In the wee hours of a bitterly cold mid-October morning, Melinda and Kaylee Turner of Moorefield were loading up their car and making the trek up U.S. Route 220 north on their way to Frostburg, which this time of year is generally even frostier than Moorefield.
The Turners braved the cold with a car full of original art, along with dreams of selling and connecting to Celestial Woods Witchfaire, which is a vendor event offering everything from whimsy to the macabre. Sandy and Zack Mongold of Cumberland, owners of Celestial Woods, organize the twice-a-year fair.
“I’m a vendor and an artist,” shared Kaylee Turner, with mother Melinda by her side in support. “I wanted to find a place to sell my art.”
She sells under the name Kaylee Alexis and her visage on this day represented as artistic an effort as the wares on display for sale. With the 24-year-old’s face painted almost as a mask and donning a stylishly and seasonally “witchy” dress and outfit, Turner’s look absolutely drives the brand that she is trying to establish.
She has been developing over the past eight years, but only recently did she turn to selling her work. “I’ve been selling my stuff for a year now,” Kaylee Turner shared.
“I do a lot of fantasy stuff, moths, butterflies. People love Mothman and Bigfoot,” she described. Turner works with different media, starting with digital painting and imagery, but more recently broadening out into mixed media, traditional painting, and wood art. “I’m inspired by nature, fantasy. I love fairies and different kinds of stuff.”
She shared that some of her works take more than 20 hours to perfect.
Celestial Woods Witchfaire represented her sixth event in her young entrepreneurial career and it fit her needs better than many others. “It’s hard to find events for the price I want to sell for.” She offers prints for $5 and framed works for $10.
For Turner, the barrier of entry in many cases comes from the entry fee to join a show. Many shows require a much higher fee to participate, forcing vendors to raise prices so they can still earn good profits for their time, work, and creativity.
Another goal of the Turners lies in meeting “like-minded people” who also create along the same lines as the artist and have the same goals in both creating and vending. Kaylee Turner expressed that she missed the Celestial Woods show in May, but was “so happy” to hear of the event’s return in October.
West Virginia offers a broad range of cultural outlets in different areas, but the appeal of some such outlets will be more often received in some places than others. Turner shared that in her experience, fantasy-based art does not sell quite as well in her home area as others, hence the need to take her works to Frostburg or farther to get attention and make sales.
