It’s tough to stand out in a crowded field. Joanna Archetti had brought along some of her finest sketches, but believed that her best chance was to offer something the vendors at the Shadow Art Fair couldn’t: Portraits drawn to spec, done on the spot. All it would cost is a little of the customer’s time and not much more money.

She doesn’t have much time to get to know her subjects. After an intro and a brief sales pitch, Archetti has about 10 minutes to look into the man’s or woman’s soul and capture it on paper.

“I want to create something that you’ll feel or see something different in it every time you look at it,” she said. “I try to look right into the soul of the person I’m drawing.”

Archetti, of Ann Arbor, was one of 40 Southeast Michigan-based vendors at the Summer 2010 Shadow Art Fair on Saturday, a noon-to-midnight affair held in July and December at Ypsilanti’s Corner Brewery.

Other vendors out on Saturday included the Ann Arbor Film Festival (the early deadline for entries is August 16), the Prison Creative Arts Project and iSPY, the Ypsilanti-themed events guide that got off the ground last month.

Founded in 2006, the Shadow Art Fair is in some ways the opposite image of the Ann Arbor Art Fairs. The Ann Arbor fair attracts six-figure crowds; the Shadow Art Fair doesn't even keep track of how many visitors it gets. And while the Ann Arbor Art Faira bring visitors by the thousands, the Shadow Art Fair is a "for us—by us" effort meant to inspire hometown pride in Ypsilanti.

“I don’t go anywhere west of I-94 during the Ann Arbor Art Fair,” joked Ypsilanti's Tom Kula, a vendor at the fair. The red-bearded Kula, founder and proprietor of the St. Joshua Norton Press, sold small ‘zines’ that he produces special for the Shadow Art Fair.

Like Archetti, Kula also sold on-the-spot art: personalized haikus, on any topic, for the cost of a dollar. Kula also allowed guests to choose a topic and a recipient and he’d send that person a haiku as well.

To the uninitiated, the Shadow Art Fair seems to have grown too big for the Corner Brewery, a venue it has called home since day one. With hundreds of visitors and artists sharing the space at any given time, the Shadow Art Fair has become a place to bump into your neighbors - literally.

But for organizer Mark Maynard, the cozy confines of the Corner Brewery offer the intimate feel he wants for the daylong fair.

“We’ve talked about (finding a bigger venue), but decided against it,” Maynard said. “The Corner Brewery has been great to deal with, and we like it here. We like having it contained, and we like having just the 40 artists featured.” 

He said there are no plans to expand the fair beyond what it is currently.

Indeed, the 2010 Summer Shadow Art Fair was the product of an expansion effort.

But rather than simply moving the art fair to a bigger venue, or closing down Norris Street, where the Corner Brewery is located, organizers have chosen to hold events at three other venues in town, Maynard said: music at Savoy nightclub, puppet shows at the Dreamland Theater, and an art race at SPUR Studios. The Dreamland Theater element was added last December as a pilot effort. The experiment worked. Since this time last year the Shadow Art Fair has expanded from one venue to four.

Transportation between the venues was provided after 6 p.m. by vegetable oil-powered shuttles provided by BTB Burrito. The choice to add new venues was an effort to give more people - including those with no specific interest in art - a chance to enjoy some Ypsilanti pride. Another goal of the festival is to provide a forum for local artists to connect. The close quarters at the Corner Brewery certainly facilitated that.

No matter how many side events and venues are added to the fair, there’s no question that the Corner Brewery is still the main stage. In addition to the art vendors, the microbrewery featured live music and the unveiling of a special “shadow brew,” the Penumbra Blackberry White Ale, brewed with a number of ingredients ranging from chamomile to blackberry jam to macadamia nuts - aged one month in an oak barrel.

The next Shadow Art Fair will take place in December.

James David Dickson can be reached at JamesDickson@AnnArbor.com.