First Presbyterian Church of Noblesville invites you to come to the Red Geranium Artisan Market, “A Market with a Mission,” from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 18. This will be the third annual market featuring local and international artisans, food, live music and fun in a festive open-air environment.
Mission Team Member Jennie Auble is the event organizer. She was a teacher who worked with the yearbook for 10 years. She was the art teacher at Westfield Middle School for 25 years. “I just recently retired,” Auble said. “That is why I have time to do these really fun volunteer activities.”
According to Auble, an elder in the church, Sue Jourdan, is in charge of missions and is an antique collector. Jourdan also works for a design company and is very involved with the arts in the area.
“We were all sitting together talking about a coming up with a new idea and she suggested this,” Auble said. “We put it together in under a month the first year. It was small and it was quaint, but we had a horrible rain storm. So it was a rough start, but almost everyone who was there was thrilled with it. People liked that it was in the parking lot under the shade trees. We had piped in music that year and people really liked it.”
Since that first year the event has expanded to feature over 30 vendors, both indoors and out.
“We had a couple vendors who love indoor events, mostly because of the products they carry,” Auble told The Reporter. “For example, some are paper items. There are also a few people who did not want to be out in the heat. They typically only do markets in the winter when they can be indoors. They were really excited about doing this tied into an outdoor market.”
In addition to items from local vendors like artist and historian Brad Cook, there will be crafts from across the globe. One example is Africa Bags, featuring batik hand-crafted bags and aprons made by women from Malawi.
“The Africa Bags booth – we send everything directly back to them,” Auble said “We were able to send just over $1,000 back to them from the sales of their bags. The booth rental the vendors pay goes into our mission fund. We use that to support quite a variety of projects – some are local here in town, some are statewide, national and international. We support Habitat for Humanity, the Humane Society, Boys and Girls Club locally. We have some missionaries in New York City who work for Cru. (Editor’s note: Cru was formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ International.) We also have projects overseas.”
The proceeds from the 2017 Red Geranium Artisan Market were approximately $2,500, including vendor booth rental, a church bake sale, cafe food sales, and the Africa Bags Project.
Another returning international vendor is Padilka, (the Ukrainian word for handmade). This booth will be selling hand-painted solid oak Ukrainian Easter eggs, traditionally called pysanky, along with similarly decorated ornaments and jewelry. All items are painted by a Ukrainian artist named Marina Shepeluk who was raised in an orphanage and earns a living from the American sales of her work.
“Our church youth group is going to run the food stand,” Auble said. Last year they did hot dogs, watermelon, chips and things like that. I believe they are going to also have walking tacos this year, which are always a big hit.”
The Presbyterian women’s group will put on an amazing bake sale reported to have table after table of things made by members of the church.
There will also be live music.
“We have three different musicians that will be there,” Auble said. “Two are young people – high school age – and one is from our church. Christina, 7, does vocals with her electric piano and guitar. Our other youth group, the Max Oglesby Quartet, does jazz.”
Auble wanted to remind readers of this newspaper that admission is free and her church sees this as a community outreach.
“We like to have people come see our church and what we have to offer,” Auble said. “We also want them to know that by attending they will not only have a wonderful day, but they will be contributing to many individual groups and mission projects.”
For more information, visit redgeraniummarket.wordpress.com, visit them on Facebook at facebook.com/RedGeraniumMarket, see the church website at fpc-noblesville.org or contact Jennie Auble at 317-773-5564.