Okay, so I’m a late convert. I’ve been hearing about the indie craft fairs for a long time, and for at least a year I’ve been saying, privately and publicly, that I welcomed a phenomenon that made craft affordable by committing to the commercial models of internet sales and the outdoor fair. Such fairs have never vanished, not even from New York City, but they have now found forceful advocates in a younger contingent of makers. At last I managed to get to the Renegade Fair in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park last weekend. It was not exactly what I imagined, though. I was expecting more punk and a harder edge. I expected the youth orientation to make me, a boomer generation artifact, feel slightly out of place. The name, after all, promises irreverence.

Instead, within minutes I discovered that I felt quite at home. That was when I made my first purchase—a pair of earrings snipped from the colorful printing on metal cans and sold by Anna Johansson (http://www.Annabuilt.com).  Recycling! Not merely “affordable” but downright inexpensive! I almost felt that I’d slipped back into the 70s, but with a few differences, if this fair is typical. It seemed to me that the merchandise was overwhelmingly body-oriented, dominated by jewelry and T-shirts. Scents and creams, less numerous, also fall under this heading. T-shirt imagery was mostly of the moment and ranged from self-dramatization to silliness. Humor and politics reprised the precedents, and there was plenty of invention. Some outstanding examples were the witty shirts of Campfire Goods (http://wearecampfire.com) consisting of funny city slogans and other geography lessons, spelling rules and selections of labeled typefaces. International Robot (http://www.dylanS.etsy.com) had a distinctive line of shirts with dense congeries of squarish retro-futuristic robot characters, and Skeledog (http://skeledog.com) depicted your favorite breed in bony essence (with an outline of the fleshy shape).

Besides the snipped-tin earrings there were imaginative embroidery or wood ones and novelties such as tiny decorative cabinetwork hinges fitted with jewelry findings. Jessica and Susan Partain made charms and other jewelry of minuscule polymer clay food models, from pies to broccoli (http://www.inediblejewelry.com), and another appealing novelty was zipper-pull earrings by Amalia Versaci Designs (http://amaliaversaci.com).  There were also the expected extremes: strung beads that anyone could have done and creditable handwrought jewelry designs including cast silver and twisted wire, and even biological-pattern necklaces made by rapid prototyping in stainless steel by Nervous System (http://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com).  There were checkbook covers and refrigerator magnets—the height of kitsch—but also outstanding children’s clothing and even shoes by Keiko C. Hirosue (www.kstar-nyc.com).

I recognized craft-fair staples such as small, inexpensive prints (say, $20) and larger but still modest posters ($25, for example) that took me back. The change of times shows in the complete absence of weaving—though there was a lot of embroidery and appliqué, and a fair amount of knitting and needlepoint—and almost no pottery. A very modern exception was by Susan Dwyer (http://upintheairsomewhere.com): in a booth with walls lined with blank sheets of paper, like ephemeral shingles, were two tables holding, among other things, candleholders and vases inspired by urban-style water tanks and power plants, the forms rendered austere and abstract.

The bottom line was a comfort with craft. Some makers have migrated into galleries and some into design stores over the years. But it seems that selling and buying handmade things in the outdoors on lovely summer days has eternal appeal.            —Janet Koplos