MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WBTW) – Around 50 artists gathered at Valor Park in Myrtle Beach on Saturday and Sunday for the 47th Annual Art in the Park.
Art wasn’t always a passion for Murrells Inlet local and owner of Nathan Craig Designs, Nathan Craig; he discovered it almost by accident.
“During the recession I lost my job and was homeless, and I got a job cutting out golf cart parts out of diamond plate aluminum,” Craig said.
That’s when Craig began creating burnished metal sculptures, which he has now been doing for the past eight years.
Other artists at Art in the Park traveled much further to show off their work. Denise Murrin-Coburn, owner of DJ’s Crystal Garden, traveled with her husband from Pennsylvania to sell their large glass flowers.
“I wanted to be an artist and my parents said you can’t go to art school, you’ll never have a career that way, so I never had that chance, so I’ve always done art on the side, something that I enjoy, that creativity, so being able to do something like this at this point in my life is wonderful because the artist in me gets a chance to live,” Murrin-Coburn said.
For most artists, traveling to different art shows across the country is not only a way to show off their work, but also a necessity.
“When I travel to places like Florida and I go up to North Carolina and all these really great cities, it’s to have an opportunity to have a client base I wouldn’t have any other way, so these are really vital; important for us local artists or for artists that are in our industry to have access to a market,” Craig said.
