Southfield woman honors mom with 50 years of art

SOUTHFIELD — “I traveled all over the world with my mother. Not all over, but a lot of places, and we just always enjoyed each other’s company as a kid or as an adult, and everybody knew that. Everyone says to me, ‘You had such a special relationship with your mom.’ And I did,” said lifelong Southfield resident Pam Lippitt of her late mother, Sally Lippitt, who passed away from cancer in the fall of 2005.

For Lippitt and her mother, the Ann Arbor Art Fair was one of their favorite places to visit together. Nearly 20 years after her passing, Lippitt still honors her mom by attending it.

The mother-daughter duo began their decades-long tradition when Pam’s older brother was part of a three-week-long high school debate program at the University of Michigan in the summer.

“Really, the art fair wasn’t even in our vocabulary at that point. And so we said, ‘All right, we’ll go, and we’ll take him to dinner,’ and that just became the tradition. The art fair was a very different place. It was a little bit smaller, not much smaller, but Ann Arbor was just very different. 1970s Ann Arbor was a very different place.”

Lippitt described Ann Arbor in the 1970s as a “real hippie spot.” Through the years, Ann Arbor and Lippitt grew up and evolved together. Lippitt went on to attend the University of Michigan. She recalled working at a friend’s uncle’s ice cream shop called Mountain High Ice Cream Parlour.

“We would all kind of descend in the summer from  Michigan and Ohio. All our friends would just descend on the spot. We worked for free, but we got to sleep at his house at night. So it was good times,” Lippitt laughed. “Fifty years of memories. So we wouldn’t be going if it weren’t still fun.”

Lippitt recalled that she and her mother had a rhythm when it came to attending the art fair. They’d walk the same route each year, knowing what they wanted to see. Lippitt added that sometimes they didn’t speak. They simply walked together, enjoying each other’s company.

“I think what we both found nice about the art here is you could walk and not talk. There wasn’t the need to fill space when you walk around an art fair,” she said.

Lippitt said they didn’t even have to buy anything either; just being there was half the fun. She shared that her mother was always drawn to the glass vendors. Though Sally Lippitt wasn’t an artist herself, her daughter remembers her as an “artisan” when it came to designing and sewing dresses for her. Her mother never sold her creations. She only sewed dresses for her daughter and herself. Her mother also enjoyed gardening, and she keeps her legacy alive by caring for some of her mother’s plants, which she’s kept all these years.

For many years, Thursday was the day that Lippitt went with her mother to the art fair, which began because she worked in a bead shop as a teenager, and that was the day off they gave her to attend. For years after, she’d continue attending the Art Fair on Thursday, making sure that she always requested Thursday off no matter where she worked.

Lippitt made the painful decision to return to the art fair after her mother’s passing.

“It was horribly emotional. I didn’t really think I’d ever go again, but somewhere in my head, I heard her voice say, ‘Go this year, or you will never go.’”

Lippitt then called up a friend she’d usually meet up with at the art fair, who’d also lost her mom a few years prior, and agreed to go with her.

Almost two decades later, the tradition lives on.

“Always, about three-quarters of our way into our wanderings, we start talking about our mothers, and I knew her mother — she knew my mother — but they didn’t know each other, and we just imagined them together being as good of friends as Bunky and I are.”

Nancy Winer is also a close friend of Lippitt and has attended the art fair for almost 50 years.

“I remember the first thing that I bought. I bought a mug,” said Winer, who began attending the art fair as a student at the University of Michigan, “but I do remember the second thing that I bought there, too. It was a wall hanging. It was macrame, and it had a piece of driftwood incorporated into it, and it was like a seascape. So it was like beach colors, and then it went into sky colors, and it was so pretty. And I had it on my wall for maybe 10 years into my marriage.”

Winer said that, sometimes, when she walks around the fair, she looks at the weavers and wonders if the same person who made that piece is still attending. As a former teacher, Winer remembers becoming inspired by different vendors at the art fair, such as a shadow box booth, which gave her the idea to assign students to gather objects from their summer, put them in a shadow box and then write about what they did that summer.

Winer explained that even though Lippitt also attended the University of Michigan, they didn’t meet until years later, when they were serving on the board of the Detroit Friends of ALYN Hospital, a rehabilitation hospital in the Middle East for children around 30 years ago.

“Her mom was a nice lady. I didn’t know her well, but I knew her, and you know, she was a nice lady. I just think that the two of them were the ones who conquered the world together, so maybe now I get to do a little bit of that with her,” Winer said.

Lippitt honors her mom by talking about her daily and attending the Ann Arbor Art Fair each summer.

“We all create traditions in our lives. Some are handed down to us, and some we create. And my mom and I created a great tradition, spending the day in Ann Arbor together.”

Lippitt and Winer recommend that attendees bring sunscreen and a water bottle, and consider attending later in the day.

The Ann Arbor Art Fair kicks off at 10  a.m. July 18 with three full days of artisans lining the streets of downtown Ann Arbor. For more information, visit theannarborartfair.com.