Courtesy Photo
Tina Bush will sell her painted clothing at this weekend’s Prairie Grove Clothesline Fair.
Pigs sell.
That’s one of the things Tina Bush has learned over the years she’s been an artisan at the Prairie Grove Clothesline Fair. Bush, who lives on Lake Keystone west of Tulsa, Okla., makes handpainted clothing. And while she doesn’t paint Razorbacks, pigs make her Arkansas audience happy.
“Those Razorbacks are die-hard people,” Bush says, chuckling. “I sell out of cute pigs everywhere I go.”
Bush says she’s “always painted” and started painting on sweatshirts about 30 years ago. Her designs look “a lot like Batik” but are created from diluted acrylic paint, she explains, and their popularity “snowballed” into a line of clothing that was carried in many stores around her previous home in Jackson, Miss., and drew buyers to her house on the Fridays before craft shows to shop her den.
“You were nobody unless you had a Creations by Tina outfit in Jackson,” she says, laughing again. “But I was about to work myself to death. When I moved back to Oklahoma, I made a list of five things I needed to change in my life — and one of them was to go back small. It’s not about the money. I chose to make a good living and also have a good life.”
Now Bush does about 35 shows a year, including several in Michigan, Kansas, Alabama and Mississippi, in addition to Arkansas. Actually, she says, she’ll work only part of the Clothesline Fair, then hand off to her daughter.
Courtesy Photo
Tina Bush will sell her painted clothing at this weekend’s Prairie Grove Clothesline Fair.
“And I’ll go junking,” she says happily. “Y’all have really good junk there.”
— Becca Martin-Brown
bmartin@nwadg.com
FAQ
Prairie Grove
Clothesline Fair
WHEN — 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday & Sunday; until 3 p.m. Labor Day
WHERE — Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park
COST — Admission is free; $5 parking
INFO — 751-5441 or acozarks.org
