photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Ceramics artist Melanie Harvey shows off a Kansas-themed vase on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026.

In 12 years of showing her pottery at Art in the Park, Melanie Harvey has some ideas of what the people want to see.

They want the chicken band. They want the T. rex on the drums, or the cat on the bicycle – the “classic characters” she came up with, inspired by people she knows and things in her life.

And the best part is, they don’t just want to look – they want to buy.

“A lot of places will have art fairs, and their whole town will turn out, but they’re not always a real buying crowd,” Harvey said. But at Art in the Park, “people come and they really support the arts, and they fill their homes with art, and they give their friends art. So I think that this town in particular is really supportive in a way that they show with their pocketbooks, not just their attendance.”

Harvey is one of about 130 artists who will be taking part in the annual show, which is Saturday and Sunday in South Park. Art in the Park is organized each year by the Lawrence Art Guild, and Jen Unekis, the show’s co-coordinator, said all kinds of artists will be represented, from painters to glassblowers to woodworkers and leather artists.

One exhibitor this year will have pieces inspired by early animation, Unekis said – “He has this wooden machine that he makes that’s sort of similar to that with panels on it, that, when it spins, you can see the images.” Another artist will be selling windchimes made of old toys. And there will be some exhibitors coming from as far away as Iowa, St. Louis or Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“I don’t think there’s hardly anything that we don’t have,” she said.

It’s a highlight of the year for many of the artists, Unekis said. “Like with anything in life, you have to have something to strive toward. And for a lot of local artists, that’s the thing that they’re striving toward, is making their booth better, making their artwork better and looking forward to being in the park.”

This year, Art in the Park will have two special tents dedicated to “emerging artists” who haven’t done an art fair before. Displaying your work at art shows has upfront costs that can be out of reach for many who are just starting out, Unekis said. “We provide a professional tent and professional panels to hang your work on, which is like thousands of dollars if you have to buy it yourself,” she said.

Helping both new and experienced artists is important, Unekis thinks, because each artist’s booth is essentially a small business. “It’s kind of a cool thing to think, as a coordinator, you’re helping these people with their business, you know?”

That doesn’t mean everyone in the show makes art as their full-time job. Harvey is a full-time chemistry professor at Johnson County Community College, and she first started selling her pieces just to help pay for her hobby, “but then it became a whole thing.”

She fell in love with ceramics in a night class she took during her graduate studies at Vanderbilt University. “I would go to the research lab every day and work on my dissertation … but then I would go to the pottery studio every night.” There’s a lot of overlap between science and art, she thinks, because both require the same kind of creative problem-solving.

“If you’re actually good at science, you’re very creative, and the same creativity really works well for being an artist,” Harvey said.

Art in the Park is Harvey’s biggest show of the year in terms of sales. She starts preparing for it months in advance, and her preparations go right up to the last week before the show. On Thursday in her studio, a tall set of wooden shelves holds dozens of pieces in various states of completion; “Awesome Things in Progress!!!” is written on top of it.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Shelves full of unfinished ceramic creations are pictured in Melanie Harvey’s home studio on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Shelves full of unfinished ceramic creations are pictured in Melanie Harvey’s home studio on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026.

“Literally the last week and a half before the show, I’m counting the days and figuring out how many loads I can finish in time,” Harvey said.

Harvey makes whole batches of pieces all at once, and her process is long, with many steps that can’t be rushed and three separate times when the pieces go in the kiln. They really start to show their personality a couple of weeks before the show, when she starts glazing and fires the pieces for the second time.

“I hand-paint a lot of colors all over my work,” she said, and the glazing step is the messiest part.

While there is chemistry involved, it isn’t as precise as working in a lab. There are variables that affect the outcome and can be hard to control, like where the materials in the glaze were mined or the specific conditions inside the kiln. “There is chemistry with it; I don’t often have to think about the chemistry part when I’m making my art,” Harvey said. “But I have it to pull from – the things that make me good at chemistry make me good at being an artist.”

After the glazing comes Harvey’s favorite step: putting on decals that she drew herself and firing the piece one last time to get the image onto it.

For Art in the Park, roughly half of these will be Kansas-themed, because there are always people who want that, she said. She has a decal design of a bison with a meadowlark, the state bird, on its back.

“Meadowlarks aren’t the birds on the back of bison, and you’re not going to find a bison in a sunflower field,” she said. “I’m not trying to be literal. But I like to put all the Kansas-y things together, and so I make a lot of dishes like this.”

But other images she uses have a more personal story behind them, like the chicken band. She used to keep chickens, and she named them after female musicians. The decals depict the first three hens she got: Joan Jett, Bonnie Raitt and Meg White – complete with a White Stripes drum kit.

The drumming T. rex, meanwhile, is inspired by her family, which is full of musicians. She plays guitar and sings, and she has two sons who are professional musicians: one plays drums, the other plays bass and trombone. So, she made designs for each of them: one was the T. rex, and the other is a bear playing an electric bass.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

A drumming T. rex bowl is pictured in Melanie Harvey’s studio on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

This cup has Melanie Harvey’s “chicken band” design, which Harvey said is one of her more popular creations.

There’s also a giraffe playing an upright bass, which Harvey said was inspired by a volunteer trip to Africa. She was there with a group called Earthwatch to collect data on wildlife, and giraffes were her favorite animal she saw.

“They’re really interesting to watch,” she said. “They just stare at you, and they’re, like, shaking flies off their ears, and they’re really interesting and cute.”

And, because she loves fly fishing, Harvey also makes pieces with pictures of trout swimming in “whimsical” rainbow water.

She tries to bring a good variety of things, because “I really hate having someone go, ‘Oh, I’ve been wanting to get this from you,” or, ‘This broke and I want a replacement,’ and I don’t have it.”

But, even if she doesn’t have what a customer wants, there’s a good chance they can find something else they love somewhere in South Park.

Harvey does some shopping every year, too – when she can get away from her tent, that is. She said she’s “just like everybody else” in Lawrence in that regard. “They want their homes to be full of art, and they like to collect from local artists.”

“The artists are amazing,” Harvey said. “I always end up buying things from other artists.”

Art in the Park runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday in South Park, rain or shine. For more information and a map of exhibitors, visit lawrenceartguild.org/art-in-the-park.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Finished ceramic works are lined up in Melanie Harvey’s studio on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

A bowl featuring a bass-playing giraffe is pictured in Melanie Harvey’s studio on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026.