By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Becky Laabs loves Bowling Green.
For a number of years, the artist and retired art teacher painted a watercolor scene of the city to give to the winner of the Chamber of Commerce’s “I Love BG” award.
Now Laabs has turned her talents to helping promote and celebrate one of the city’s signature events, the Black Swamp Arts Festival.
Laabs’ poster for the festival was unveiled Wednesday.
Jessica Gibson, of the festival’s marketing committee, said she suggested asking Laabs to design the poster. A former student and now a teacher herself, she was surprised Laabs hadn’t ever been approached about creating the festival poster. As an arts festival, the event should showcase local talent.
“I was thrilled to be asked,” Laabs said.
Then she set to work.
She gathered photos of the festival. She zeroed in on “images I immediately associate with the festival.”
Chalk walk, musicians on the main and community stages, tie-dyed t-shirts, floppy paper hats, kettle corn, and a dog lapping up water from a bowl in an artist’s booth, all find their place, in the swirling depiction that captures the energy of the weekend.
Laabs said she knew she would do something representational. She’s not a graphic artist, but was aware that the poster had to have some element that the marketing committee could pull to use on the T-shirts.
So, she structured her painting around a mirror of the festival’s salamander on a paint brush logo. Those paired amphibians represent, she said, the town-gown nature of the volunteer effort that is essential to staging the event each year.
And, as she writes in her artistic statement: “It also is positioned to represent a gate or entrance to the joy and magic that awaits you inside.”
The Black Swamp Arts Festival has played a role in both her personal and professional life.
She now holds special events in her downtown shop art-a-site where she continues to offer art classes.
As a teacher she would encourage her middle school and high school students to volunteer. Most often that would be in the Youth Arts area. They had as much fun as the kids, Laabs said.
This is one way to help connect them with the community.
When Laabs was 11, she was washing dishes in her parents’ restaurant, the Wagon Wheel (located where Kermit’s is now). As a family member, she was allowed to wait table at 14.
A 1968 graduate of BGHS, she started her college studies in Colorado, before realizing that BGSU had a better program in her studio specialty, weaving. So. she came back to BG where she ended up spending 35 years teaching. “I’m proud to a member of this community.”
