Bloomington has been invaded by Steampunks as Cogs and Corsets: A Steampunk Happening kicked off with a vendor’s fair at the Bloomington Center for Performing Arts on Friday afternoon. Its the Sixth Year for the annual Cogs and Corsets festival.
Also, on Friday there was a promenade from downtown to the BCPA and contra dancing in the ballroom. Saturday events include the vendor’s market, a tearoom, a maker’s faire contest, workshops, an outdoor music stage, food trucks, a fashion show and a concert by John Sprocket of The Cog is Dead in the auditorium. On Sunday morning the vendor’s fair will continue, the tearoom will be open and there will be more workshops.
Those entering the vendor’s fair on Friday were greeted by Rad, a lovable little character that appears in artwork by Beth Moak who owns Raven Designs.
“He’s just a little robot that’s kind of lost and kind of forgotten in a little barn somewhere in the country,” Moak said. “I feel like he is in an apocalyptic moment of life. Maybe the farms just kind of gone the way of the south and they just aren’t as popular anymore and he’s just kind of like gotten forgotten with the rest of the machinery and he just kind of breaks my heart and warms it at the same time.”
Rad appears in some prints of Moak’s that she has 3-D’d. “I adhere them to a Foamcore board, take a skill saw and cut them and layer them back into the frames,” Moak said. Some of Moak’s Foamcore art is 3-D’d in cigar boxes.
Rad was inspired by the “Imagine Dragons” song “Radioactive.”
Another vendor at the fair was Michael Cobb, the owner and proprietor of Dr. Mike’s Shaving Emporium.
“I have been a big proponent of shaving in a more dapper style, or the straight razor or safety razor style for quite awhile,” Cobb said. “I had a situation when I was younger where I was growing up and my dad just kind of chucked a cartridge razor at me and said, ‘Well here you go, good luck’ and it ended up destroying my neck. So I sort of dove into how do you really need to shave and found safety razors and straight razors. Then it kind of grew into a passion for finding the best stuff to bring out for everybody.”
Cobb made some recommendations for those that might want to grow or wear longer goatees or beards.
“We do beard care as well. We do the three C’s of beard care which is keep it clean, you want to wash it with a good product. … You also want to keep it conditioned, which is your balms and your oils, and then you want to control it which is also the balms which help like a pomade for your beard.”
As They Sew in France makes Edwardian and Victorian era dresses and suits for ladies. Chris Pieler and John Richardson explained a beautiful dress that they had on prominent display at the entrance to the fair.
“It’s from a British dress pattern book by a woman named Janet Arnold,” Richardson said. “The original dress dates from about 1860, 1861. It is in its original size. The pattern book is in one-eighth of an inch grid. And you take the grid and you draw it up to one inch on patterning material and you cut it out and this is what you get.” It has a hoop. It has an underskirt and an overskirt. The one thing you will notice about the shape, unlike in Hollywood movies, in women in hoop dresses they are always triangular. The real ones were always shaped like a bell, as is this one.”
Pieler explained the market for the companies products.
Primarily we are doing steampunk festivals. We just got accepted to the Renaissance Festival in Pennsylvania dealing with time traveling this weekend. We are quite excited about that. That will be a new marketplace for us.
Richardson provided more insight to the steampunk world from his point of view.
“Our two favorite shows are the Big River Steampunk Festival in Hannibal, Missouri,” Richardson said. “It’s labor day weekend. Then (our second favorite is) the Teslacon in Madison, Wisconsin, which has been going on 14 years and has an ongoing storyline. And each year there is a different imaginary venue and extension of the story. One year there was a war going on. This year we are going to Egypt and digging in the ground to find artifacts from the Paharoah.”
“I wouldn’t drive to these things if I didn’t enjoy them,” Pieler said. The people here are truly the way the world was supposed to be. No one cares if your young, old, black white, gay, straight. They are here to celebrate the individuality of the person, the creativity of the costumes and laughter and joy.”
