Miller Awards
By ELIZABETH BRIGNAC
Cary’s 48th annual Lazy Daze Arts & Crafts Festival drew an estimated 50,000 visitors from across the region this past weekend. Almost 300 artists from 16 different states (including many from the Triangle area) sold their work at the event, and the weather was beautiful—sunny and cool for the time of year.
The festival’s food booths and live music were both as popular as ever. People enjoyed icy brews in the beer garden and treats from 29 different food and drink vendors offering everything from Hawaiian noodle dishes and New Orleanian beignets to French and German pastries and Venezuelan arepas. And what North Carolina festival would be complete without a tasty variety of local barbecues?
The kids’ area was buzzing with activities including a stage with kid-focused entertainment, art festival bingo cards and—for the first time ever—a kid collectors’ market. Festival artists donated small pieces to the market, which was housed in a tent near the kids’ stage. With a five-dollar ticket, each child could select one piece of art to take home. Each work of art had the artist’s name and booth location on it so the children could meet the artists if they chose.
2024 Jerry Miller Awards
This year had a bittersweet element to it because it was the last year that festival founder and beloved local artist Jerry Miller, for whom the annual Lazy Daze awards were named, would personally hand out the awards. Here are the seven artists who won awards this year (one winning two, for best in the category and for best North Carolina artist) and a little more information about their art.
Chaz Lamb from C Lamb Creations in Lumberton won awards for metalwork and for best North Carolina artist appearing at the festival. Lamb recycles metal, mostly from used propane tanks, and uses it to build outdoor sculptures and artisanal fire pits. “This is our first show here,” says Lamb, who has been making these particular pieces for five years but has been an artist since childhood. “I started as a little boy, drawing. It’s just a God-given talent. I draw and weld and do it all at the same time.”
Patty Pun won an award for fiber art. She creates figures—some as small as your hand; others much larger—with fiber wrapped around wire. Most are fantastical creatures, and many are dragons. Some of the figures can be bent and manipulated. Kids from the 1980s will appreciate that one of her popular figures is meant to resemble Falcour from “The Neverending Story.”
Blake Gore from Blake Gore Miniature Arts won an award for drawing. Gore is a miniaturist. His works are hand-drawn without benefit of magnification—or even glasses. “I was definitely surprised,” says Gore, a self-taught artist who comes to the festival from Christiansburg, Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains. “I’ve done this show for three or four years, and I’ve always loved it.” He adds, “The people [here] have a great appreciation for the arts. It’s a dream, obviously, for artists.”
Jennifer Domal from Jennifer Domal Studios in West Chester, Pennsylvania won an award for folk art. Domal makes pysanky— a Ukrainian art through which artists write intricate designs on eggshells using beeswax. “I don’t even remember learning,” says Domal. “My first memories of making these was sitting at the kitchen table when I was about three years old…and dabbing beeswax on an egg.” “That’s one of my fundamental memories,” she adds. Domal earned a BFA and practiced other arts forms for a while, before returning to pysanky. “This is my true voice,” she says.
Val Taylor of ValTArtist from Clayton, North Carolina, won an award for drawing. Taylor creates photorealistic works of art using colored pencils or soft pastels. Many of her works depict animals, especially dogs and birds, and other subjects from nature, but she also depicts other subjects—everything from a succulent-looking hamburger to a hyper-realistic box of crayons. “I’m speechless,” she says. “I’m thrilled and extremely honored.”
Cliff Garren from Wildwood Originals won an award for home decor. Garren, who lives and works in Greeneville, Tennessee, has been selling sculptures and homewares made from wood and stone at festivals for 38 years. He uses juniper wood, which he mostly collects from Montana, Colorado and Wyoming. It’s an old-growth wood—some of the wood he uses is 800-1000 years old—for which he hunts himself (with permits from the Bureau of Land Management). He also uses travertine stone formed in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park.
Dustin Headrick of Tennessee’s Nashville Picks won an award for best mixed media for his work creating handmade guitars and other stringed instruments as well as picks for those instruments. Headrick is a musician and an artist who has been in business for 30 years. He played his guitars at the event. See our Instagram post for a video!
