DiYpsi continues to highlight local artists

Jason Abraham Smith, owner of Lurk and Destroy, has been producing illustrations for 10 years. Here he is with work, which featured special holiday cards for the DIYpsi event. Find him at lurkanddestroy.com. Vardan Sargsyan | Washtenaw Voice

By Danny Villalobos
Staff Writer

The DiYpsi art fair exhibited a profusion of artistic crafts this year, at Riverside Art Center, located in downtown Ypsilanti. People attending the event cluttered the entire building, making an environment reminiscent to that of any other grand art fair.

“What we do is, we categorize it out: 2D, 3D, body care, jewelry, apparel, soaps & oils, jams & jelly, and etc.,” said Cre Fuller, one of the organizers for the DiYpsi event and artist behind Tin Angry Men. “That way we can see that no one category gets too saturated and make sure we get a little bit of everything.”

First taking root in 2010 by Cre Fuller, Sherri Green and Marcy Davi, DiYpsi snowballed to being one of Ypsilanti’s wellknown shows of artistic talent from, drawing visitors from Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor, the Metro Detroit Area, Upper Michigan, and even from out of state.

Sarah Moeding, the artist behind Dead Things by Sarah, is one of those artists from beyond Michigan. She comes from Louisville, Ky.

Moeding heard about DiYpsi while in Kentucky and became immediately attracted to the event. “I looked around for different shows and I saw this one, I thought it looked really great, the sort of thing I liked,” Moeding said.

Moeding makes jewelry consisting of semi-precious stones, vintage chains, and copper, to go along with bones and fur of dead animals–hence the name, Dead Things by Sarah.

Mark Sarmel is a first time artist to be featured at the art show, but he’s also worked at a variety of other art shows.

Coming from Ferndale, Sarmel’s works are inspired largely by comic books, early anime, Japanese mangas, and music. Sarmel creates stuff that he finds as cool for him and also “[create] characters that are Indian, African American, Latin American, and Asian,” Sarmel said.

Sarmel is Latino and according to him, he is putting minorities in “heroic spaces,” where minorities are normally not seen.

What began as an event with 40 vendors, slowly grew to be about 100 vendors with about nearly 250 applicants applying for each show according to Fuller. New artists are debuted at each show.

Fuller hopes to provide more from DiYpsi in the future, for attendees and the artists alike. “We want to help more people in the community and help artists get rich making art,” Fuller said. “I’m hoping that this continues. There’s still more to show and artists out there that are growing within their craft, and next year there will be more stuff, better stuff.”

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