Brandywine Festival of the Arts returns Saturday, Sunday

When the Brandywine Festival of the Arts returns Saturday and Sunday for its 63rd year, the featured artist will be making handcrafted cottages honoring the Brandywine Park’s Josephine Gardens and Rose Garden.

Sue Ann Cox, known as the Fairy Potter, is known for her whimsical stoneware floral cottages and fairy accents inspired by inspired by the 19th-century primer, “The Language of Flowers.”

She’s a familiar face at arts fairs and has been a regular exhibitor at the Brandywine Festival since 2016.

Cox will donate a portion of the sales of these cottages to OperaDelaware, whose singers will be performing each day as 250 artisans and crafters displaying and selling their works in scenic Brandywine Park on Sept. 7-8.

Festival hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday.

A Wilmington tradition since 1961, the festival’s slots for artists were sold out for the second year in a row. This year, they sold out in June.

In addition to art works and food, the event features music, children’s activities and pet-adoption opportunities.

The artisans from the mid-Atlantic states, New England, the South and the Midwest, include painters, photographers, jewelry makers, ceramicists, woodcrafters and fabric artists.

Held on the banks of the Brandywine on the weekend after Labor Day, the festival attracts as many as 15,000 visitors.

The festival is the largest annual two-day outdoor event in Wilmington, says organizer Barry Schlecker.

Always held on the weekend after Labor Day, the event marks the transition from summer to fall and signals the start of the peak season for home redecorating and the early purchase of holiday gifts.

Food will include Asian fusion, vegetarian, BBQ, soul food, chicken, seafood, ice cream, water ice, kettle corn, caramel and honey treats.

Other festival attractions include face-painting and other activities in the Kids Korner and animal rescue and shelter organizations offering pets for adoption.

Acme supermarkets will offer free flu shots and COVID-19 boosters to individuals with insurance cards who register in advance at www.acmemarkets.com/vaccinations/group-clinic/BFA.

The festival’s presenting sponsor is the WSFS Foundation. Other sponsors include the New Castle County and City of Wilmington governments and Ourisman Tri-State Subaru.

Brandywine Park is at 1001 N. Park Drive, opposite the Brandywine Zoo. Free parking and shuttle bus service will be available at Incyte, 1801 Augustine Cutoff.

Admission is $5 per day, with children 12 and under accompanied by an adult admitted free. Friendly pets on leashes are welcome at the festival and on the shuttle buses.

For more information, go to brandywinearts.com or facebook.com/brandywinearts.

Brandywine’s featured artist

Cox says she was always fascinated by pottery and flowers, but she had to work her way through three career changes before becoming The Fairy Potter.

Cox, a McKean High School graduate, Widener University business student and Pike Creek resident, hadn’t planned a career in pottery. It took nearly three decades to get there.

First came a stint with the DuPont Co., working in a call center and then in finance with its pharmaceutical division. Next she was able to achieve a lifelong dream when she opened the Wallflower Gift Boutique in Hockessin, where she showcased her work as a floral wreath designer and represented Delaware artisans and artists. Retail furniture sales and management came next.

While working in furniture retail, Cox rekindled her love of pottery, taking classes at the Center for the Creative Arts in Yorklyn. She started experimenting with clay, hand building rather than using a potter’s wheel.

“I took to it right away, I knew I had to do this,” she said.

In “a moment of clarity, of divine intervention,” she was shaping a birdhouse when she imagined something totally different.

“It was a fairy house, but don’t ask me how I knew it,” she said.

Her fairy cottages come in a variety of themes, each with a whimsical, free-spirited design. Combining her loves of nature and fairy lore with her expertise as a floral designer, she has shaped white clay into butterfly cottages, beach cottages and ones celebrating cherry blossoms, dogwoods, sunflowers, lavender and others as well.

They average 8 inches high, though some may be as much as 12 inches tall. Within each theme, each piece is different, thanks to subtle changes in ornamentation, shapes and glazing.

Each house has battery-powered illumination, making them ideal for display outdoors in a garden or indoors on a shelf or tabletop.

Her cottages sell for $45 to $175. Fairy garden accessory pieces sell for $10 to $45.

“Each piece has an inspirational meaning – joy, love, beauty, grace,” Cox said.

She also creates seasonal items – pumpkin themes for autumn, Christmas trees and holiday cottages for winter.

“The color palette can be very challenging,” she said.

She first exhibited at the Brandywine Festival in 2016, and she has been back every year since.

She enjoys the setting, on the banks of the Brandywine, in Wilmington’s Brandywine Park, and appreciates the festival’s camaraderie even more. “It’s not corporate. It’s homegrown. The producers and the artists – we all make it work together. We look out for one another,” she said.

The 12 pieces she makes for the Brandywine Festival of Art will cost just under $100, she said.

Robbie Jester at festival

Robbie Jester, one of Delaware’s best known celebrity chefs, will be among those offering food at the Brandywine Festival of the Arts.

Renowned for his television appearances on “Beat Bobby Flay,” Netflix’ “Pressure Cooker,” “Guy’s Grocery Games” and “Chopped” will bring his mobile In Jest Events and Catering to the festival for the first time.

He will be serving his famous original barbecue as one of 14 vendors setting up in the festival’s food court.

Home Grown Café and Copperfield Kettle Corn, two festival perennials, will return, and so will HyPoint Farms with its wide variety of ice cream flavors in cones and cups.

Three other Wilmington-area favorites – BrewHaHa beverages, Fusco’s Water Ice and Donut NV – will also be there.