Submitted photo Russ Duerksen’s painting titled “Fading Memories” was on display at the recent Brookings Summer Arts Festival. Russ and his wife, Rhonda, have been creating and selling his paintings fulltime for 33 years.   

Art is everywhere you look, especially if you’re at a large and artsy gathering such as the Brookings Summer Arts Festival.

The Summer Arts Festival attracts enough people to Brookings fill a stadium. We’re talking about a stadium that’s packed to the rafters as in a fiery World Cup matchup. Although the festival attendees aren’t nearly as rowdy and are much more apt to purchase art-related souvenirs.

I’m old enough to remember when the Summer Arts Festival was just a dozen or so artists’ booths clustered next to Pioneer Park’s bandshell like baby chicks huddling close to their mother hen.

As I recall, attending my first Summer Arts Festival included stopping at blacksmith’s booth where horseshoe nails were being forged into rings. I purchased one of the rings and gave it to my then-girlfriend, hoping that she would get the message, “I really like you, but this is all I can afford.”

She must have inferred something different from my offering because she never wore the ring. She broke up with me shortly thereafter.

Nowadays, the Summer Arts Festival packs Pioneer Park with food and craft booths featuring everything from handcrafted cotton candy to homemade cotton quilts, from smoked brisket to superb jewelry boxes. The amount of time and effort that must have gone into producing those items is staggering.

Examples of homespun art abound at the festival. One that I witnessed this summer was a small child who was wearing a vibrant balloon hat that was larger than the actual child.

You cannot ignore the artistically prepared food available at the festival. The air is filled with the aromas of good things cooking over open flames, which causes the mouth to water even before you even enter Pioneer Park. The vittles may not be a bargain, but you cannot put a price on dining at a picnic table in the shade of a tree on a balmy summer day.

In the bandshell, a music group called the Brass Holes were belting out their versions of classic rock tunes. You haven’t really heard Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” until you’ve heard it played by a band that consists of three trumpets, two trombones, and a pair of tubas. The group also had a drummer who was hammering away at the back of the bandshell. His cymbals were brass, so I guess he would technically qualify as a brass musician.

While meandering the park, I randomly stumbled across booth where a lady artist was sketching caricatures. I was pleasantly surprised to see that our neighbors Dave and Steph were seated in the booth and having their whimsical likenesses immortalized in pen and ink.

As I watched the artistic interpretation process unfold, I said to Dave, “You’re going to regret not combing your hair this morning.”

“My hair is a lost cause anyway,” Dave replied with a grin.

Dave and Steph chuckled with delight when their caricature was revealed. My observation was that the artist gave them some extraordinary dentition, with incisors that appear large enough and powerful enough to pop open bottles of beer.

I had wandered a bit farther when a particular painting caught my eye. Amidst a wall full of artistic illustrations of waterfowl and wildlife was a painting of an old John Deere tractor peeking out of a weatherbeaten barn. A rusty windmill and a timeworn grain bin stand guard in the background.

The author of that art is Russ Duerksen. Russ and his wife, Rhonda, live in Sioux Falls.

I chatted with Russ and learned that he grew up near Dolton, South Dakota.

“I worked on my grandpa’s farm when I was a kid,” Russ said. “I milked cows, threw hay bales, and drove an old John Deere tractor much like the one in that painting. I loved the farm life.”

During his teen years Russ worked with his father, who was an electrician.

“I didn’t mind being an electrician but decided that it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, so I took art classes at a trade school,” Russ said. “My first job involved creating ads for a department store. They would bring me a rack of clothes and say, ‘Illustrate these,’ It was pretty challenging until I began to ask some of the store’s employees to model the clothing.”

“I saw what he was doing for a hobby – illustrating wildlife – and told him that he could make a living at it,” said Rhonda, who met Russ at the trade school. “He eventually listened to me, and we’ve now been doing this fulltime for 33 years.”

Making a living with paintbrushes and chunks of canvas! That sounds like an artform to me.

Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy,” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.